Senate candidate Michelle Nunn of Georgia election strategy plan (as of last December) was somehow leaked to the National Review. The Earth moved, I think. Or folks on the Right got a glimpse of how Democrat campaigns work or something… I am still trying to figure out why this is such a big deal…
And big yawns for stating the obvious from the National Review that she might have a hard time with rural white voters… well, maybe, but, she is Sam Nunn’s daughter.
As southern whites have moved to the right, Democrats have been forced to cobble together a coalition of minority voters… “This constituency group is critical,” it says of the African Americans who make up much of Georgia’s Democratic base, adding that Nunn must win “a very high percentage of the African-American vote” and attract “a large number of voters who do not typically turn out in an off-election year.
How can I get a job of just stating the obvious: for a Democrat to win, Democrats in a Red state need to go to the polls? And yes, minorities make up this demographic because the Right vilifies minority groups all the time. Geesh. Duh.
None the less, this is an important Senate election for Georgia. Unfortunately, for me, it is really hard to get excited about it. Her website pretty much paints the picture of Republican light. Jay Bookman at the AJC describes Nunn’s message as vague…
What Nunn does not yet have — and what she will need — is a clear message. She’s going to run as a centrist problem-solver, a moderate antidote to the bitterness, rancor and extremism of the national Republican Party. And she’ll try to project an air of studied neutrality as Perdue tries to paint her as a poorly disguised liberal intent on doing the bidding of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
I understand the thinking. Neutral may not antagonize people. It may make them feel safe and unthreatened. The problem is, neutral doesn’t get people to turn out at the polls come November. Republicans still have a built-in advantage in this state, and that advantage is amplified in mid-term elections with no presidential race to draw voters. It can only be overcome with turnout.
You can go ahead and waste some time reading the National Review article. But, the comments following the piece are even more entertaining…
Turnout in 2014 means something very different then it did in 2006. A little further south of Georgia (actually a different country) in Florida here’s what happened in Orange County last week. (Orange County is the home of the Mouse.) 153,315 absentee ballots were mailed out. That’s roughly 25% of all eligible voters. 70,503 (46%) went to Democrats, 51,418 (33%) went to Republicans and 31,394 (21%) went to unaffiliated voters. Granted these are all votes that will be cast in the August Florida primary, but in the 2012 general election primary the percentages were pretty much the same. In the 2006 primary in Seminole County, a county next door to Orange County, 8% of the vote came through the mail. In the 2012 primary 32% were absentee ballots. We all need to rethink what voter turnout means. And hopefully in the near future we can all fire up the computer machine and vote electronically.