So today Markos decided to
call the Tennessee senate race, declaring that the race is
"all but lost". Markos, you should be ashamed of yourself. Our candidate is within five points, he is fighting for his political life, and his race might decide whether we win the Senate. And you're discouraging us from helping him?
You have no excuse to do that, especially when you're still pimping the Connecticut race because "our guy is on the rise." Last I checked, the gap between Lamont and Lieberman is ten points, twice as large as the gap between Corker and Ford. It's a lot easier to close a five-point gap than a ten-point gap, and heck as much as I hate Lieberman, Bob Corker is far, far worse. And you know it.
Why is Markos calling this race, urging us to divert our support elsewhere? Because he's had it in for Ford for a long time. Just a week ago, he blasted Ford for not supporting gay marriage,
saying he "won't cry when [Ford] doesn't win". Before that, he mocked Ford for running what pundits called
"the perfect campaign" and said he was
"headed to defeat", although at that time he said he wanted Ford to win. Heck, when Ford was getting
blasted by a racist ad campaign, you didn't see a damn thing written about it by Kos. He didn't bring it up, even when it was featured on sites that I know he reads every day. Markos, I know you don't really want Ford to win. And you should be ashamed of yourself. I know this is your site, but all of us -- especially you -- should be trying to do everything possible to make sure we win the Senate.
If we want to win, we have to get past playing favorites and pimping our pet races. We need to support Dems who have a chance to win, especially when they're good candidates like Ford. How are we ever going to rebuild our party in the South if we cut loose candidates like Ford? We can't be a national party, in my opinion, without representing this entire country. And states like Tennessee mean we have to run candidates like Ford.
You think the GOP is this stupid? Lincoln Chafee often votes with us, and heck he publicly bragged that he didn't even vote for Bush in the last election. Yet Bush just sent his wife to campaign for Chaffee. They know that to keep a seat in Rhode Island, they need someone like Chafee. Let's not be stupid. We need the same if we want to win in Tennessee.
The reasons why we need to support Ford go far beyond where he's from. We all know the real reason that Ford is behind in Tennessee right now. He's behind because he's a black man, and a dirty racist Republican ad campaign focused the attention on race for the past week or two. In Tennessee, if the campaign is about race, Ford loses. The point behind the GOP's ad wasn't just to get racists thinking about what Ford would do to their women. It was to push Ford, and us, to respond and explicitly make race an issue in the campaign. It was their way of getting us to remind voters that Ford was black.
The truth is that Ford would be up ten points if he was white. You know it, and I know it. Now sure, he's taken some positions that a lot of us disagree with. But in case you forgot, he's running in fucking Tennessee. He's running to replace Bill fucking Frist. This isn't Connecticut or Minnesota. And no one in our party, no one, is as pure as snow when it comes to voting for things they don't believe in. As I pointed out in a previous diary, Paul Wellstone (who I worked for) voted for the Defense of Marriage Act too. And the Patriot Act, for good measure. The bottom line is that politicians can't always vote my way if they want to win. Paul Wellstone couldn't, and Harold Ford definitely can't if he wants to win in Tennessee. I deal with that, and so should Markos.
Ford is trying to do something harder than just win as a Democrat in Tennessee. He's trying to become the fourth black U.S. senator since Reconstruction. In fucking Tennessee. That's pretty damn tough. And he's running a good campaign. He's fighting hard. He's a good candidate and he might just pull out a win. He's got as good of a shot as Lamont or Peterson have of winning. And frankly, his victory would mean more than theirs. It would mean a victory against racism, it would mean a victory for African-Americans. It would make the Senate more diverse. And it would give our party more rerepresentation in a part of the country many want to write off.
I want Ford to win because I want to win the U.S. Senate and keep it for decades, not just until the next cycle. If you're a Democrat, you should want him to win too. So get off your ass and contribute to his campaign. Get off your ass and phone bank. Get off your ass and volunteer. And Markos, don't ever put your personal feelings before a victory for our party. Too many people are counting on us. The stakes are just too high. We owe it to the soliders in Iraq and to working people in Tennessee and across the country to fight to the end. Don't ever again dampen our own energy behind our candidates when they are fighting to win and their victory means so much.
UPDATE: In his original "I give up" front-pager, Markos said a "not yet released" Rasmussen poll would show Ford down eight points, 53-45. Now his new front-pager says the Rasmussen poll only shows Ford two points down. What the fuck? We could use an explanation.