Folks,
I know that defining Sarah Palin before and with the media (I've never seen someone walk into such a field of fire upon announcement, but then my political career is almost short enough to qualify me for a Republican VP nomination), and the RNC is taking up a lot of attention here. However, down in the smaller plays, such as trying to get to sixty seats in the Senate, there is still a lot of work to do.
I will post my usual upfront fundraising plea here before getting into the meat of the topic. Right now, Jim Martin has almost reached the $20k mark on ActBlue. Is a goal of reaching $50k by the next week too high a mark to set?
Alright, now to the heart of the matter. This will be part one in a two part series. First, I will introduce the villain, and tomorrow, I will bring out the hero of this little drama brewing in Georgia.
If you check out 538.com, you can see that we currently have just under a 10% chance of getting to 60 without needing to keep Joe (I-ManAsAnIsland) Lieberman around. A pickup of five seats is roughly in the bag, with the weakest in the bunch being the Colorado Udall cousin.
The battle for 60 has the netroots supporting a lot of good candidates, including Jim Slattery (KS) and Scott Kleeb (NE). Martin currently has a better chance of victory than both of them. He has recent experience in running for statewide office, in which he outperformed the top of the ticket, in 2006. After the cash-draining runoff with Vernon Jones, he brought his Democrats home straight away, and is looking to fight Saxby Chambliss for Georgia independents.
The DSCC sees this as a race to improve, with Schumer pledging conditional support - namely if Jim can make it close. In closing a 21-point gap in May down to a 5-point gap in August, I think Jim has satisfied his end of the bargain. The aid of the DSCC in the coming air war is helpful, but of course it will be best if Jim has resources of his own that he can direct and put in tune with Georgia voters.
And so with that, I would like to give a preview of what is to come and what is being played on Georgia televisions right now:
First, we have Saxby's introductory piece:
In it, he runs the standard GOP line. Government is always the problem and not the solution. Taxes for social spending are "unfair" to "hard-working" Americans. He believes in choosing your doctor, meaning that children should be free to choose to have no doctor. And you can see the pattern go on. This is all that goes unsaid as Saxby attempts to position himself as a "moderate."
The most radical part of Saxby's agenda is a little piece of filth lovingly cultivated in the God-fearing northern part of Georgia and the Atlanta suburbs. We of course know it as the FairTax:
Now, even as gas prices sag for the post-travel season, and people take a breath between seething about the vacations they couldn't take and worrying about the heating bill (which, honestly, Georgians don't have to in the same way that Yankees must), we will likely hear something like "Thank a Democrat" from Saxby.
Saxby's solution to this is the Gang of Ten, which drives the right-wing crazy, but is also a transparent play to the independent. I'm sure Saxby is willing to use this to say "I'm willing to try anything to help you with your high prices."
Finally, returning to the international realm, we are going to hear some variant of this from Saxby. Regardless of which Chickenhawk sent them into harms way, Saxby is of course going to make a naked play for servicemember votes. In Georgia, pro-military is almost a must, as the Democratic Party of Georgia is running service members in every Congressional race they can find. Jim Martin is also a veteran, of the very same war that Saxby decided was less important than being a football star.
That's enough air time for the opposition. I feel less bad about sending him the links because I believe it is important to see the kind of things he plans to say in order to win re-election. And I will balance that out by showing video from our side next time.
The point of the above is that Saxby will likely try to paint himself as a "moderate" Georgian, since he has the GOP all sown up. He's going to hit us hard on Iraq (likely supporting McCain's "we're gonna win it without those spineless liberal losers"), on energy, and will be a major obstructionist on our health care goals. There is a lot of dog-whistle politics he can still play on "hand-outs" and so forth to deny Georgians the health care they need.
There are two battlegrounds in Georgia. The first is voter registration and turnout amongst the Black Belt that will surely be aided by the amazing efforts of the Obama crew. The second is low-information voters and independents, and that is where the air game comes into play.
Post-RNC, we are going to see a lot of Republican noise down here. Will you help us to answer back?
Please donate here. Can we hit $50k in a week?