Today two candidates are poised to win elections against
incumbents. Both are liberal Democrats, both have been buoyed by
the endorsement of a local big-city newspaper, and both have drawn
support from the blogosphere. Indeed, they’ll probably vote
similarly if elected.
The difference is in their choice of opponents. And it’s all the
difference in the world.
Hank Johnson is running against Cynthia McKinney. McKinney,
you’ll recall, is the cuckoo for Coco-Puffs Representative who
recently punched a Capitol police officer for the crime of not
recognizing her (she refuses to wear her member pin when she
waltzes past security), an incident that barely makes her greatest
hits list. That list includes questioning Al Gore’s “negro
tolerance level” in 2000, suggesting in 2002 that a possible secret plot by the
Bush Administration to make money by letting the 9/11 attacks
happen would be worth investigating, and accepting donations from
people under federal investigation for raising money for terrorist
groups (refusing to return the money in a 2002 debate, she said her
campaign wouldn’t “racially profile our contributors”). That’s not
even counting the open anti-Semitism of her father Billy, who has
lamented that “Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S.”
Ned Lamont, on the other hand, is running against Joe Lieberman,
one of those J-E-W-S. Lieberman’s sin, of course, is his steadfast
support for the war on terror generally and the war in Iraq
specifically, and his insistence, against the prevailing opinion of
his copartisans, that the latter is a part of the former.
The New York Times, Bible of Tri-State liberals, gave
Lamont a surprise endorsement on July 30; though he’d started to
edge Lieberman out in polls shortly before then, the endorsement
seemed to cement his lead. The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, meanwhile, has waged a pro-Johnson,
anti-McKinney assault in both its editorial endorsements and in editorial page editor
Cynthia Tucker’s column.
Johnson, who has forced McKinney into a runoff for the
Democratic nomination by holding her under 50% in the three-way
primary last month, leads 53% to 40% in the latest InsiderAdvantage
poll. Lamont leads Lieberman 51% to 45% in the latest Quinnipiac
poll. The polls could be wrong — low turnout races, as a
mid-August primary is likely to be, are hard to poll — but it
would be foolish to bet on either incumbent.
Besides the papers, Johnson and Lamont owe some thanks to the
blogs — but not the same blogs. The nexus of Johnson’s online
support is the hawkish Winds of Change, where Joe Katzman and Marc
Danziger invited Johnson to ask for donations and respond to reader comments. The comments ranged from
skeptical to enthusiastic (Danziger’s nom-de-blog is “Armed
Liberal,” so it’s no surprise Winds of Change would attract a
heterodox crowd), but Johnson walked away with a few thousand
dollars and a bit of blog-cred.
Lamont’s fans congregate around Daily Kos, the id of the
partisan left, and similar bastions of anti-Bush shrillness. Daily
Kos founder Markos Moulitsas appeared in a campaign ad with Lamont, and he’s
been known to hang around with liberal blogger Jane Hamsher. But
when Hamsher embarrassed herself with a blackface caricature of
Lieberman, Lamont pretended to know nothing of these “blogs.”
Lamont, unlike Johnson, suddenly had to worry
about how being associated with the blogs would make him
look.
It probably won’t matter today. But it could matter tomorrow.
Another difference between Johnson and Lamont: Johnson’s race is
basically over. The Republican general election nominee is in no
danger of winning in Georgia’s 4th. But if Lamont does anything
less than blow Lieberman out of the water, Lieberman may stay in
the race and run as an independent. Every connoisseur of political
drama must hope that he does.
