The New Dixiecrats

From the AP

Not all Democrats falling for Obama

By BEN EVANS and SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writers

Nothing personal, Sen. Obama, but our re-election comes first.

Barack Obama, for all his attention and primary successes, does not go over so well in a fair number of Democratic lawmakers' home districts. So it seems there is little chance that some will endorse him for president.

Some are counting on Republican votes in their re-election bids. Some are newly minted and in rematches with 2006 opponents. Some may be wary of how their constituents will react to a black presidential candidate. Some, too, have made it a practice of distancing themselves from the national party, fearing the inevitable campaign ad that has their face morphing into Howard Dean, the party chairman, and Obama.

Rep. Dan Boren, the only congressional Democrat in Oklahoma, calls Obama "the most liberal senator" in Congress and says he has no plans to make a public endorsement.

"We're much more conservative" in eastern Oklahoma, Boren said. "I've got to reflect my district."

Georgia Rep. Jim Marshall, a Democrat and Vietnam veteran who won his last election by about 1,800 votes, said he admires both Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but feels no obligation to state a preference.

"If it turns out one of them is an ax murderer or something like that I'll make a choice," he joked. Otherwise, "I don't think I need to get involved."

For most of these fence-sitters — at least 14 as of Wednesday — it boils down to political necessity: They are vulnerable Democrats in conservative-leaning districts who take pains to avoid aligning closely with the national party.

…

"They are all scared to death about getting beat by a Republican," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., one of Obama's most prominent supporters. "I don't think that if the good Lord himself had been nominated as a Democrat that some of those folks would have endorsed him. They are afraid of looking too much like a Democrat because of the kind of districts they're from."

As in the past, many uncommitted Democrats are from the South, which has favored Republicans in recent elections.

Although Obama swept the region in the Democratic primaries with near-universal support from black voters, he often fared poorly among working-class whites. As a result, he is seen as an asset in some districts but a question mark at best in others.

…

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a Democratic House leader who helped orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006, argues against reading too much into the holdouts. He said most of them always stay out of national politics and that the party is generally unified around Obama.

"They're just going to stick to their knitting," he said. "It's not that they're anti-Obama."

First, unless the writers of this article are using the phrase “orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006” in the loosest possible, “I-got-up-and-went-potty-and-showered-and-then-voted” sense (in which case several million of us “orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006”) then they’re just dead-wrong: Rahm Emanuel had shit-all to do with the Dems crushing the GOP in 2006.

Emanuel is a one-man DLC goon-squad who was bequeathed his political manhood by Bill Clinton and has downloaded absolutely no new software upgrades since. And had he managed to force his GOP-lite, triangulating political playbook down the DNC’s throat and run the 2006 elections out of its moldy pages, we would likely have been saddled with yet another two years of Republican congressional majorities.


But he couldn’t, and as a result an admittedly slim and weak 2006 Democratic Majority was brought to you by an alliance of infuriated citizens, GOP scandals, Teh Netroots and Doctor Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy.

(Speaking of which it would please me mightily if someone a lot closer to the corridors of power than me would point these facts out to the Democratic Leadership. And then ask them that why -- since they won the god damned election -- they continue to treat the corrupt Republican minority and the lying, treasonous Republican administration with all the calm authority of a teenage boy caught rifling through his Dad’s porn stash.)

Second, if you are a Democrat and your constituents can’t handle the heavy burden of living in a post-Emancipation Proclamation World, fuck them and fuck you for pandering to them and still having the nerve to call yourself a Democrat.

And if all this seems distantly familiar -- this spectacle of Democrats hiding from their own Party, platform, and standard-bearer -- that's because it is.

But at least back in Harry Truman's day this species of turncoat

had the stones to be up-front about why they betrayed and then bolted their party.