Excellent profile of Alvin Greene’s Senate candidacy in South Carolina. Given the demographics of the South Carolina Democratic primary electorate, I suspect the racial angle (i.e., that black voters could tell just from their names that Vic Rawl was white and Alvin Greene was black) is probably the Occam’s Razor explanation for how he won. Interesting that the national media’s paid a lot of attention to Greene without mentioning that it actually is a milestone for the party of John C. Calhoun and Strom Thurmond (back in the says when Strom was a segregationist) to nominate an African-American for the Senate for the first time since Reconstruction.
Yes, Greene is a ridiculous Senate candidate, and a less-than-appealing storyline given the obscenity charge and what appears to have been less than honorable discharges from the Army and Air Force. But it would nonetheless behoove Jim DeMint to debate Greene and treat him with the respect afforded to any opponent, and the media to hold off a bit on making fun of him. Greene’s the epitiome of an ordinary citizen nominated by his fellow citizens, and while he seems pretty ignorant of even basic civics, that didn’t prevent him from serving in the Armed Forces; plenty of men have died for this country knowing no more of its governance than Alvin Greene. That doesn’t mean anybody should vote for him, but a little common decency and respect for the power and dignity of ordinary Americans would go a long way in this season of popular discontents.
(By the way, I very much doubt the one outlier poll purporting to show Rawl within striking distance of DeMint. Yes, Republican incumbents face an electorate that’s not that happy with them either, but this is South Carolina, and DeMint has given voters no reason to ultimately desert him).
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This year, Democrats here in Illinois nominated a pawnbroker named Scott Lee Cohen to the office of Lt. Governor. The party establishment ended up strong-arming him into withdrawing after a number of skeletons popped out of his closet, including a domestic battery arrest for allegedly holding a knife to the throat of his live-in girlfriend (an accused prostitute).
In 1986, the Democrats nominated acolytes of Lyndon LaRouche to the offices of Lt. Governor and Secretary of State.
In both cases, the media completely failed to meet their responsibilities to give these candidates even modest scrutiny. In fact, this year, most of our state and local races were given very little coverage by the local media. I don’t live in South Carolina, but I suspect this is what happened there.
Given the nonsense the media *does* cover (how much do we really need to know about Snooki?), there’s absolutely no excuse for this.
“…the media completely failed to meet their responsibilities to give these candidates even modest scrutiny.”
Kind of true of the 2008 Presidential election as well isn’t it?
“…the media completely failed to meet their responsibilities to give these candidates even modest scrutiny.”
Kind of true of the all elections of the last 30+ years as well isn’t it?
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Fixed it for you, Lee.
Berto, I agree with you that the media should have done a better job with Clinton, but what else did they miss…in the last 30+ years
maddirishman,
Don’t get me started on Clinton. You’d think the GOP would name an airport after him the way he screwed the Democratic Party forever.
What else did the media miss? They let Cheney whine about how taxes are bad, after Cheney made all his money from government contracts (i.e. tax money). They whiffed on Reagan’s Iran-Contra program. (BTW, Iran-Contra should be the only thing we name after Reagan). Helped with the cover-up of Bush’s “spying on American citizens without a warrant” program. What did the media miss? You’ll get a shorter answer from the question “what did the media get right?”