Wasn't "The Obama Effect" supposed to win the Georgia Senate race for Democrats?
The networks just called the Georgia Senate race for Saxby Chambliss, preventing Democrats from taking the 60 seat majority they needed to block Republican filibusters. That keeps Democrat Senate gains to 7 seats this year, and also preserves Republican checks on Pelosi-Reid-Obama for the next two years.
Despite Republicans winning this seat, it’s actually a victory for moderates today. Pelosi and Reid can’t steamroll anything crazy through Congress now. That’s good for ALL Americans, of both parties, who sit in the middle of the political spectrum.
It’s bad news in the Obama Nation though.
All of Obama’s muscle in Georgia was turned over to Jim Martin to beat Chambliss…his former campaign offices, his paid staff, even his recycled campaign posters and flyers (anything that had Martin and Obama together was used to full effect). Jim Martin wrapped himself head to toe in all things Obama, and even tromped around with Obama’s favorite rappers to turn out black voters. The truth is: Obama’s voters turned out for Obama personally, and not for Democrats generically. Black voters excitedly voted for a black candidate for president, but didn’t turn out in high numbers for a white Democrat running for Senate.
Republicans actually turned out to vote today, unlike on November 4th, and “The Obama Effect” did nothing to cancel that out and win the day for Martin.
But, it was supposed to. Obama’s winning coalition of November 4th was supposed to win this Senate seat too.
So, why didn’t it?
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Thank The Lord for the Chambliss win!
Thank the Lord that BHO and his goons were not down in GA causing corruption.
That may take the air out of Franken’s challenges in DC. Also reduce some leverage for Joe the Houdini Lieberman. Dunno..
Now we wait for the craziness to end in Minnesota………….
Please take Hillary’s picture down. She should not be stained by Republicans.
Woooohoooo.
John Says:
December 2, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Please take Hillary’s picture down. She should not be stained by Republicans.
Clintons don’t seem to be bothered much by stains, so don’t worry about it, OBorg.
“Wasn’t “The Obama Effect” supposed to win the Georgia Senate race for Democrats?”
Well, no, quite frankly.
McCain won the state handsomely duing the federal election, and it looks like Obama was smart enough not to waste his time campaigning for Martin.
Really, you should learn something about electoral politics before issuing forth with yet another brain-fart.
Hmmm….let’s see.
Do I vote for someone who has a governor with a successful track record campaigning for me or a rapper with a record deal. Maybe common sense isn’t dead after all.
…these are the breaks.
I hope common sense wins in MN. Al Franken is a freak of nature…and a crook.
The kind of change we needed in Georgia. Didn’t acorn do its job?
Turns out there is no obama effect if obama isn’t on the ticket. imagine that
“Turns out there is no obama effect if obama isn’t on the ticket. imagine that”
thats the dumbest thing i have ever heard…did obama win georgia? NO
saxby actually won the election the 2st time, just not over 50%
how about all the other senate races where the dems added seats? no no dont talk about that and a possible “obama effect” just cherry pick the 1 result that would fit into your arguement
how about elizibeth dole losing? could that be due to the “obama effect”?
oh no that would negate your horrible arguement…carry on then
not-so-secret weapon: Palin!!!
Pelosi and Reid can’t steamroll anything crazy through Congress now.
Wanna bet? the Republicans will not be able to keep their squishier members (Olympia Snow for one) from voting with the Dems. And Harry Reid will keep the Democrats toeing the party line. So filibuster votes will look like this:
For: 58 Democrats, 1 independent, 1 Republican
Against: 40 Republicans
Result: cloture
Who knows? maybe Harry can convince Senator Snow to join the ranks of Independent?
Jenn: it really has nothing to do with the Lord. Honestly.
Matt, the truth is that Obama was NOT on the ballot during the GA run-off. Elizabeth Dole lost when Obama WAS on the ballot.
So, where does that put YOUR argument? (Incidentally, the NC Senate race was a much BIGGER win for Hagan. Obama couldn’t even get 50% of the vote while Hagan won by about 8 percentage points–she also actually won 106,000 MORE votes than Obama got, despite the Senate race having 39,000 FEWER votes cast. Dole, by comparison, got 240,000 fewer votes than McCain got. And given the actual results for the Senate race, it’s quite possible that a number of GOP voters went to Hagan. Combine these facts: (1) Hagan got 106,000 more votes than her top-of-the-ticket guy, Obama; (2) Dole got 240,000 fewer votes than her top-of-the-ticket guy, McCain; (3) Other-party Presidential candidates combined for less than 40000 votes compared to other-party Senate candidates who combined for 135,000 votes (Lib’t Pres candidate Barr accounted for nearly 65% of the non-Dem, non-GOP Presidential vote; Lib’t Sen candidate Cole accounted for almost 98% of the non-Dem, non-GOP Senate vote); (4) There were just under 39000 fewer votes cast in the Senate race. What you’ll come away with is that Hagan HAD to have won more than 100000 GOP votes to achieve the margin she did.
And Obamaisprez, McCain did NOT win in Georgia “handsomely”. He won by 5 percentage points (only 200,000 votes out of less than 4 million votes cast). Comparing the two races, overall, there were more than 170,000 more votes cast for President than for Senate. The differences break down as such: McCain won nearly 181,000 more votes than Chambless; Obama won just over 86,000 more votes than Martin; Barr got nearly 100,000 fewer votes than Buckley. (By comparison, McCain did win “handsomely” in Alabama. Out of nearly 2,100,000 votes, McCain beat Obama by more than 450,000 votes. McCain got more than 1,266,000 votes while Obama got 813,000 with fewer than 20,000 votes for other candidates. In the US Senate race, Sessions-GOP won 1,300,000 compared to Figures-Dem’s 750,000 and only 2500 votes for other candidates. Roughly 40000 people didn’t vote for a Senate candidate.)
my point, JozefAL, was that the author wrote a whole post about how the obama effect was to win GA for martin, when in fact that race was always viewed as a longshot for dems to win. Look at the facts, chambliss won the initial election, just not over 50%…obama lost GA by about 5 points. so wow imagine the shock that obama had little effect on a race that A) the GOP already won (by a decent margin) and B) obama didnt spend 1 minute campaigning there for martin…and not to mention this race was in GOP stronghold georgia
my point is that the author cherrypicked this one race and sarcastically mocked an “obama effect” when there were numerous other senate races where the democrats beat out GOP incumbants that he/she could have written about, but instead chose this one
thats all