Wednesday, December 20, 2017

More About Our Special Senate Election

I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome of last week's Special Senate Election in Alabama, speaking as an insider. I'm not sorry with the outcome.

But the National news coverage of it gives me some pause. 


First of all, there was excessive coverage of it. After all, it's only for a damned Senate seat.


But secondly, the tone of some of the opinion pieces had carried a tone of utter surprise; kind of like an overly censorious grandparent expressing surprise that her boisterous grandchild did not do something embarrassing, for a change. One even said that we need more pressure from our betters to do what they consider to be right.


Okay, we might have had our share of rough times lately. Remember the Luv Gov, perhaps?


But we in general have our hearts in the right place. And we showed it.


And we don't need some columnist from the Post or Times to throw shade on us.


Now I get it: the Post has a real hard-on to get Trump. Sometimes they don't play fair. But only an idiot expects a lack of slant or bias from a newspaper.


There's a place for Democrats in Alabama. But look for them to be non-Pelosi Democrats. And there's also room for third parties. 


Historically, the largest reason why Alabama turned Republican is because of a split in the Democratic Party back in 1985. That race was between then Alabama Attorney General Charles Graddick in a runoff with then Lt. Governor Bill Baxley.  Graddick, who was the the more conservative candidate, won by a few thousand votes. However, Baxley sued, claiming that Graddick violated primary regulations by encouraging Republicans to "cross over" and vote as Democrats. Graddick, maintained that this was legal because Alabama was an open primary state. The dispute made it all the way to the state Supreme Court, who told the Democrats to either declare Baxley the winner by default or hold another primary. The party went with Baxley. A lot of people got pissed off; and turned around an voted for Republican Guy Hunt. Guy Hunt was less than a stellar Governor; but the Democratic Party gave itself a self-inflicted wound.





3 comments:

  1. Very interesting. I got that sense from the coverage too.

    For some reason some East Coast media types take Montana to be full of dangerous anti-government cranks. Well, we're not like Seattle here and we drink less expensive coffee.

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  2. Interesting.
    Thanks for the history lesson.

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