Final Thoughts Before Bed

Mark informs me that absentee ballots have already been counted in VA. So…if that’s true, then I’m much more optimistic for Webb. There’s an automatic recount in VA if the final result is under 1%, so Dems still need to send every lawyer in a 1000 mile radius into the state. But if this is the case, then a truly despicable man has been defeated, by an honorable man. Even if the Dems. don’t pull it out tonight, this is a great victory. And I believe that Webb will be a great Senator.

Sadly, however, Harold Ford seems to have lost. This one hurts. Ford ran a really hard campaign, gave more than as good as he took, and showed that Democrats could play hardball. I hate to say it, but I do think the “call me…” ad did him in. It changed the tenor of the race. Ford winning would have been a great thing for Democrats in the South, and for demonstrating a really significant shift (along with Obama in IL) in the character of black political leadership. I grieve over this one…

Author: Steven M. Teles

Steven Teles is a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of American Politics. He is the author of Whose Welfare? AFDC and Elite Politics (University Press of Kansas), and co-editor of Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy (Cambridge). He is currently completing a book on the evolution of the conservative legal movement, co-editing a book on conservatism and American Political Development, and beginning a project on integrating political analysis into policy analysis. He has also written journal articles and book chapters on international free market think tanks, normative issues in policy analysis, pensions and affirmative action policy in Britain, US-China policy and federalism. He has taught at Brandeis, Boston University, Holy Cross, and Hamilton colleges, and been a research fellow at Harvard, Princeton and the University of London.

4 thoughts on “Final Thoughts Before Bed”

  1. Did you think any state in the South was ready to send a black senator to DC? That ad didn't swing anything. It was merely an ugly reminder of the truth. Steele similarly never had a prayer, whatever his own flaws or virtues.
    I remember Bradley/Deukmejian in '82, and that was California.

  2. "Steele similarly never had a prayer, whatever his own flaws or virtues."
    You mean here in Maryland? If so…yeah, I was always thinking that while he might peel off some of the black vote, it would hurt the Republicans in the redneck parts of the state (if only from people not voting if not voting for Cardin).
    Of course, Steele's "flaws" were considerable…

  3. I'm in MD, and predicted Cardin's win based on Steele's race — that 5-10% of whites won't vote for a black man no matter what, but will lie about it to pollsters. Rural MD is still South-ish.

  4. Ford losing may not necessarily have to do with race. I know a guy who's an independent and lives in Memphis, and he absolutely detests the Ford family for being a bunch of corrupt SOBs who run a local political machine.

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