Georgia blue?
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: July 10, 2008
Barack Obama has been keeping close tabs on Georgia over the past few weeks. It’s one of the historically red states Obama’s campaign believes the junior senator from Illinois might be able to turn blue – or, at least, a nice, rosy shade of pink.
You’ll remember that Obama trounced Hillary Clinton, 67 percent to 31 percent, in Georgia’s Democratic primary on Super Tuesday (Feb. 5). He ran up 50-point margins in some counties.
Former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, a Macon native who made his name in the Senate on foreign affairs and military policy, has been mentioned in more than a few circles as a potential VP choice for Obama. (This is nothing new, writes Michael Crowley for The New Republic.)
(Speaking of Nunn, he’s already making time in the swing state of Colorado—and with another might-have-been-presidential-candidate. Check this out, from RealClearPolitics.com.)
And McCain leads Obama in the Peach State by a not-very-red 6.7 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics average.
But Jim Wooten of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution isn’t impressed. In a blog post ahead of Obama’s appearance at a Cobb County school on Tuesday, Wooten explained why he believes the big crowd sure to turn out at the rally won’t turn Georgia blue in November.
“Georgians are occasionally surprised by the leftward drift of politicians they elect, but they do not knowingly choose candidates with the ideological bent of Barack Obama,” he says.
Obama “cannot win Georgia. Nohow, no way.“
Maybe … maybe not. In each of the three times Georgia has gone blue since 1968, the Democratic nominee was a native Southerner. At the least, it’s looking like McCain will need to spend time and resources shoring up support there.
And while Georgia may stay red, what he’ll have to do to keep it is sure to be making McCain feel a bit blue.
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Posted by ( ) on July 11, 2008 at 7:52 am
In the video of Powell and Nunn, the most interesting thing to me was the question (at the 6 minute mark) to Powell and Powell’s answer. As we know, Powell was instrumental in presenting “evidence” to the UN that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq by US forces. The constitutionality of that invasion is questionable. Had Congress listened to Congressman Ron Paul and not given its stamp of approval to that invasion the world would be a different and better place today. Incidentally, Paul approved of our incursion into Afghanistan because going after an enemy that has attacked us is constitutional.
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