Low Turnout Saves Chambliss; Progressives Look AheadPaul Hogarthbyline‚ Dec. 03‚ 2008December run-offs are always brutal to getting out casual voters, and December run-offs on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving are even worse. Despite heroic efforts by hundreds of Obama campaign veterans in Georgia to elect Jim Martin, they could not replicate the high voter turnout of November 4th to come out again on December 2nd (and even that alone could not have won the election.) Senator Saxby Chambliss is lucky to have gotten a second term, grateful to Sarah Palin for inciting the right-wing base, and fortunate to hail from the most conservative part of the country – in a state still polarized along racial lines. Chambliss dodged a bullet, after for much of the campaign he was largely expected to easily win re-election. Martin’s loss means that Democrats won’t have sixty votes in the U.S. Senate, but that’s never what this race was about – and it’s a terrible mistake to read it that way. Now the task for progressives is to demand results from Democrats in Congress – as an expanded majority still means that a lot can get done. |