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Goofiness
Thursday, Nov 11, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller A very misleading factoid seems to be making the rounds of the right wing lately, so I thought I’d help nip it in the bud. * Alan Keyes received more votes than Jim Durkin did two years ago during his run against US Senator Dick Durbin. Keyes did receive more votes than Durkin. Durkin took 1,325,703 votes compared to Keyes’ 1,376,044. But total voter turnout was way higher this year than in 2002. Durkin and Durbin received a combined 3.4 million votes. Barack Obama alone received 3.56 million votes this year. Durkin raised almost no money, was hardly known outside of his own state House district, received little media coverage, was up against a popular incumbent and still won 38.7 percent. Keyes won 27 percent last week. Only a fool would claim that Keyes improved on Durkin’s result. A tree stump running as a Republican might have received more votes than Keyes this year. Then there’s the “blame the media” mantra that seems to emanate from every rightist corner. Keyes’ own website had this lovely nugget: For almost three months, the Illinois media had a field day intentionally turning the dignified, passionate Keyes into a caricature of his true self. There was nothing “dignified” about Keyes or his campaign. dignified Nobody can claim that I am a fan of the mainstream media. But Keyes got pretty much the coverage he deserved. He did not elevate the dialogue here. He cheapened it with over-the-top insults and super-heated rhetoric. And then there’s the paranoid fantasy that Illinois Republican Party Chair Judy Baar Topinka somehow wanted a Keyes candidacy in order to ruin the party’s conservative wing. The problem with this tinfoil hat argument is the undeniable fact that it was the conservatives who came up with the Keyes idea and it was the conservatives who convinced the state GOP to bring him here and then defended him until his strange behavior forced most of the saner members of their cabal into hiding.
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Geek in Chief
Thursday, Nov 11, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller From the AP’s afternoon wrap of Veterans’ Day activities: Gov. Rod Blagojevich attended an annual Veterans Day program in Belleville, where he announced a new Web site that consolidates information about state and federal programs available to help veterans, service members and their families.
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No rejoicing?
Thursday, Nov 11, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller Alan Keyes did better in Effingham County than anywhere in Illinois, but the only local article posted on the subject that I could find contains just a brief mention of his success buried way down deep: Not only did President George W. Bush carry Effingham County by nearly 3 to 1, but U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes soundly thrashed Democrat Barack Obama in the county, even though Obama won a landslide victory statewide. Keyes also did well in Iroquois County, but the largest daily newspaper in that county has yet to post any stories about the victory on its website.
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The Obamatist
Thursday, Nov 11, 2004 - Posted by Rich Miller Another glowing article on Barack Obama. This time in the November edition of the Washington Monthly. There’s almost nothing new here, including the warnings about how others who were tagged with the “First Black President” prediction have fizzled. But Benjamin Wallace-Wells does know how to turn a phrase. What was perhaps most brilliant about Obama’s speech at the convention, and indeed about much of his campaign, was the way in which he revamped his unusual, foreign-seeming biography so that it fit the central American political myth, the ascent from the Log Cabin, with a post-racial 21st-century spin. The half-Kenyan kid became Abe Lincoln. Isn’t it unlikely, Obama tells all his audiences, �that a skinny kid with a funny name from the South Side of Chicago� could be where he is today. (In some ways perhaps not so unlikely: He was the son of a single mother, but he also went to prep school and has degrees from Columbia and Harvard). While I think most Illinoisans are pleased with their choice and proud that we’ve produced such a powerful national figure, lots of us also want him to remember that he is supposed to be our US Senator, not a political showpiece for bicoastal liberals, as Carol Moseley-Braun became. He has a much better head on his shoulders than CM-B, but the Beltway can tempt like almost nothing else.
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