If Elizabeth Colbert Busch had won her special election tonight against former Governor Mark Sanford in South Carollina’s First District, it would have given me a certain amount of satisfaction. I am fond of the Colbert family, I am no fan of Mark Sanford, I like winning, and I would have been heartened that the people on South Carolina’s coast have certain standards that can’t be violated. As it turns out, she lost by nine points. I am only mildly surprised that she lost, but the margin was startling. The thing is, and I pointed this out twice on the blog, I don’t really care about losing. In most ways, it’s actually a preferable outcome.
It’s highly unlikely that either Colbert-Busch or Mark Sanford can or could change the outcome of even a single vote in Congress over the next year and a half. It’s also highly unlikely that Colbert-Busch could have won reelection against any normal Republican opponent. The First District isn’t a competitive district. If Colbert-Busch had won, the DCCC would have spent a ton of money trying to defend the seat, but it probably would have been a bad investment.
However, it’s very helpful to our national narrative to have Mark Sanford in Congress. He’s probably worth three Cynthia McKinneys or five James Traficants. In a few days Sanford will be appearing in court to answer for violating a restraining order. His creep factor goes to eleven.
So, even though I like winning and I like the Colbert family, I’m basically happy that we lost this seat. I’m happy even though I recognize that feeling happy means I’ve already partially died inside. Being this cynical isn’t healthy, even if it is fully justified.
I fall off the idealism wagon into cynicism all the time, and then claw my way back up almost as frequently. I don’t consider that a little death at all, though. Contradiction is balance. Humans are subjective creatures, but that doesn’t mean an objective approach makes someone a Vulcan.
I think a mix of enthusiasm/idealism and cynicism/skepticism is the healthiest way to deal with the universe’s contradictions. And yet I fail at that mix often enough to not really know anything about anything anyway.
But that’s just me.
I hear you. I wouldn’t invest an enormous amount of my time and energy into activism (and commentary that hopefully inspires activism) were I not fundamentally optimistic that things can change. I am also relentlessly cynical, because I’ve been doing this a long time and that cynicism is hard won.
I don’t see them as contradictory. The kind of world I’d like to see won’t exist in my lifetime, but while I’m here I can do what I can to pull it in that direction, and alleviate the suffering of those victimized by it who are less privileged than I am.
Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Some people are angels, some people’s values are horrific or their lack of capacity for logical or nuanced thought is horrifying, and at different times some people are all of these things. All you can do is laugh whenever possible and keep going, because sometimes we really do make a difference.
Beautiful thought, Geov. Progressivism depends on a hard, realistic – but not fatalistic – kind of hope. The right-wing seeks always to destroy that hope because it would mean the true destruction of the progressive movement. So we all have to guard it in ourselves.
What changes policy for the better? Winning a special election by a hair with at total turnout of 100,000 over all candidates after having campaigned as GOP-lite (without the Appalachian Trail problems) somehow doesn’t seem to move the meter.
I’m not sure that Sanford’s coming troubles will help Democrats that much if they don’t start painting the real distinctions instead of the phony ones that Sanford used against Colbert-Busch.
It’s not a matter of happiness.
I agree that Colbert-Busch would have had a difficult reelection campaign against a Republican opponent not plagued by a sex scandal (I believe they could have wrangled one, anyway.) In the meantime, we avoided adding an anti-Labor Dem Caucus member. I don’t care how difficult your District is, I don’t want a Democrat who says publicly that they want South Carolina to remain a right-to-work-for-less State.
You read America jut right sometimes.
You sum up how I felt when I learned that the (figurative) final chapter of To Kill A Mocking Bird is a lawsuit over copyright involving a shameless violation of trust. The perfect American story arc.
An cynic assumes things can’t get worse whereas an optimist is sure they can.
the margin isn’t surprising to me – after all, she’s relatively unknown (despite her famous brother), and the district is red. I would have liked a closer result to unsettle the GOP more, but she’s raised her profile, and perhaps she can play other roles in SC democratic politics. I’d love to see more dynamic democratic leaders emerging in deep southern states.
People think I am an optimist because I keep insisting that we can make things better. I assure them I am not. I assume that I, and everyone working with me, will fail most of the time. I expect people to frequently be stupid and short-sighted. But I can live with that because I celebrate every success and make the most of every failure. That’s why I can keep trying. I have no optimism about today’s battles, but I have complete faith in our ability to end the war. Someday.
I don’t think you’re being cynical, Boo. I think you’re being realistic. It will become cynical only if you quit trying.
What this shows me is that Republicans are the biggest hypocrites of all, as they will vote for a snake just because he’s a Republican. He’s a moral failure, not to mention a nut, and yet they voted him back in. We don’t even have to guess how things would have gone had he been a Democrat: he would have been vilified by the Right and apologized for by the Dems.
So sure, a little cynacism is justified.
“Republicans are the biggest hypocrites of all, as they will vote for a snake just because he’s a Republican”
And, after all this time, this surprises you …why? Tribalism almost always wins out in the South.
And Democrats are different? How?
Remember William “Freezer Cash” Jefferson and Joseph Cao?
Exactly. You can’t say Democrats are tribal when the Republican option is a lunatic psychos.
Also Scott Brown.
Then explain Rahm Emanuel and Michael Madigan, et al. They routinely screw their voters and keep getting elected.
If one congressman is powerless, how powerless is one voter?
the seat was R+11
It’s not cynicism. it’s common sense
What caught my eye after the 9 pt lead was that the whole district voted red. So my cynicism jumped right over to the, ‘was the vote rigged’ side.
Bush has been a good candidate for Dems in her district. She got listened to and she made a dent in a candidate who’s been an embarassment to every Rep inside and out of the Dist.
Sometimes cynicism is the best fuel. Reality is, we’re never going to be able to stop the Repub’s from breeding so there will always be a group who vote against their own interests. All we can do is what you do, there is no alternative.
“Reality is, we’re never going to be able to stop the Repub’s from breeding…”
Maybe so, but they’ll never convince me they get nearly as much joy and delight out of it than we do;-)
I think it’s just matter-of-fact electoral calculus. I think you’ve adopted the right tone here and we live to fight another day. What I’m concerned about is how PPP had them virtually tied in the polls and then whomp. I like it better when PPP is more accurate.
I’m sure extreme low turnout models are harder to predict, didn’t their MOE end up being higher than normal on those polls? I’d look if I thought it really mattered.
Yes, a little disconcerting.
However
if they can’t decide otherwise.
District is R+11. Sanford won R+9. All is normal.
Having run and lost in the same way in a red district, I am totally not surprised. Totally.
Nate Silver says:
So in the end, the scandal hurt him as much as it would hurt anyone else, but the District is so Republican it’s not enough.