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Sun 29 Feb 2004 7:16
by Kevin McGehee
[Wackadoodle]
[blogoSFERICS]
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Henderson added that polls have shown Democrats are more favorably disposed toward the flag raised by Democrat Barnes than are Republicans and independents.
That worries some Democrats.
That’s in an article by the AJC’s Ben Smith about the upcoming March 2 vote on Georgia’s state flag.
“If we don’t win with the current flag on Tuesday, the flaggers and others will perceive that as a signal that they can come back and lobby the Legislature to change the flag again,“ said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta).
Brooks, who is African-American, agreed that the Legislature won’t approve another flag change regardless of the referendum’s outcome. But any further debate could create more racial divisiveness, he said.
Brooks and others have launched a last-minute campaign to persuade black voters to endorse the current flag.
I’ve got to hand it to Georgia’s leading Democrats, they appear to be no more interested in keeping this flag controversy going for another election cycle than anybody except the “fergit, hell!“ types who want to go back to the 1956 flag that was dominated by the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil “rebel cross” emblem (sometimes misidentified as the “Stars and Bars”).
The very idea that Georgia’s African-American voters would be on the same side as those their “leaders” once found it politically expedient to condemn as racists, is a prime example of just how distorted politics becomes when the issue of race is magnified out of all proportion.
UPDATE: While we’re on AJC coverage of Georgia Democrats, there’s also this article by the AJC’s Gayle White, in which opinions are given of President Bush by three Democrats and only one Republican:
Any rally-round-the-president sentiment Democrats may have felt after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers in 2001 appears to have dissipated. And bitterness over the 2000 election — in which Bush lost the popular vote but won in the Electoral College after a controversial Supreme Court decision — has bubbled up again.
“I’m damn mad as hell,“ said retired journalist Robert Woodham, 64, of Columbus. “He stole the presidency. . . . I haven’t been pleased with anything Bush has done — especially the second Bush oil war.“
Bush “wasn’t presidential material, and he ain’t supposed to be president,“ said Walter Mathis of Rome, a 62-year-old retired electrical worker and union member. “He’s got the whole world stirred up, all these people out of work, and all these people’s kids going to bed hungry.“
Beth Ingram, an independent voter and co-owner of Randall’s Truck and SUV Accessories in Ball Ground — where the 1956 Georgia flag, with its Confederate battle emblem, flies out front along with the U.S. flag — said she was not angry with Bush, but she also wasn’t satisfied.
“I’m frustrated with government in general,“ said Ingram, who gave her age as “pre-50.“ “I feel the common, everyday working person’s opinion doesn’t matter.“
But Renate Botterbusch of Sandy Springs, a Republican housewife who said she was “over 50,“ thinks the president is doing a fine job. A naturalized citizen born in Germany, she said she voted for Bush “reluctantly” in 2000 but became a true believer after Sept. 11, 2001.
“Every single move he has made since then, I have supported,“ she said. “I support the war in Iraq. I think Bush did the right thing going in there. Whether they had weapons of mass destruction or not, I don’t care.“
Look at the opinions of the first two Democrats interviewed for this article. One, a retired journalist, is still counting votes down in Florida. The second, a union member, blames Bush for fighting back against terrorists, and for economic conditions that have been prevalent in the South since long before Bush was even born.
I’m not sure if the choice of Democrats to feature represents selection bias by the reporter, or the pathetic state of Democrat opinion in Georgia, or simply the scarcity of Georgians who want Bush gone.
But the fact only one Republican was presented after three Democrats, would seem to suggest selection bias.
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