Wheel Barrow Out
by digby
Following up on my earlier post, I see that Howie has laid out some more evidence that this volatile political season can’t be defined by tea baggers and anti-liberal backlash. Here’s another example of where things may go awry for the usual suspects:
This morning Greg Sargent at the Washington Post at least came close, closer than anyone else in the DC press corps, to getting the narrative right about the anti-incumbent— rather than an anti-progressive– mood. And yesterday’s Macon Telegraph was clearly sensing what barnacles like David Broder and Charlie Cook will try to explain in retrospect. Furthering what Sargent alluded to, there is room in the anti-incumbent fervor for insurgent progressives to oust reactionaries like John Barrow.
Rep. John Barrow’s vote against health care in Congress has cost the Georgia Democrat key support within his own party, from officials quietly withholding endorsements to one party leader calling for his defeat.
While other Democrats up for re-election are being targeted by Republicans for passing President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in March, Barrow faces backlash for his “no” vote from fellow Democrats in southern Georgia… Democrats fuming over the three-term congressman’s vote will have a chance to vent their anger in the July 20 primary, when Barrow faces a rematch with Democratic challenger Regina Thomas, a former state senator.
“We are very angry about the way John Barrow has sold us down the river,” said John Brewer, Democratic Party chairman for rural Montgomery County. “I will go to the polls on primary day and I will vote, but it won’t be for John Barrow.”
…[S]ome Democrats say Barrow went too far in alienating his own party and Obama on health care, particularly for many black leaders to justify supporting him. Black voters make up 41 percent of Barrow’s constituents, and account for a solid majority in Democratic primary races. It’s unknown whether Obama will weigh in with an endorsement.
State Rep. Mickey Stephens, a black Democrat from Savannah, made the rounds of local churches stumping for Barrow in past campaigns. However, Stephens refrained from taking sides in Barrow’s 2008 primary race with Thomas.
This year, Stephens is openly supporting Thomas in the Democratic primary. Barrow’s health vote, he says, wasn’t just the last straw – it “was a piece of timber.”
“Most African-Americans are under-insured or don’t have insurance at all. They need it the most,” Stephens said. “John didn’t just turn his back. He turned his back and ducked on this vote.”
Two other black lawmakers who endorsed Barrow in the 2008 primary have backed off this year. State Rep. Bob Bryant of Garden City says he’s now supporting Thomas. State Rep. Quincy Murphy of Augusta said, while he’s unhappy with Barrow’s health vote, he hasn’t decided whether to endorse either candidate.
Blue America has backed challenger Regina Thomas’s campaign to send the Democrats a message from the beginning. We didn’t know if she had a chance, but we did know that John Barrow is one of those Blue Dogs who everyone vouches for as being a “good guy” underneath it all but because he has statewide ambitions he just “has to” repeatedly sell out his constituents. We think that’s wrong. And it’s possible that for a variety of reasons, this is going to be the year Blue Dogs like Barrow get a big surprise and find out that pandering too far to the crazy right has a price for Democrats.
It’s not like we’re trying to replace mainstream liberals with extremists as the tea partiers are doing on their side. We’d like to see the party move left, for sure, but this is first a move to stop this headlong rush to the right. As the career of Justice Stevens so perfectly illustrates, liberals didn’t leave the center, the center left us.
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