The Solid South

McCain picks up Alabama and Georgia. As someone who has read Tom Schaller's Whistling Past Dixie, this doesn't surprise me. As black turnout goes up in the deep South, white turnout usually does as well.

It was good for Obama to raise turnout and spend money in Georgia, but realistically it wasn't going to flip. The Republicans are a regional party. The Mid-South, however, states like Virginia and North Carolina, are very much in play.

I also wonder how this will affect Jim Martin's Senate race. He's overperforming Obama right now, and not much of Atlanta is in. Hopefully we can get to a runoff.

Georgia, Georgia, No Peace I Find

Well, I guess the rumors of a cease-fire in the Caucasus were very overstated, as the Russians have held their positions, warned the United States not to get involved, and basically redrew the map:

Russia's foreign minister declared Thursday that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity, and officials said Russia targeted military infrastructure and equipment — including radars and patrol boats at a Black Sea naval base and oil hub.

...the comments from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to come as a challenge to the United States, where President Bush has called for Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia."

"One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Lavrov told reporters.

And that, as they say, is that. The US has astonishingly little leverage in this conflict, considering their sustained support for Georgia and inability to be seen as an honest broker, as well as a reluctance to get into a shooting war with Russia. It ought to give the whole nation pause as to the effectiveness of the cowboy diplomacy of the Bush years, which John McCain wants to further and even enhance.

It's EASIER for someone like McCain to put on his combat boots and strut about and make belligerent statements against the Russians. It's a war that neoconservatives understand and find more potential in as an electoral tool than talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's hard not to recognize that sad figure in the Max Boots and John McCains and Bill Bennetts and all the rest with their sustaining roots planted firmly at AEI HQ. After all, what happened to the long twilight struggle against radical Islam? So yesterday, I guess. Or can we do both simultaneously, even though the Russians are themselves up against hostile Islamic groups on their southern periphery?

Watching the Bennetts and the Krauthammers get all jazzed up about Georgia as the new Afghanistan, with all the painfully awkward nostalgia and excitement of an 80s era Gilligan's Island reunion flick is entertaining. But much less so when you realize these jokers might be running the government in six months.

Meanwhile, McCain can't even keep his own words straight on the conflict when they're not completely fed by Randy Scheunemann.

In effect, this is a local conflict where Russia is settling a Near Abroad dispute in their sphere of influence, and the degree to which we have to have a policy on that, especially when Georgia kicked off this conflict by indiscriminately firing on the South Ossetians, is dubious. I agree with Matt Yglesias:

The reality, however, is that Russia has no actual ability to move from Tblisi to Kiev. Georgia is tiny, poor, and geographically located so as to make it difficult for the West to provide it with any practical support. Ukraine has 10 times Georgia's population, 20 times its economic output, and extensive land borders with countries firmly in the Western orbit. The practical impossibility of conquering Ukraine, not American threats, is what will keep the Russians out of Kiev. Meanwhile, it turns out that, contrary to the fears of the hysterics, Russia isn't even going to Tblisi today, much less Ukraine tomorrow or Estonia the day after that. Vladimir Putin, unlike the leader of the United States, is apparently shrewd enough to recognize that military occupations of foreign territories have high costs and scarce benefits.

But while Russia's punishment of Georgia may not have major consequences for America or for world security, a hysterical American response just might. Most obviously, if we were to take things like John McCain's Aug. 12 proclamation that "we are all Georgians" seriously, we would be in the midst of a shooting war with Russia and literally risking the end of human civilization in a nuclear exchange.

By all accounts, McCain just wants to engage in some irresponsible posturing rather than to follow through on the implications of his words, but even excessive posturing and loose talk of a new Cold War with Russia would have real costs. Specifically, both McCain and Barack Obama have recognized that an agreement with Russia related to nuclear-weapons reductions is key to revitalizing the global nonproliferation regime. Russia can't conquer Ukraine or Estonia, but it can play a key role in helping or hindering American efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. And unlike the status of South Ossetia, nuclear proliferation is actually important to the United States. Having frittered away the past seven years on a foreign policy driven by hubris, the United States can ill-afford to misplace its priorities. With the active phase of the war over, we need to move beyond it as quickly as possible to more important issues, not indulge baroque fantasies of renewed great-power conflict.

Exactly. Humanitarian assistance to an ally is fine, but the talk of World War III is very dangerous.

Peter at Duck of Minerva has more.

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

Either we're ruled by idiots, or we're ruled by people who think we're idiots, but either explanation is no excuse:

The Bush administration suggested yesterday that an apparent cease-fire in Georgia came about because Moscow feared it would be banished from Western-dominated international economic and political institutions if it did not stop its "aggression" in the former Soviet republic.

"Russia has one foot into the international community . . . and one foot that is not," a senior administration official said. Membership in institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the Group of Eight major industrialized nations "is what is at stake when Russia engages in behavior that looks like it came from another time."

Yeah, that was it. It wasn't that there was no need for Putin to occupy a fractious republic because they see the model of an imperialist power being bled dry by trying to control the territory of a people who reject their presence.

I hate to interrupt the "we did it!" party at the White House, but we actually aren't always the central factor in global conflicts. The biggest evidence of that being that Russia is still moving military convoys inside Georgia.

The Power Of Not Being Reviled

So Russia starts bombing targets inside Georgia, the United States huffs and puffs to no avail. Then French President Sarkozy hops on Easyjet and stops off in Moscow, and within a matter of hours, just after he lands, Russia calls a cease-fire.

MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia announced Tuesday that he had ordered a halt to his country’s military operation in Georgia, although he did not say that troops were pulling out and he insisted that Russian forces were still authorized to fire on enemies in South Ossetia.

The president said Russia had achieved its military goals during five days of intense fighting, which has seen Russian troops advance into Georgian territory and which brought strong denunciations from President Bush and other Western leaders.

Now, there are scattered reports of continued fighting here and there. And Sarkozy was just beginning cease-fire talks and didn't exactly provoke this. But basically, what you have is a country that maintains good relations and holds a little thing called influence, and another country that coddles their neocon friends and looks ridiculous.

(On another note, Sarkosy is a dead ringer for Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless)

UPDATE: According to Jonathan Landay at McClatchy, (h/t K-Drum) we begged Saakashvili not to attack Georgia (which I don't totally believe) and we "had an understanding" with the Russians that they would limit themselves to fighting in South Ossetia and not beyond those borders. That's just kind of stupid, to expect the Russians not to want to dominate their sphere of influence.

UPDATE II: Here's the smartest take on reconciling the Landay article about US entreaties to Georgia, from Robert Farley:

The other possibility is that the Americans said different things than the Georgians heard. This happens ALL THE TIME in international politics; motivated bias on the part of Saakashvili may have led him to believe that the Americans were making encouraging noises, because he wanted to believe that the Americans were encouraging him. Indeed, this would go a long way to explaining how the Georgians were certain of US support, despite the fact that there was no compelling reason for the Americans to give support.

That sounds right to me.

The Obama Ad

It's his first of the general election campaign.



Kind of up and down, and a gratuitous reference to getting people off welfare to work. But this is a red-state ad. Fourteen of the eighteen states where Obama bought time went Republican in 2004.

The first ad of the general election is on the air. We're told it's on running on t.v. stations in 18 states: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia. Interesting combination.

North Dakota, Montana, Georgia and Indiana leap out at me. And as Digby notes, this is really why Obama's stepping into a primary fight and endorsing Bush Dog and telecom whore John Barrow. No other reason.

I expect a bit of a move to the right in the general election, I'm prepared for it. What I cannot fathom is how the nominee and leader of the party remains mute while the Fourth Amendment is flushed down the toilet. It's astonishing to me that the only remaining Presidential candidate who appears to give a damn about civil liberties is Bob Barr.

Pardon me, but I'm angry today...

UPDATE: I'm hearing that Obama cut the radio ad for John Barrow before there was a primary opponent. Of course, there are quotes from Obama staffers praising Barrow out today, so if Barrow is doing something sneaky Obama sure appears to be going along with it.

Georgia Goes To Barack

Per CNN. That was very quick. An exit poll showed that 52% of voters in the primary were African-American, and 86% of them went to Obama. He could win it 2-1.

A pretty idiosyncratic electorate, but apparently Obama got 43% or so of the white vote, so read it as an omen if you wish.

(BTW, Georgia votes all touch-screen machines. Where are the Hillary haters calling for a fraud at the polls?

Sound Policy Idea

Sonny Perdue is a major-league rainmaker.

What to do when the rain won’t come? If you’re Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, you pray.

The governor will host a prayer service next week to ask for relief from the drought gripping the Southeast.

“The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power,” Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said on Wednesday.

To quote Steve Benen: "It’s the 21st century. I just thought I’d mention that."

If the rain prayer doesn't work, I believe next week Gov. Perdue will paint half of his body blue to ward off evil spirits.

Dependent upon a statement of support from the legislature, of course.

(Just to make this a little bit about politics and not mockery, conservative ideology is so bereft of solutions that a "faith-based initiative" like this is about the only thing they can manage)

What's The Matter With Georgia?

OK, so yesterday I saw this quote from the GOP front-runner for the June special election for US Congress in Georgia's 10th District to replace the late Charlie Norwood, a guy named Jim Whitehead:

"Iraq has not been a big thing in our district."

Wha-wha-what now?

Then today, there's this from Georgia's Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss.

As the Pentagon notified some 35,000 soldiers to prepare for a fall deployment to Iraq, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said Tuesday he found "truly amazing" progress during a trip to the country this weekend [...]

"Every time I go over there the improvements in the conditions are truly amazing," Chambliss said in a noon conference call with reporters after his fifth visit to the country. "It's very encouraging to me to see the progress."

People on the same trip said the exact opposite.

Chambliss traveled to Iraq with several other members of Congress as part of an Intelligence Committee fact-finding tour. His comments contrasted with those of another Republican in the delegation, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said in a weekend interview that she found little to be cheerful about.

"The good news is mixed; the bad news is downright troubling," Snowe said.

Have they checked the water in Georgia for melamine?

UPDATE: Here's a good rundown of the possibilities for Democrat Jim Marlow to win the GA-10 seat next month. He's going against three Republicans, so the potential does exist for a split vote.