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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

The Harrowing of Zell

Okay, I admit it: my inability to ignore Zell Miller’s continual ravings is in part because of the bottomless opportunities he provides for catchy titles playing off the Zell/Hell pun. And I haven’t even resorted to “Zell’s Bells,” “To Zell in a Handbasket,” or even “Zell No, We Won’t Go.”
Today’s installment of “Come Zell or High Water” was provoked by another logic-defying Miller statement, this time in a open letter to “All Georgia Democratic Candidates” essentially urging them to follow his lead in abandoning the party to save the party. No kidding.
The nut of Zell’s argument is to analogize this election to that of 1972, when George McGovern was the presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter was Governor of Georgia, Sam Nunn was running for the Senate, and Miller himself was state party executive director. “We cautiously and carefully worked to avoid any connection between the far-left presidential candidate and our centrist state and local candidates.” As a result, “Nunn received 54 percent and Georgia Democrats continued to dominate the state Legislature and local offices,” and then four years later Carter was elected president.
Gee, Senator, I was a Georgia Democrat who watched the 1972 election pretty closely, and I somehow missed that part where Jimmy Carter or Sam Nunn endorsed Nixon, praised all his domestic and international policies, went to the Republican convention and made a fist-shaking attack on the Democratic nominee, and then went barnstorming around the country with Tricky Dick. Georgia Democrats managed somehow to avoid supporting Nixon at all, even though a lot of them back then were George Wallace supporters who probably thought “centrist” was a synonym for “communist.”
Miller can’t seem to get his mind around the reality that he is not a Democrat anymore in any meaningful sense of the term. He didn’t just endorse Bush or smear Kerry; he’s become one of the most reliable votes in the U.S. Senate for the Republican Party line. His very first step down this slippery slope was to cosponsor Bush’s original tax cut proposal. In doing so, he deeply undercut the very “centrist and conservative” Democrats he claims to represent, who were either opposing the whole mess (like the DLC did) or trying to force Bush into a compromise that wouldn’t break the bank and might give poor and middle-class folks a few scraps from the table. And now he’s accusing Georgia Democrats of cowardice for failing to make total surrender to the opposition their highest principle.
Before his New York tirade, part of Miller’s rap was that he intended to help “rebuild” the Democratic Party after helping beat Kerry in November. That was a laugh. Now in his open letter he continues to say: “I still care deeply about the Georgia Democratic Party.” The joke’s over.

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