Zell Miller On The Warpath Again-- This Time For Saxby Chambliss

Lifelong racist and former chief of staff to Lester Maddox, Zell Miller isn't just a disgrace to the Democratic Party-- the original Joe Lieberman-- and a shameless reactionary, he's also lost his marbles. He's been in and out of mental institutions ever since his breakdown at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Ole Zell lives up in the mountains in KKK country now and rarely comes down among people. But Saxby Chambliss had someone go up there and clean him up and get him into a shirt and tie and drag him down to a Republican rally last week.

These days Republicans roll him out whenever they need a "Democrat" to endorse them. He's a regular on Fox and has cut campaign ads for Ralph Reed, Johnny Isakson and Sonny Perdue. Needless to say, he adamantly refused to support Obama in the recent election. So it should come as no surprise that the mentally ill Miller would be up on stage endorsing Saxby Chambliss. Remember, it was ole Zell who actually sponsored a Constitutional amendment (in 2004) to outlaw gay marriage, the far right's most cherished tactic for divisive politics. (The other Constitutional amendment Miller proposed, actually the repeal of the 17th amendment, was meant to take away the right of the people to vote for senators and return that to the state legislatures.)

Delusional and ranting, Miller claimed he was governor of Georgia in 1944 (a full year before his bar mitzvah and 46 years before we was elected governor) and that he was proposing tax cuts Jim Martin was fighting. The whole audience was laughing at the loon but they were happy to have another right-wing nut voting against Martin. After working himself and the crowd into a frenzy of self-righteousness, someone gave him his pills and took him back to his home in Young Harris way up in Towns County near the South Carolina line. Meanwhile ole Saxby is doing what he can to weasel out of tesifying about his despicable role in the notorious Imperial Sugar case-- and claiming he doesn't know if we're in a recession or not or even what one is. Clearly, Georgia needs better representation in the U.S. Senate.

Please enjoy this short clip of ole Zell campaigning for "the firewall" who the Republicans hope will thwart the will of Americans who just elected Barack Obama in the sincere hope that he would bring a progressive agenda of change to this country after 8 miserable years of the Bush-Cheney agenda that included neither peace nor prosperity but that was completely rubber stamped by Saxby Chambliss:

Jim Martin might be able to oust Saxy Chambliss from his disgracefully stolen Senate seat, and might also be a serious senatorial upgrade

by Ken

Here's a race that was off the charts till now, and is suddenly in play. It's the Georgia Senate race where the unspeakable Saxby Chambliss (aka, at least hereabouts, as Saxby Chamberpot) is seeking a second term. Only last week Howie described this race as "an uphill battle." (Back in march our Georgia-resident friend Valley Girl reported to DWT readers on "much-loved Georgia pol" Martin's inching toward making the Senate race.)

I admit to strong personal feelings here. Chambliss probably isn't the worst person in the Senate, where there's such tough competition for the title. But for me he is just about the vilest, simply because of the way he got there. In denouncing the McCranky presidential campaign, I've tried to be careful to include the distinction "national" in any estimate of its all-time vileness rankings. It's hard to believe that a campaign could be any more loathsome than the one Chambliss waged against Sen. Max Cleland, an authentic war hero, somehow turning his service record against him. And even then, the campaign apparently had to engage in some significant election fraud to put their, er, man over the top.

The good news is that the political convulsions of recent weeks have apparently put Chambliss's reelection bid in play.

Now, Georgia Democrats are not necessarily adornments to the nation's progress and well-being. The name of virtual Republican Rep. Jim Marshall comes up regularly on DWT, where he generally vies with North Carolina's Heath Shuler for recognition as the worst Democrat in the House. And of course no survey of Georgia "Democrats" (sorry, quotation marks required) would be complete without mention of the appalling Zell Miller.

In order to find out what kind of Democrat Jim Martin, Chambliss's opponent, is, our colleague Matt Stoller eked out some time from the candidate's busy campaign schedule for an informative interview on OpenLeft.

Martin assures Matt that he considers hiimself a progressive, and insists: "Progressives can win in the South because people are fed up with where we are as a country, and they are looking for real change." He's not even fazed by Matt's mention of the Z-name:

Simply put, I am not Zell Miller. I am a proud Democrat and a proud progressive and I would just ask you to look at my record. Over the course of my career, I have earned deep, bipartisan respect as a principled leader for progressive causes. That is who I am and what I will be as Georgia's next United States Senator.

Martin manages to work references to "the failed Bush-Chambliss economic policies" in nearly every sentence. He opposed the bailout, and explains why:

As I've said, I strongly believe that action must be taken to stabilize our economy in order for us to start reversing the failed Bush economic policies that have proven so disastrous for the middle class. But what I am not willing to do is to stick taxpayers with an enormous and costly bailout bill, rushed through in haste, which won't even solve the problem. Among other issues, the package failed to address the fundamental problems created by the deregulation of Wall Street. And it lacked consumer protections to stem the abusive lending practices that are at the root of this crisis - practices that I devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars in television ads to sound the alarm on two years ago, long before the mortgage crisis began.

For reasons that should be obvious from what I've written above, I award Martin points for the statement: "I am lucky enough to count Max Cleland as a friend and a strong supporter of my campaign. Everyone knows of his service to his country, but I am also inspired by his long service to the state of Georgia."

There's a lot to like in the interview, and the apparently realistic chance of Jim Martin capturing the seat from the most illegitimate member of the Senate.


AND MARTIN IS OUTRAISING CHAMBLISS!

According to the Associated Press:

Campaign finance reports show upstart Democratic Senate challenger Jim Martin has raised more money than Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss over the most recent three-month period.

In by far his best fundraising haul, Martin took in more than $1.3 million from July through the end of September.
Click here to find out more!

The silver lining for Chambliss is that Martin spent almost all of the money and had just $92,340 in the bank heading into the final month of the campaign.

Chambliss had about $1.2 million in his treasury after raising about $1.1 million for the third quarter.

The advantage shows that Martin has had an easier time convincing people to donate as the race has grown competitive. Chambliss once had some $4 million in the bank compared with just a few hundred thousand dollars for Martin, a former state legislator.

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CONNECTICUT DEMS DUMP LIEBERMAN... AGAIN-- WHAT ABOUT CHRIS CARNEY?

Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller both have a lot in common; they are conservative Democrats who went from working with Republicans in a bipartisan manner to working for them against Democrats. Miller was a governor of Georgia and, briefly, a U.S. Senator. He suffered a public nervous breakdown on the stage of the Republican National Convention when he endorsed Bush and viciously savaged his old friend and collegue John Kerry. After Miller's performace in 2004, the DNC passed a rule, informally known as the Zell Miller rule, which disqualifies any elected Democrat who endorses a Republican from being a super delegate.

Yesterday the Chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party, Nancy DiNardo, noting that Lieberman has endorsed McCain, said the Zell Miller rule clearly applies and that Lieberman has lost has status as one of Connecticut's 12 super delegates.

I was wondering where that leaves reactionary Democratic congressional freshman Chris Carney, who denounced Hillary Clinton and declared that he would like seeing Republicans Mike Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel in the White House. Is Carney going to be allowed to sit as a super delegate for Pennsylvania?