Whom does Georgia's Jim Marshall Represent?

[lwcon]

Jim Marshall is confused about whom he represents. Is it the Third or the Eighth District?

And is it the Democratic Party or Georgia for Lieberman?

“I really think it’s excellent that (Bush) very clearly said in this speech that this is going to be a tough go, that our enemies are going to do their best to show American troops being killed on the televisions of America in order to discourage us. There is going to be more bloodshed ... that this is not going to be some clean surrender like World War II.”

Truly, does leadership get any better than this: starting a war with claims that it'll be a chocolate cakewalk, and when it's clearly become unwinnable to put more soldiers in harm's way and announce that it's not going to go well?

Who wouldn't jump party lines to support that?


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[lancdem]

1. I'm pretty sure Marshall barely won in '06

and Georgia continues to be a solid red state. I'm not surprised by this, frankly.

[DemBones DemBones]

4. Are you aware that Georgia had a Democratic governor

and two Democratic senators in 2002? The * machine put a lot of $$$ into defeating Sen. Max Cleland and probably contributed to the governor's defeat, too, since Gov. Roy Barnes was being talked about as a potential Democratic for VP or even president in 2004.

I've lived in Georgia for many years and all the Republicans I know personally moved here from the North or Midwest. Georgia is the new Florida. Younger people move here for the jobs they can't find in their home states, retirees come for the warmer winters.

BTW, if you were listening to C-SPAN this morning, you should have heard at least two anti-war callers from Georgia. I was one of them.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. Georgia underwent redistricting in 2002, which is

how the * people defeated Cynthia McKinney the first time, and also how they defeated Republican Bob Barr, who strongly opposed the Patriot Act and other invasions of privacy. After losing that election, he became a consultant on privacy issues for the ACLU. They also defeated Sen. Max Cleland that year. * was in Georgia several times, Poppy and Laura and I think "Bar" were also here.

Anyway, I'm still confused about what my district is. After living in a district for more than 30 years, it's a little odd to have the district number changed! So I suspect that's Marshall's problem, that they changed the number of the district he has long represented. I don't agree with what he said about the war, of course.

[lwcon]

3. Thanks for helping me "better know a district"

... even if we're not sure what the # is.

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[DemBones DemBones]

6. My pleasure to follow in Stephen's footsteps!

I looked at Marshall's House site and found this:

"Note: The Georgia Legislature has redrawn all Congressional districts for 2006, and Jim will be in the 8th District. A map, in Adobe PDF format, is available from the University of Georgia."

So it was the 3rd, is now the 8th. And of course all the redistricting was done to give Republicans an advantage, since the * machine had helped elect a Republican governor in 2002, the first one in Georgia since Reconstruction. That was the year Georgia went to voting machines and the new Republican governor, Sonny Perdue, was surprised by his victory. He defeated Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who was fairly liberal and whose name was being floated as a possible candidate for VP or pres in 2004. You can see why they wanted to take him down. . . Sen. Max Cleland lost to Saxby Shameless that year, too, though Sen. Cleland and Gov. Barnes were leading in the exit polls. Need I say more?

From the same page: "Georgia's Third District represents the very best our State has to offer, from urban to rural, and with people from a wide variety of backgrounds."

The map (which shows his district as the 3rd) shows he represents a bunch of counties well southeast of Atlanta, well west of Augusta. Those counties are mostly farming areas, as far as I know, though I'd guess that farms are being replaced by industries and businesses there as well as everywhere else. Atlanta, like other big cities, continues to sprawl in all directions but I don't think any of the counties in the 3rd/8th District have Atlanta bedroom communities yet.

Macon is the biggest city in his district. Macon, like Athens, is well known due to the musicians who started out there but I'm not sure that Macon is nearly as big as Athens, since Athens is where U-GA is. The district must be rather sparsely populated, since there are so many counties in it. Jimmy Carter's hometown, Plains, is in Sumter County, which is west of Marshall's district. I would think that farmers in his district would grow peanuts, though, as well as peaches, pecans, cotton.

Georgia is a big state and I don't really know much about the areas south of Atlanta but those are my best guesses, based on the map.

[lwcon]

8. With Dems who support Bush's Iraq policy

The Repubs will feel like winners. Fortunately we got a big margin in the house....

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[DemBones DemBones]

9. We can hope that those Dems don't

support all his policies. Of course, we all want our congresspeeps to represent our views and Marshall may be representing the views of his constituents, at least those of the constituents he hears from. I'm afraid many people opposed to the war have stopped trying to win over their pro-war rep or senators.

Marshall certainly sounded more intelligent and articulate than some Repubicans I could name :evilgrin: so perhaps there's hope for getting him into the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

[liberalpragmatist]

5. They also just re-redistricted

Before this cycle, they made Jim Marshall's district (and one other one - I can't remember who the Congressman is) more Republican in an attempt to off them. They're going to have an awfully difficult time holding those seats come 2008.

Not that this justifies Marshall's comments, but he's clearly running scared.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Yep, see my post above that's headed

"My pleasure following in Stephen's footsteps" for more on Georgia politics.

In another post above, I also tell how they redistricted Bob Barr's district, even though he was a Republican, because he had opposed the Patriot Act and other * actions. He had to run against another sitting Republican Rep and without several of his strongest counties. If you cross *, they will get you. They got Sen. Max Cleland, who was pretty hawkish, by accusing him of not supporting * on the war. Saxby Shameless, who got out of being drafted due to a bad knee (though he later took up jogging) was portrayed as more patriotic than Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Viet Nam! They showed TV ads showing Cleland morphing into Saddam and Osama. Still he was ahead in the polls, and in the exit polls, but that was the year all Georgia counties initiated computerized voting machines. . . We also lost our Dem governor in that election (2002) and Cynthia McKinney.