The search for the explanation for why Alvin Greene won is … interesting, but probably rather trivial.\u00c2\u00a0 Barring the “Diebold Machine” line of thought, I will just say that if his candidacy was a Republican Dirty trick, it is a dirty trick that recognizes the randomness and information void in South Carolina, and a type of Dirty Trick tossed out to work at crap-shot intervals,\u00c2\u00a0usually unexploded.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind that nominations like his… happen reasonably regularly<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Too many elections with curious variables for them not to occur.<\/p>\n What we’re looking for becomes a quest for Impulse Biases against a broad background of an Information Vacuum.\u00c2\u00a0 It is here that variables such as ballot placement and prejudice toward\u00c2\u00a0monosyllabic names — or perhaps unconcious\u00c2\u00a0admiration for Alvin and the Chipmunks or Al Green — comes across as the deciding factor.\u00c2\u00a0 Coming off a blogoland discussion advocating that Judgeships should not be elected officials due to their positions of responsibility not really being conducive to public ‘s ability to qualify and rate them — leading the job into an information vaccuum and into a crap-shot liable to be filled by narrow interests OR short spurts of politicization on the part of the judge — I’d think that Nate Silver and 538 could just move some of those arguments into\u00c2\u00a0his analysis — found here<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n It appears that race was not a factor, but I would not have been surprised if it had been.\u00c2\u00a0 Keep in mind this would only be the case against a lack of meaning in the broader campaign, and a lack of campaign focus.\u00c2\u00a0 We had a good case study of a white politician defeating a black politician in a heavily black electorate because qualifications and positions had been clearly spelled out: Artur Davis lost the Alabama Democratic Gubernatorial Nomination because of his record and his opponent’s record.\u00c2\u00a0 I do not know who appeared first on the ballot, and I can state clearly that that was not a meaningful factor.<\/p>\n Here is my thought experiment.\u00c2\u00a0 Consider an elected position of, say: Abjunct Facilitator.\u00c2\u00a0 What does this job entail?\u00c2\u00a0 I haven’t a clue, which is why I’m going to ask two distinct electorates to vote on the it.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll give you two candidates: Samantha Blout and Edward Blanche.\u00c2\u00a0 No other data is supplied.\u00c2\u00a0 One is before a group of women, the other a group of men.\u00c2\u00a0 Who wins? The real interesting race might be between a “Sam Fry” and a “Sam Frye”.<\/p>\n As for Alvin Greene, the disturbing thing is reading some comments <\/a>on various posts that abound about this story.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n rickroberts, I live here. I am telling you, none of the local newspapers covered this race. There were no “voter guides” for this race. One alternative weekly, “The Free Times,” actually did run a pretty decent piece on Greene in May, asking “Who is this guy?” I think the Greenville News also had a paragraph about him.<\/em><\/p>\n There’s this sort of incredulity on this concept of “voter’s guide”.\u00c2\u00a0 I would think this would be a necessary de rigeur component of a state’s election system — a voter’s pamphlet — paid in part by candidate’s filing fees, I would think.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s disturbing to me if it is not the case.<\/p>\n Regarding his media interviews– here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0— I would like the man much better if his answer to the question of how he won and what his campaign consisted of was something of a more blunt — “I put my name on the ballot and the people voted for me.\u00c2\u00a0 Deal with it.”\u00c2\u00a0 Read his comments here on his supposed campaign<\/a> — and I just\u00c2\u00a0find myself now\u00c2\u00a0waiting for\u00c2\u00a0someone somewhere in South Carolina to come forward and discuss any political interaction they had with Alvin Greene “Pressing the Flesh”.<\/p>\n And this wikipedia comment: .. and for the Progressive Base who came out in support of Bill Halter to sock it to the anti-union Blanche Lincoln — skip to 4:00 on the last video and you will see that this man, Alvin Greene, stating that “We don’t have Unions here in South Carolina and I want to keep it that way… I’m for keeping South Carolina free… Union Free — I’m a moderate Democrat, that’s… one of the… Moderate Democrat positions.”\u00c2\u00a0 It is a bizarrely scripted explanation for his position, I am thinking, and suggests we can’t even give him points for not being a calculating politician.\u00c2\u00a0 But I guess you can hedge that against his desire to Unify the Koreas into one Democratic government… if you think he’s capable of bringing that about.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nHow about we give a Provo electorate and a Berkely electorate a choice between “Joe Friday” and “Sunday Butterfly”?\u00c2\u00a0 Fuzz it and make it less obvious — this name, I’m guessing, suggests nothing about background yet I’m guessing has an effect: “Nick Spacey” versus “Fred Aldrin”.<\/p>\n
\nIf elected he would be the first African-American in the Southern United States to win a seat in U.S. Senate since Reconstruction[<\/span>1]<\/span><\/sup> when Republican senators Hiram Rhodes Revels and Blanche Bruce represented Mississippi in the 1870s. He would also be the first popularly elected African-American Senator from the South.
\n<\/em>strikes me as the Alvin Greene campaign, or some sympatic figures, putting the best light on his nomination.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a bit weasley — he’s not the first black candidate, and frankly has fewer qualifications than either the damned blue doggish Harold Ford of Tennessee or… the state Senator from Mississippi who ran in Mississippi in 2006 and 2008 — Erik Fleming,\u00c2\u00a0both of whom\u00c2\u00a0once fit the wikipedia article focus that “\u00c2\u00a0would be the first African-American in the Southern United States to win a seat in U.S. Senate since Reconstruction”.\u00c2\u00a0 (If you want to know why I know of Erik Fleming, it’ll pop out at you if you read through his wikipedia article.)<\/p>\n