# A Pox On You, Saxby Chambliss **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 1, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519 "2008-11-01T00:51:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/21 "2008-11-01T14:33:22Z")
Right, which means since less than 30% of the electorate in Georgia is black, there’s never been a Democrat elected to any office in Georgia. Ever. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/22 "2008-11-01T14:42:44Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > But almost all blacks in Georgia do vote Democrat, and almost all whites in Georgia do vote Republican. All I can say is, you’d better have an irrefutable cite backing up this claim with solid demographic statistics, or you’re going to get branded as racist. It’s possible, of course. But in a statistical univers of that size, damn awful unlikely. (In 1955, it was the truth that “All blacks in Jefferson County, NY, are Methodists” – all five families of them, allowing for the possibility that there were a couple of them agnostic or atheist in actual (lack of) belief and representing themselves as Methodist for family/social reasons. As the size of the statistical universe grows, however, the likelihood of this sort of coincidental skewed statistic shrinks dramatically. And I could believe the majority of black Georgians being Democrats, given recent party stances. But 99%+ correlation (which I’d take “almost all” to mean) between race and party, in a multi-million population state? I’m _very_ skeptical. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/23 "2008-11-01T15:29:05Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > But almost all blacks in Georgia do vote Democrat, and almost all whites in Georgia do vote Republican. The former part of your statement is probably closer to the truth than the latter. White Democrats are definitely outnumbered these days, but hardly in danger of extinction. Tuesday I will cast my vote for President, as I have for the last several elections, fully aware that my candidate has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the state—but at least this time around, the snowball won’t be \*quite \*as melted. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/24 "2008-11-01T15:29:54Z")
I’m not saying there’s a 99% corrolation. But according to this PDF study: > **[Joint Center at National Conference of Black Political Scientists 2015 Meeting...](https://jointcenter.org/joint-center-at-national-conference-of-black-political-scientists-2015-meeting/)** > > Friday and Saturday I was in Atlanta at the Annual Meeting of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS). Historically, Black scholars have played a critical role in the history of the Joint Center. Kenneth Clark, Mary Francis... Kerry got 88% of the black vote in Georgia and Gore got 90%, and I don’t think it’s racist to say that early black voting is going to skew the early voting exit results against Chambliss. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/25 "2008-11-01T15:33:16Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > But almost all blacks in Georgia do vote Democrat, and almost all whites in Georgia do vote Republican. Nearly all black folk in Georgia (and everywhere else) vote Democratic. However, the correlation is not nearly as strong for white voters. Otherwise it wouldn’t matter how many blacks were voting against Chambliss - they’re only 29% of the population. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/26 "2008-11-01T15:37:02Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Nearly all black folk in Georgia (and everywhere else) vote Democratic. However, the correlation is not nearly as strong for white voters. No kidding. I think in Georgia it’s something like 65-35; very much against Obama, to be sure, but nowhere near ‘almost all’. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/27 "2008-11-01T16:39:12Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I’m not saying there’s a 99% corrolation. But according to this PDF study: > > [Joint Center at National Conference of Black Political Scientists 2015 Meeting - Joint Center](http://www.jointcenter.org/index.php/content/download/557/3238/file/BlackVote2004.pdf) > > Kerry got 88% of the black vote in Georgia and Gore got 90%, and I don’t think it’s racist to say that early black voting is going to skew the early voting exit results against Chambliss. That’s what I was asking for; thank you for producing it. And while vote-for-President doesn’t equate to party affiliation – lots of Republicans voted for FDR in 1936; many Democrats voted for Reagan in 1984 – given that Sen. Chambliss was speaking in part of the Presidential race, I can grant the validity of your evidence. (As others have noted, the correlation of white and Republican is nowhere near that high, which truly messes up the statement I challenged.) However, without getting snarky, I find the “almost all” of your comment to be an invalid usage when you’re looking at 10-12% who **don’t** meet your generalization. By those standards, almost all people are straight, almost all people are right-handed, almost all Canadians speak English as their principal language, almost all Americans are white. Nasty generalities with uncomfortable relegation of minorities as unimportant. The implications for human rights of such a generalization make it more than a semantic quibble. And frankly, I feel you’ve done a disservice to decent Georgians, of which there are hundreds of thousands, in using it. And that’s said without a desire to start a Pit pissing match between us, just a desire for accuracy in abstracting from statistics, for what I feel are valid human-rights reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/28 "2008-11-01T16:56:50Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > However, without getting snarky, I find the “almost all” of your comment to be an invalid usage when you’re looking at 10-12% who **don’t** meet your generalization. By those standards, almost all people are straight, almost all people are right-handed, almost all Canadians speak English as their principal language, almost all Americans are white. Nasty generalities with uncomfortable relegation of minorities as unimportant. Nitpick: only about 80% of Americans self-identify as white. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/29 "2008-11-01T18:12:54Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > The implications for human rights of such a generalization make it more than a semantic quibble. And frankly, I feel you’ve done a disservice to decent Georgians, of which there are hundreds of thousands, in using it. And that’s said without a desire to start a Pit pissing match between us, just a desire for accuracy in abstracting from statistics, for what I feel are valid human-rights reasons. I’m perfectly willing to believe there are millions of decent Georgians. I’d imagine most Georgians are decent people. All I was trying to say in my first post was that black Georgians aren’t going to vote for Saxby Chambliss, and Chambliss knows that. Now, I’m sure this isn’t technically correct…and that some blacks will vote for Chambliss. But I think it’s correct enough to explain why Martin is doing so well among early voters. The voting behavior of white Georgians seems to be franky irrelevant here for the purposes of the argument. I also have to say I don’t understand the “human rights reasons” here. 88-90% is an overwhelming majority. ---
**Author:** ![ReuvenB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@ReuvenB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ReuvenB)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/30 "2008-11-03T13:29:01Z")
Chambliss is a boil upon the ass of the US Senate. I say this as someone will be voting against him with great glee on Tuesday. It honestly wouldn’t bother me if I was voting for a horse; all that would matter is that I was voting against Chambliss. ---
**Author:** ![TommyTutone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c4cdca/32.png) [@TommyTutone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TommyTutone)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/31 "2008-11-03T14:09:14Z")
Don’t get me wrong, I am all over getting Chambliss out of there, but even as staunch a leftie as possible, I am disturbed that Martin and especially the gun running against Honeycutt keep touting that they want to increase taxes by 23%, where the truth (please correct me if I am wrong) is that the republicans want to get rid of the income tax and replace it with the national sales tax. I’m not saying this tax is a good or a bad thing, but it seems disengenous to keep running this as a negative. In addition, the ONLY ad I’ve seen in the one race is the one with Honeycutt’s face next to Bush (who is wearing those dumbass glasses). Either I’m missing something or the republican has not run any ads and the democrat talks nothing about his side, only the same ‘tax increase’ in that one ad. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/32 "2008-11-03T14:23:45Z")
Nobody wants to get rid of the income tax but Ron Paul and Mike Gravel. It’s certainly not a mainstream position for either side. ---
**Author:** ![EvilHamsterOnCrack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@EvilHamsterOnCrack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilHamsterOnCrack)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/33 "2008-11-03T16:01:12Z")
> [@TommyTutone](#): > > Don’t get me wrong, I am all over getting Chambliss out of there, but even as staunch a leftie as possible, I am disturbed that Martin and especially the gun running against Honeycutt keep touting that they want to increase taxes by 23%, where the truth (please correct me if I am wrong) is that the republicans want to get rid of the income tax and replace it with the national sales tax. I’m not saying this tax is a good or a bad thing, but it seems disengenous to keep running this as a negative. > > In addition, the ONLY ad I’ve seen in the one race is the one with Honeycutt’s face next to Bush (who is wearing those dumbass glasses). Either I’m missing something or the republican has not run any ads and the democrat talks nothing about his side, only the same ‘tax increase’ in that one ad. Neither of those ads are by neither of those candidates. Jim Martin has even publicly denounced the ad discussing the fair-tax. Those ads are by PACs like the DSCC. They are not endorsed by the candidates, and honestly, I wish they would take them off the air. There’s enough crap to say about Saxby without mischaracterizing his record. Although Jim Martin does kill children. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/34 "2008-11-03T16:14:27Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Much the same way typhoid is better than ebola. I’ll take typhoid any day. People usually survive it, even if it’s untreated. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/35 "2008-11-03T23:02:43Z")
Don’t suppose there’s any hope Chambliss will lose? Based on [this,](http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Senate/Graphs/georgia.html) I’m not optimistic. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/36 "2008-11-03T23:30:43Z")
Turnout, baby. Oh, and they have a 3rd party candidate and rule about the winner needing an absolute majority or else it goes to runoff. The third party candidate is a Libertarian. I have no idea how the runoff would end up if they have to have one. How many folks like Saxby Chambliss enough to come out to vote for just him alone? How many would come out to retire him and/or put a Democratic majority in the Senate? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/37 "2008-11-05T14:12:07Z")
Looks like it does indeed go into overtime. Heck, USAToday hasn’t even called Georgia for McCain yet! ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/38 "2008-11-05T14:28:06Z")
Also, apparently there are a shitload of early and absentee ballots from overwhelmingly liberal areas that haven’t yet been counted. ---
**Author:** ![Kiber](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kiber/32/317_2.png) [@Kiber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiber)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/39 "2008-11-05T15:12:12Z")
Well - the latest tally has Saxby about 10,000 votes shy of 50% +1 - so it does indeed look like a run-off. And this is still with many of the early votes not yet counted. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2008, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519/40 "2008-11-05T15:17:37Z")
538 is reporting that the early votes may not have been counted yet! That would presumably make a huge difference, given that the vast majority of them apparently went against Chambliss. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pox-on-you-saxby-chambliss/470519.md?page=3)