This article poses a question many of us in South Carolina are asking tonight, who the heck is Alvin Greene?
To call this an upset is a bit of an understatement. And before you assume this may be another case of the supposed anti-establishment fever sweeping the nation, take note that nobody has ever even seen this supposed candidate and the leading theory is that people just blindly voted for the first name alphabetically. He was so nervous and obviously unprepared when the media came to him for comment that he could only speak in unintelligible gibberish.
I’ve never seen anyone express any kind of dissatisfaction with Vic Rawl, who obviously had a well put together campaign. There was never a moment of doubt that he would beat the guy who didn’t even have a campaign website, well it looks like the joke is on us. Sources say the Demint people are falling asleep tonight with giant grins on their faces.
So do people really vote randomly in races they know nothing about? Can someone really be the victim of a bad name in the nomination for a position as high profile as US Senator? I’d understand if this as a party runoff for railroad commissioner or neighborhood dog catcher, but come on!
Can some of you politically astute people please tel me what the heck just happened?
Damn, reading that story, he makes Sarah Palin sound like George Plimpton.
I’m sure Sen. Demint is probably laughing his ass off right now, but in a race which he was likely to win anyway, it’s not like it mattered who the Democratic nominee was going to be.
Not cool, Mr. Greene. Not cool. Even if Demint’s a shoe-in for this race - if you weren’t prepared to be a capable, articulate spokesman for the Democratic Party, you had no business seeking the nomination.
South Carolina politics continues to be the laughingstock of America. Joe “you lie” Wilson, state Senator Jake Knotts calling President Obama and gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley (Tea Party favorite accused of two different affairs) ragheads, the aforementioned Haley, and now this.
Just another in a long line of utterly bogus and mindbogglingly stupid South Carolina political events.
From the article, he appears to have done absolutely nothing whatsoever to win the nomination other than putting his name on the ballot. If a professional politician can’t beat someone who does nothing to win the primary, then they have only themselves to blame.
I think it is more embarrassing for Vic Rawl to be beaten by this complete unknown than it would be to be beaten by a dead man. At least a dead man gets his name in the paper. Mr. Greene can’t even get his name in the obituaries.
Does anyone know if South Carolina has open or closed primaries?
Agreed, Rawl is to blame for losing this thing. Greene, however, is to blame for winning it when he knew or should have known that he didn’t have what it takes to run a real campaign.
DeMint is favored to win, sure, but even in South Carolina he hasn’t won by impressive margins in the past. As I mentioned in the “potential 2012 GOP candidates” thread, in 2006 he actually lost the first Republican primary, then won the runoff primary, and in the general election he couldn’t even take a double-digit win, in one of the redder states in the country. It’s a stretch to say DeMint is vulnerable, but he was not expected to win by landslide margins either.
This is truly a weird story. Almost like Head of State, but with the candidate being nowhere near as funny as Chris Rock.
You forgot Mark “hiking the Appalachian Trail” Sanford and Andre “poor people are like animals” Bauer. South Carolina is gaining on Glenn Beck in the “Most Appearances on The Daily Show” competition.
And of course it’s always worth mentioning the guy with the horse (Twice! With the same horse!).
I dunno, everyones always grumbling that we could pull random people off the street and they’d be better then our current crop of politicians, now we have.
I kinda hope someone helps Mr Greene make a go of it. He won’t win unless DeMint gets caught giving blow-jobs in the mens room, but you figure the national party can make some hay out of the guys story (thirteen year military veteran returns to the US in the middle of the Recession, can’t get a break, decides to make a quixotic run for office), especially in the current anti-elitist environment.
Well see I’d been following the race a little, and I really don’t see what else Vic Rawl could have done. He was an entirely qualified candidate and his campaign was competent and focused. He traveled around plenty, wasn’t really objectionable in any way, his online presence was decent with arms on Facebook and Twitter. Anyone who took a moment of observation in the race knew there was a serious candidate and one guy who nobody could even find any information on, Alvin Greene may as well have been Bigfoot as far as visibility was concerned.
The only thing I can think is that the race was so low profile and people so apathetic and uninformed that they picked at random in the voting booth. I’ve seen this phenomenon before, I even did it myself in my first few elections until I wised up and realized that was a terrible thing to do. Basically you go to the ballot knowing a race or two you are interested in, but there are all these extra contests you don’t know about so treat it like a multiple choice test that you are trying to complete before the time is up. The correct thing to do in that situation of course is just leave those spots blank, but many people don’t even realize you can do that.
Still though, most people involved in politics know that this happens and can account for some scattershot votes, but to actually decide a party nomination for US Senate of all things? Something doesn’t seem right here at all.
South Carolina has an open primary. Obviously the majority votes on the Republican ballot, especially at a time like this when the R side was especially attention grabbing with several key races people wanted to vote on, I suspect it even drug away a number of our Democrats who wanted to have a say in the headline races. The Republican ballot was pretty long and even had a few policy questions on the ballot, the Democratic ballot was pretty boring let me tell you, there were three low profile races on mine, none of them very contested or interesting. So yea there was a pretty shallow pool of voters here, probably had something to do with the result.
Nope. To quote Jon Stewart, “world’s most alluring horse”.
Back on topic: it’ll be interesting to see what Mr Greene does next with the weight of the party behind him and presumably a bit more money to spend. I’m guessing the DNC will at least get the guy a new suit and a PR coach.
I’m sure they’ll back him, but I’m thinking the DNC is not going to spend too much money or time on a hopeless race. State organizations might do more for the guy but the DNC will probably do the bare minimum. What a weird story.
He’s enough of a novelty, though, to be able to get a decent amount of buzz and name-recognition without having to actually pay for TV ads and the like. And you figure there must be some just starting-out political operatives out there who would work for cheap to have the chance to run a (admittedly doomed) Senatorial Campaign rather then having to spend the season as a low level functionary on a “real” campaign. Assuming the guy turns out to be relatively sympathetic (and who knows, he might turn out to be a rabid anti-semite, or have some crazy pet conspiracy theory or something, which would obviously necessitate the party ditching him), he could give the national party some good press, and make the GOP spend some money on an otherwise safe senate seat, even if he never gets close to winning.
The guy that ran Fred Tuttle’s campaign could make a doucumentray out of it and help make it worth Greene’s while.
Open Primary, natch. Hoo boy, them ‘ol boys pulled a goodun’, votin’ fer (someone they perceive to be a) Stepin Fetchit. HAW HAW HAW, they done messed with them commie faggots in Warshington now!
