South Carolina on My Mind: Alvin Greene

South Carolina politics provide the richest commentary on the unthinkable. The June 8th South Carolina primary have left the Democrats in a conundrum. South Carolina Democrats have been quick to dump on Alvin Greene, a candidate that seemed to emerge from under a rock to become the Democratic Senate nominee to face Republican Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).

In an unending frenzy, Democratic politicos cried foul suggesting problems with voting machines, irregularities, and Republican malfeasance.

The media looked into his background, all but called the man a dumbass, and questioned his intelligence, and laughed at the idea that some unemployed, unconnected veteran could possibly be South Carolina’s choice.

The preferred Democratic nominee, Vic Rawl, is a well-known South Carolina politico. White guy.

Last night, Vic Rawl took his challenge of Alvin Greene’s win to the South Carolina Democratic Party committee/apparatus.

His challenge? Denied. Not enough evidence to suggest they should overturn Greene’s primary win. So South Carolina democrats are stuck with him.

But suppose this was the South Carolina Republican Party? Earl Ofari Hutchinson gives us a sense as to how it would have gone down if:

…the instant the last ballot was counted and the black candidate was declared the winner, the GOP branded their party’s nominee a fraud, a plant, called his win a dirty trick conspiracy, demanded a federal investigation of him, his filing fee, the ballot count, the voting machines, the registrars, the clerks, the janitors and anyone else who might have looked at a polling place. The Democrats would have flung the R (racism) word would all over the map. It would launch a titanic national crusade to rebrandthe GOP as the party with the white sheets in the closet. The GOP would have been rocked back on its heels. It would have to issue mountains of statements, and releases, send its talking head emissaries to all the network shows, to deny the racism charge.

But in the bizarre world that is South Carolina politics.  Hutchinson goes on to say:

The party nominee, of course, is Alvin Greene. And the GOP isn’t trying to dump him. The Democrats are. They’ve gone apoplectic to purge their first and only black nominee for a major Deep South office since Reconstruction. The ACLU has even jumped in the act and demanded that all the voting machines be impounded.

I’ve been extremely wary about how quickly the media and established party apparatus ridiculed Alvin Greene.  The snickers and laughs about Alvin Greene irritate me along with the arrogance of the media and party elite. 

Let’s see if they comport themselves any better in the coming months.

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