Ranting On...Shoddy Political Journalism

As many of you may know today is the South Carolina special election, and while it's a close race, it does appear to be headed in Mark Sanford's direction.  While this is an article for a different day (I want to wait and see if Sanford actually pulls it off), I've got to say that the political reporting regarding this turn of events has been pretty awful.

I'm used to people discussing the upside and downside of winning, but you would think that from some of the commentary that both sides would like to lose the election, which is simply not true.  The reality is that the winner is, and this seems obvious to state but if you read certain articles apparently journalists need reminding, but they are the winner and the loser is the loser

It's worth mentioning that the points they are raising are valid.  Some have said that with Mark Sanford elected, this will be a huge cross for the Republican Party to bear, and they may be right-the party does have a serious problem with moderate and independent female voters, and Sanford is about as popular as stomach flu with these demographics.  However, this is assuming that people remember who Mark Sanford is come next year when the midterm elections occur, which I seriously doubt.  The reason that Todd Akin worked so well as vote-driver was that it happened in the heat of the election, and an election that had been focusing quite heavily on women's rights and the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which Gov. Romney had been seen waffling on and this forced him into an uncomfortable corner.

This is not the case with Sanford, however.  The former governor is well-known, but he's not so well-known that he can be attached to Republicans for the next year.  The national attention span is generally short (look at George W. Bush's inexplicably rebounded approval numbers for proof) and it's doubtful that Sanford would even be severely hit in his own primary, much less be an albatross for the Republicans in 18 months, without more being added to the story.

Additionally, the focus on how the Democrats would have trouble holding the seat being a reason to not want the seat is utter hogwash.  For starters, the Democrats want the seat-with Speaker Boehner regularly needing bipartisan support to get anything done in the House, there's a good chance that several votes could come down to a slim margin, perhaps slim enough for a Rep. Elizabeth Colbert Busch to matter in the congressional whip count.

Secondly, while she's running in a seat that the Republicans are generally favored to win back (greatly favored depending on the national environment), incumbency matters, and people win inexplicably after a surprise special election all the time.  Bill Owens and Stephanie Herseth are both recent examples of people who held their conservative seats for multiple cycles after barely skating through a special election win.  The Democrats will need sixteen seats to win back the House, something that President Obama knows is a long-shot, but probably his best shot of solidifying his legacy further, and this is a president who is well aware of legacy.  Having Colbert Busch as the incumbent makes SC-1 go from being completely out-of-reach to a possibility in adding up to a Democratic House majority, and with gerrymandering largely limiting the number of seats that could be up-for-grabs, that sort of move is worth the money and time that the Democrats are investing.

So, while it's still a close race, and I do think that Sanford does have the upper-hand, this "you win by losing" talk seems like political pundits trying to fill an article quota for the day.  I do agree that this has no national implications beyond this race (if Sanford won, it's because this is a beet red district, if Colbert Busch wins, it's because Sanford completely screwed up his political life fours years ago and is paying for it), but at the end of the day, the winner of this race is the one who has something to crow about, and no amount of spin will change that fact.