September 07, 2004

Shut Up, Jimmy

I'm about as yellow-dog a Democrat as anyone, but when Jimmy Carter refers to "a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox" I gag.

The point is to upbraid Zell Miller for betraying the party. But the party of Lester Maddox would be a party worth betraying. The small point is that Miller is being hypocritical when he claims that he's still a Democrat; the large point (as Carter emphasizes in his last paragraph) is that he's wrong on the substance, because (for one thing) the Democratic party isn't the party of Lester Maddox anymore.

(I know that Miller thinks that the Democratic Party has left him, not vice versa, but I've never been sure why he thinks that--what it is that could have led him to be a Democrat in 1992 and abandon the party by now, without changing his own views.)

Posted by Matt Weiner at September 7, 2004 02:57 PM
Comments