Let me finish tonight with this.
I love this race in South Carolina.
Here was a woman, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who took a chance entering a race for the Congress where Democrats like her don’t stand a chance – not a chance in the world.
She did so knowing she could well face a former governor, Mark Sanford, in the race, someone who had once represented this same district in Congress.
Well, as the Irish say, “It’s the long road that has no turning.”
Suddenly we’ve got a new poll showing Colbert Busch up nine points on Sanford. The race that no Democrat could win is now a race where the Democrat could be hard to catch.
It makes a point I learned working for Speaker Tip O’Neill. I met a number of Members who won seats deemed impossible. People like Tom Foley of Spokane won in years like 1974 when a door opened on change, when suddenly the old rules didn’t apply and anything was possible. Joe Biden is another example. He won in 1972, the year Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern was slaughtered by Nixon … but Joe Biden won and served in the Senate for thirty-six years. So let’s hear it for the long-shots, for the person who has the guts to run when everyone says it’s hopeless – because, as we can see in that race down in Charleston, it isn’t.
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