Ordinarily, presidential endorsements from two former red-state senators, neither of whom are especially high-profile right now, wouldn’t be especially newsworthy, but I think today’s announcement that Sam Nunn and David Boren are backing Barack Obama is a little more interesting than most.
The Obama campaign sent out a press release, noting the endorsement, and adding that both Nunn and Boren have accepted Obama’s invitation to serve as advisers to his National Security Foreign Policy Team. With Nunn having been a chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Boren’s record as the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in history, these guys carry some institutional heft.
There are a couple of different angles to this, but Josh Marshall emphasizes the fact that Nunn is from Georgia, and Boren is from Oklahoma.
This continues to be one of the most striking features of this campaign — the tendency of politicians who do or did make their careers on the votes of people from small towns and rural areas to come out for Obama.
It’s been going on for three months.
I’ve always been highly skeptical of Hillary Clinton’s argument that she’s a stronger candidate in rural areas and red states. But the pols who know these areas best seem to be even more confident she’s wrong than I do.
Quite right. I haven’t seen a comprehensive analysis in a while, but it seems Obama has enjoyed an advantage among red-state Dems, despite the perception that he’s likely to Clinton’s left, ideologically.
But the angle that stood out for me is that both Nunn and Boren were major players in the drive to launch a Michael Bloomberg presidential campaign.
The NYT reported in December:
On Sunday, [Bloomberg] will join Democratic and Republican elder statesmen at the University of Oklahoma in what the conveners are billing as an effort to pressure the major party candidates to renounce partisan gridlock.
Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, “I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent.”
In fact, both Boren and Nunn, conservative Dems while in Congress, have been so active in the “post-partisan” approach to politics that Nunn even flirted with the idea of being Unity08’s presidential candidate. Last August, Nunn told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “My own thinking is, it may be a time for the country to say, ‘Timeout. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it’s not serving us now.'”
And now, with some enthusiasm, he and Bloomberg’s other biggest backer are rallying behind Obama.
This a) points to a possible edge for Obama in wooing independents; b) will renew speculation about who Bloomberg might support; and c) should help Obama with the party’s conservative flank, such as it is.
Update and Post Script: As some emailers have noted, I neglected to mention that Nunn and Boren are also wildly popular with the David Broders of the world, so today’s news might have an effect on him.
As for the conservative wing of the party, I probably should have noted that it mainly consists of Nunn and Boren.