Ex Cathedra

• It’s all about change. Obama’s hope that people who fear change will compromise with change is irrational: http://ow.ly/okKu Xaxnar at Kos #

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It goes far beyond Griffith’s former status as a segregationist and his present status as a health industry profiteer.

It goes beyond the fact that his announced opponent, Les Phillip, is the Alabama Republican Party’s head of minority outreach and can expect massive financial support from national Republican donors and money-laundering PACs.

It goes beyond Alabama Democrats’ disillusionment with Griffith.

As Michael Tomasky pointed out in The Guardian, it’s simple arithmetic.

Last November Griffith beat Wayne Parker by a 51-48% margin. John McCain beat Barack Obama by a 61-38% margin in Alabama’s 5th Congressional District. That’s a 20 percentage point gap.

The Alabasma 5th is so red that Griffith has little chance of surviving even a small deviation from conservative dogma, no matter how big a loon Les Phillip turns out to be. Tom Schaller draws a similar conclusion from a different analysis at 538.

Bottom line: why must Griffith disappoint and betray progressives? He can count.

That’s why I echo Chris Bowers at Open Left: let’s focus on keeping good Democrats. Our time would be better spent in Alabama’s 5th encouraging a crop of real progressives.