The nation’s political eyes have been on Georgia for the past several months, which, according to polls, has teetered on the edge of slipping into the blue column for the first time in 12 years. The races for governor and the U.S. Senate have been competitive (though Republicans have a clear edge going into Election Day), not to mention a host of down-ticket elections, for the first time since 2002. The state’s changing racial demographics and aggressive registration of minority voters is generally credited with this trend. For much of the country, the Senate race in particular is crucial because it may decide who controls Congress’ upper chamber come January. But for Georgians, living in a state plagued by all sorts of bread-and-butter issues — high unemployment, massive numbers of people without health care and very high rates of child poverty — the campaign offered little substance and lots of slogans. This is perhaps why the race as well as control of the Senate is slipping out of the Democrats’ grasp.

The nondebate debate

Georgia has all the makings of a future progressive bastion, led by a robust political coalition of young people, racial minorities and women. But for this midterm election, the script is decidedly unprogressive.

Take, for example, Nunn’s jobs plan. The majority of the plan has little in the way of specifics, choosing instead to offer various pro-corporate pablum such as “providing certainty to businesses that are hamstrung by political leaders,” “reducing the regulatory burden on self-employed workers and all businesses that are often overwhelmed by complicated regulations” and enacting “comprehensive tax reform that lowers the corporate tax rate.” One area where she does get specific is calling for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which is estimated to create 35 permanent jobs for all of America. What’s more likely than Nunn believing that 35 jobs for people who may not even be Georgians is good policy is that her campaign has decided that it’s yet another way to brandish her bipartisan credentials — and rake in fundraising. TransCanada, the firm that is seeking to build the pipeline, has on its payroll McKenna, Long & Aldridge. The legal and lobbying firm is Nunn’s sixth-largest pool of donors. Given her Third Way campaigning, her charge against Perdue of practicing outsourcing while building his business career raises awkward questions. In her jobs plan, she calls for additional trade agreements like the ones that have contributed to the United States’ outsourcing problem. In fact, in one of the debate panelists’ few bright moments, one of them asked Nunn if she would rework the North American Free Trade Agreement. “I believe we that we should always pursue and ensure that we are creating an equal playing field,” she replied. “I’ve talked to businesspeople, unions, farmers, and over and over again they say we don’t need a special favor — we need an even playing field.” “Do we have that field?” followed up the panelist, frustrated by Nunn’s nonanswer. “I think we need to continue to work towards that, both with every form of trade, whether that’s with the trans-Atlantic trade or the trans-Pacific that’s going forward, we need to make sure that environmental protections are in place and that worker protections are in place but that we’re creating an opportunity for jobs here and for the export of our products that are so important to Georgia.” In other words, Nunn wanted to have her cake and eat it too: offer up rhetoric critical of unfair trade without committing to any specific action against one of its poster children, NAFTA. It was the sort of answer that was emblematic of her whole campaign, which hewed to elite slogans, not popular solutions.

A future progressive bastion?