Adding up Cynthia McKinney's mistakes

In the past week, just about everyone has chimed in to dissect Cynthia McKinney's loss to Denise Majette. There's the political moderation of black voters in the district. There's the pro-Israel money. There's the Republican cross-over vote.
But each of these explanations ignores what an awful campaign McKinney ran. As evidence, look who didn't show up to speak for the incumbent: U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Andy Young, DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. In short, the kind of people who could have given her campaign a needed shot of legitimacy.

But McKinney must have known what was happening. All she had to do was look to Alabama where her colleague U.S. Rep. Earl Hilliard was beaten in June by a moderate Democrat with the help of a whole bunch of pro-Israel money. In fact, McKinney could watch as no fewer than 163 of the donors to Hilliard opponent Artur Davis gave to Majette's campaign.

Hilliard and McKinney angered pro-Israel Americans during their 10 years in Congress with their support of the Palestinians. They simply chose the wrong year to be on the wrong side of the wrong issue. McKinney, though, exacerbated the situation by ignoring every sign that her usual rhetoric wasn't playing well in 2002, and decided to bring in Louis Farrakhan anyway.

Moreover, in a year in which no one in DeKalb County would ask anyone with the last name of Dorsey to do so much as mow their yards, the McKinney camp invited Sherry Dorsey, convicted murderer Sidney Dorsey's wife and former Atlanta city councilwoman, into the fold, according to sources inside the campaign. Couple that with Billy McKinney's racist "J-E-W-S statement" on election eve.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that Dorsey wasn't McKinney's only mistake as her troops were evidently outnumbered in the one category in which she was still considered formidable — field operations.

All the mistakes point to a campaign that was unusually inept. That's I-N-E-P-T.