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Crystal Graham’s article in the Augusta Free Press today, about the curtain-raiser on the most promising effort to date to depose Rep. Ben Cline, ran under a curious headline: “Beth Macy faces tough crowd in Waynesboro, first stop on listening tour.” I didn’t think so—and have to hope Macy didn’t, either.
A Roanoke resident, former reporter for the Roanoke Times & World News and author of several books on contemporary social issues, Macy last week became the third Democrat to announce a bid to challenge Cline in next year’s mid-terms. This is her first foray into politics, so give Macy credit for skipping the easy stuff and plunging right into the belly of the beast: the Congressional Sixth District, despite embracing a handful of Democratic cities, is as reliably red-meat MAGA country as you can find, and the oleaginous Cline has oozed into every one of its Republican crevices. Since winning his seat in 2018 by thumping a hapless Jennifer Lewis, 59.7% to 40.2%, Cline has not had a lower margin in three subsequent elections.
So Macy’s appearance Monday night at the Faded Poppy, on East Main Street, can be fairly characterized as only the most tentative testing of the waters. A “tough crowd” it was not. While Waynesboro has been a reliably red city, it broke blue in this year’s election for the first time, even as it recorded the state’s highest percentage increase in new voter registrations. Perhaps the color switch was thanks to all those new voters, especially as Waynesboro increasingly becomes a bedroom community for notably progressive—and expensive—Albemarle County’s employees. Perhaps it was because of Trump fatigue. Or both. In any case, Macy’s day of reckoning with a salivating MAGA crowd still lies ahead.
But with Graham conceding that “the 40 or so people in attendance were a friendly audience and mostly fellow Democrats,” what prompted the headline assertion about a “tough crowd”? She didn’t explicitly say, but presumably that was a nod to the two audience members who demanded to know why they should expect Macy not to become yet another Washington insider, more intent on satisfying industry lobbyists than on serving her constituents—just another version of Cline, in other words. Macy’s response, which essentially amounted to “trust me,” drew disbelieving sneers. “I’m old enough to have heard that one too many times in my life,” one responded.
Indeed, there is no conceivable answer Macy or any other candidate can provide to such a hypothetical that would satisfy a determined skeptic, given how debased all political discourse has become. No one can predict the future. All we can do is assess a candidate’s character by what he or she has done and hope it’s rooted deeply enough to stand up to future challenges and temptations, and in that regard Macy seems to tick all the boxes. She’s wicked smart, articulate and poised. Her published work is a testament to deeply held concerns and compassion for those who are poor, downtrodden and exploited, affirming a fixed moral compass that is so notably lacking in her putative Republican opponent.
At the end of the day, all any of us can do can do is look at a candidate and trust our ability to take that person’s measure—to trust ourselves, in other words, more than we trust someone else. Without that trust, no assurances of the other person’s merit or integrity will ever fully satisfy.
How well Macy will conduct herself when venturing deeper into the MAGA waters remains to be seen, of course, but her courage in deciding to do so requires at least the benefit of the doubt, if not full-throated endorsement. That can come later. At this point, however, Macy has done or said nothing to merit the skepticism she encountered yesterday—although I don’t think as much can be said of her second interrogator. Holding a cell phone in front of her face throughout the entire “exchange,” apparently so she could record her insightful analysis, the second skeptic speechified for several minutes and was noticeably more interested in how she sounded than in recording the little bit of Macy’s response she grudgingly allowed.
That’s not a tough crowd. It’s an immature, rude crowd of one.
Looking askance 