Seems to me that one big winner tonight are proponents of tougher financial regulations, especially fans of Lincoln’s provision forcing banks to spin off their derivatives business. The assumption until a few minutes ago was that Lincoln would lose and her provision would quietly get stripped in the conference committee that’s about to take place. Now that she’s won–and won narrowly, and faces a very tough race in the fall–the calculus becomes a lot tougher. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to conclude that Lincoln eeked out a win by convincing just enough voters that she was a Wall Street scourge. If her signature provision goes down in flames, she’ll look toothless and weak, and almost certainly lose her seat. The bank lobby and the Obama administration (both oppose the Lincoln provision) may simply prove too strong and do the deed anyway. But their task got a whole lot harder.
The title is from Kay’s smart comment in a recent thread, and I think it’s a good point to remember when evaluating primary battles. The best outcome is having your candidate win. The second-best is getting the incumbent to move in your direction. Blanche moved in the right direction this Spring, and a well-financed, credible challenger was the reason. It’s not the win that many of us (including me) wanted, but it’s not even in the Lieberman ballpark.
ChicagoTom
That can’t possibly be true! An anonymous white house official told us it was flushing money down the toilet and most the BJ commenters agreed.
kindness
Who else thinks Lincoln would gut or remove her language as soon as the Primary is over? I’m not sure she can now, but I still think she’s republican lite, not a democrat and is sure to lose in November.
It’s hard to miss the Democratic seat in the Senate when it hasn’t been reliably Democratic for some time. Hey Blanche….don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way to retirement.
cleek
@kindness:
i think she probably wants to. don’t know if she will.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – but you guys have to check out Betty Cracker’s brilliant post over at Rump Roast with reference to the Palin “call me” comment.
http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/potus_talks_to_ppofb/
mcd410x
There was a primary, people expressed viewpoints, votes were cast. Funny how much that angers people.
Sheila
I, too, think it is sad that Halter lost, but a friend sent me an article this week about Halter (I think from the NYT, though I tend to skim through these things quickly and not take detailed note) which laid out his political stance and postulated that he would have been a disappointment to progressives. I think this is not uncommon. When a lackluster candidate like Lincoln or Spector is opposed, the progressives tend to jump enthusiastically on the bandwagon of someone they would never support in other circumstances. Jim Webb is a case in point. I cannot remember the exact details of his run for the Senate, but I do remember that his ideas, in general, were quite conservative (and he is a bona fide gun nut), except in regard to the war in Iraq, and though I thought he was cogent on this one issue, I was surprised that so many soi-disant progressives were such avid supporters. Often the candidate opposing a Blue Dog is just another Blue Dog or the one opposing a Republican just another conservadem and nothing much changes except the face. I tend to vote Democratic whoever the candidate is, but I can’t get excited about a new conservadem in place of an old conservadem.
catclub
“…not even in the Lieberman ballpark.”
Yet.
JGabriel
Mistermix @ Top:
Not thrilled, mind you, but I can live with it.
.
Barry
“scourge. If her signature provision goes down in flames, she’ll look toothless and weak, and almost certainly lose her seat.”
Why? There’s no support given to this assertion.
IMHO, it’s more likely that a Blue Dog feinted left to wing the primary, and will now be back to Blue Dog for the general election.
mistermix
@cleek: I think she really wants this legislation to pass. For such a supposedly dumb politician, she did a smart thing. She picked an issue she could influence that would change her reputation without damaging her standing with her big in-state donors.
In fact, if she’s really the Senator from Wal-Mart, this is one happy occasion where Wal-Mart’s interests, her interests, and progressive interests coincide. Wal-Mart has longstanding beefs with banks, and would love nothing more to see a trail of legislation that restricts their activities. Blanche needs a anti-institutional win to show her independence. And progressives want tougher bank legislation.
Kumbaya, motherfuckers!
BTD
@mistermix:
So you disagree with the White House’s characterization of this challenge then?
MattR
re: primaries in general and Lieberman specifically
I don’t know if this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but I think that one effect of primaries is that it crystallizes what the candidate really believes in. The unfortunate part is that this often occurs after the election when the candidate starts deviating from what they said in the campaign (ie. Lieberman is with the Dems on everything but the war)
bkny
please. her amendment will be gutted.
mistermix
@BTD: I think the question of whether Lincoln deserved a primary challenge (answer: yes) is separate from the question of whether it was worth it for Labor to lay down $10 million for Halter. I don’t see what they were going to get out of this race that made it worth such a major investment. Halter was going to have to move right to win, and moving right in a state like AK means leaving labor behind.
malraux
@cleek: I think she had been planning on quieting her objections after her primary win a few weeks ago. By having to continue the campaign, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s now locked into keeping the strict language. That said, after her flopping around on the public option, nothing would surprise me.
Sentient Puddle
@Barry:
Reid deliberately scheduled a vote after the primary so that her derivatives legislation still stood as it is. And I don’t know if you could say this for certain, but with conference set after the runoff, it seems reasonable to guess that the scheduling of that was deliberate too. I’d say this all counts as support.
Lincoln also has a chair at conference. With an issue as high profile as financial reform, I’d put money on her fighting to make sure she doesn’t look weak and ineffectual.
BTD
@mistermix:
Would it have been worth it if Halter had beaten Lincoln?
Would it have been worth it if they spent $5 million? $2 million?
mistermix
@BTD: No, no and no.
Remember, as I said in the post, I wanted Halter to win. That’s a separate question from my assessment of Labor’s interests in Arkansas.
Maybe you can explain why Labor wanted to get into this fight, because I honestly don’t understand.
some other guy
I’m still pissed that the Democratic Party wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in 2004 backing John Kerry.
Mnemosyne
@mistermix:
Either Halter was going to win, or Lincoln was going to receive their threat: “We’re willing to oppose you in the primary, and we’re willing to stay home in the general, too.”
This is the difference between the unions threatening to sit things out and random liberals threatening to sit things out — when you can show that the candidate will lose out on, say, 10,000 votes, you have a lot more clout than when you run around flaunting your single vote and threaten to withhold it. Politicians don’t care about your lousy one vote. They do care about the 10,000 votes that a union can turn out.
neill
she doesn’t hafta look “toothless and weak” — she can look angry and betrayed…and get over it.
The fucking clown car senate betrays the american people on a regular basis, and they got a million excuses…
if blanche goes hard for her anti-derivatives legislation i’ll be amazed.
Ronbo
Who else is beginning to believe that this site is a “false flag” operation? I see more attacks against progressives than neocons.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Ronbo: Is that you Tunch?
BTD
@mistermix:
I’ll answer your question – why did Labor get involved – with a question- why would Labor ever get involved in an election in Arkansas under your theory?
Which leads to my next question, why should any progressive not from Arkansas care who is elected from Arkansas under your theory?
Because “moving Right” in Arkansas and everywhere mean more than just moving against Labor – it means moving Right on just about everything.
Finally, this question, if this race should not have mattered to Labor, then should Labor have ever supported Blanche Lincoln? How about Planned Parenthood? Emily’s List? Any progressive group?
I ask you these questions because I have come close to the view that you seem to be espousing – let the Blue Dogs fend for themselves and let progressives support progressives.
Coalition politics is fine. But let the Blue Dogs get their part of the coalition elected.
And as for activists, I think that electoral politics is now almost a dead end for them. They should possibly retreat entirely from it and simply concentrate on issue activism.
Alan in SF
Seems everyone is overlooking the fact that Halter polls better in the general election than Lincoln; Dems had a chance to retain this seat, and now will likely lose it.
stuckinred
Has anyone mentioned that Jane Hamsher sucks? El Cid?
srv
Regardless of Blanche’s motivations, her direction on banking reform is better than Obamas and the rest of Wall Street bitches that are otherwise known as the Democractic & Republican parties.
For the foreseable future, if we don’t throttle Goldman Sachs and crowd this year, it will never happen and our economic futures will be bleaker than the Gulfs.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
That was essentially my point. We saw this in action in the health care debate. Unions stayed in after issuing ultimatums. A lot of the drama back and forth is part and parcel of the negotiation.
Blanche Lincoln isn’t going to do anything dramatic and renounce union voters. She needs anyone she can get. They should use that as leverage, and they will. Their interests currently don’t align with hers. But that can change. She will move, and so will they.
Generally, I think primaries help. They get voters focused and interested and clarify issues. But, it’s just a primary.
sherifffruitfly
Do you folks really expect her not to start blocking/worsening all Democratic legislation from now until she loses the general?
Seriously?
demimondian
@Alan in SF: Oh, Christ on a crutch.
Look, for all you folks who talk about people not knowing Arkansas — I lived there. My wife was born in Fort Smith. I know the politics there.
Lincoln is going to lose. You know what? Halter was going to lose, too, and I assure you that Andy Stern knew that.
The unions didn’t step up to beat on Blanche Lincoln *despite* this knowledge, but rather precisely because of this knowledge. This is a free vote for them — if Lincoln had lost, then they weren’t going to lose anything more when Halter went down in November. As it is, they nearly beat her — in the fifth least unionized state in the Union!
Don’t underestimate how scary that is to folks back in the Capitol. The Democrats *need* the union vote, and if the unions are willing to make the strategic tradeoff to turn on their allies in DC and trade off short term losses for long term gains, the Dems are in deep, deep trouble.
So, no…if I were a union boss, how I would I remind DC of that inconvenient truth? Hmm…I think I’d look for a losing Senator who had worked against my interests, and primary her. Hard. And then I’d start calling Senators in states where I was stronger and reminding them that Lincoln, despite the deployment of the whole of the White House’s considerable resources, up to and including the Big Dog himself, only got 51.8%. And then I’d hang up, and wait for them to call back.
BTD
@demimondian:
Making the White House reaction bizarre in the extreme.
kay
@sherifffruitfly:
I don’t know. I think the primary is round one and she starts over for the general. She only got half of the Democrats. Now her job is to get the other half. She starts behind, and she wasn’t in great shape to begin with.
I just don’t see her as sitting in the driver’s seat, because she has a ways to go. One would hope she knows that.
Martin
Unfortunately, whatever we might say about the legislative effects of the primary challenger, since Halter showed up, Lincoln has been doing steadily worse in the polls.
I’m not sure how to unpack that, but the stronger financial language would not have put her in the bad graces of conservatives in Arkansas. If she was wanting to win the general, she still should be better off with that move. Arkansas conservatives aren’t OC conservatives that are bond traders by day and personal portfolio managers by night. But it seems to me that until the left decided to attack Blanche, she was polling no worse than Halter, and until today, Halter didn’t really improve much.
HCR is what drove this and I think that might be where it ends. I honestly don’t see the derivatives as being a tack to the left in her state, but I suspect that the Democrats tactics in this case were as much motivated to demonstrate that Lincoln couldn’t win by tearing her down as they were to effect policy change or elect Halter. Like I said, when this little adventure started, Lincoln and Halter were polling the same against Boozman – low 40s in the R2K poll and 30s in Ras. but both were climbing. Now, that’s more dangerous territory for the incumbent to be in, but I suspect Blanches favorables were torn down more by Dems than anyone else. I’m fine with primaries, but you don’t burn your bridges, and the firebaggers too often do that. Now, we’re pretty fucked, but we didn’t have to be in this deep a hole.
demimondian
@BTD: No — making that one aide’s comments more complicated. At worst, he or she is a loose cannon who’d had too much to drink. More likely, the WH is trying to dominate the political discourse for a day or so in order to limit the damage.
Smart politics.
mistermix
@BTD: Well, I’m not going to run down that slippery slope.
I think @demimondian has it about right, that Labor was looking for a demonstration race where the general election was already in danger. I’m just wondering if there wasn’t a better place to sink that $10 mil than Arkansas.
Mike
I think the opposite. Did you see Blanche gloat last night? She’s going to run so hard right, everyone’s head is going to be spinning. The derivatives language is as good as gone. She’ll say it was bad for Wal Mart and that’s all there is too it!
BTD
@mistermix:
But you already start down that road. I think the logical places it leads you should be a part of your thinking.
Start with the first one – what does Labor care who is elected in Arkansas? Your trip down the slope got us to they should not care.
The next step is to ask why any progressive should care. It seems a fair question.
Stroszek
So the White House supported Lincoln and opposes her amendment… oh yeah, I’m sure she’ll keep fighting for it.
demimondian
@Mike: One word: filibuster.
From here on in, it’s irrelevant what any of us want. Financial reform won’t happen this year, and we all know it.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: I won’t count out any dem elected, then reelected twice in a red state. She is the underdog in this pol climate, for sure, but she has passionate and committed supporters, especially in her old House district, and the Clinton machine to tap as well. Pretty soon the airwaves are going to bring a mountain of tea bag crazy ads and such. Dems have some leg accomplishments to counter. We will see just how independents and moderates react to that. The tea bag Hurricane may well be like the real ones, that get to spinning so fast, they start to break apart. There are signs of this in recent polling.
BTD
@demimondian:
Limit what damage? How does taking shots at Labor “limit the damage?”
I do not understand your comment. I certainly do not understand how this is “smart politics” by the White House.
I prefer the Lone Wolf Idiot theory.
demimondian
@mistermix: The problem is that you have to go all in to make the point. I’ve been in this kind of debate as a “union boss” (albeit a mere shop steward) — if you’re going to make a political point, you don’t do it by half measures. You go all in, and, then, either way, you can go in and say “Now, you’ve seen what I can do. I can do that again and again and again. You may win some, but you’ll lose more.”
It’s bare-knuckled negotiation, perhaps, but unions have never been successful when they played pastel politics.
kay
@Martin:
Well, I disagree with that. Every Blue Dog that volunteered to take a leading role in gumming up health care negotiations with lists of demands got hurt.
It was stupid on her part. That process was ugly. Smarter Senators than Blanche Lincoln managed to wheel and deal without drawing all that unfavorable attention, Bernie Sanders comes to mind. She was never able to articulate exactly what she was making all that fuss about. They all ended up looking untrustworthy and bought and paid for.
The Senate didn’t do themselves any favors with voters who were watching that show. It’s still amazing to me that none of them realized how terrible they looked. They were the worst salespeople for their own ideas.
demimondian
@BTD: Look at it in second hand. If I know that labor is going to be making those calls, I do not want them to be creating the narrative. I want to be out first, making it sound like they’re licking their wounds and making excuses.
The audience here is two-fold: first, other Dems, and second, the rank and file membership.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Hah! I agree. The CW wrote off Reid months ago. He kept plugging away. I think he’s tough and smart, and I didn’t write him off.
I think you have to give an incumbent Senator credit for knowing his or her own state, his or her own “base”. They know exactly who votes for them. Specter was the exception, not the rule, because he wasn’t a Democrat.
BTD
@demimondian:
Huh? If I know Labor is going to be making what calls? The one thing I thought that had happened, for possibly a multitude of good reasons, was that the White House had basically walked away publically from the Arkansas primary (unless people were associating Bill Clinton as an Obama operative, not likely).
Labor had just lost. What narrative was Labor going to create?
There was no purpose, political at least, to these comments.
Further, you say the White House WANTS to pick a fight with Labor so that “it sounds like they’re licking their wounds and making excuses?” Why on Earth would they want that precisely?
What is the political benefit to the White House for that?
Are you arguing that today’s stories of a rift between the White House and Labor is a good thing politically for the WH and Dems? How is that precisely?
This theory does not make sense to me.
Eric U.
the fact that Reid has bad numbers in Nevada drives me crazy. If it weren’t for him, Nevada would have just about zero influence. I just don’t understand voters in states like that.
It also drives me crazy to see that there are Dems that aren’t going to vote for Lincoln. If she loses, it will probably throw a seat to the republicans for decades.
demimondian
@BTD: I’m saying that Clinton was there as Obama’s surrogate. You don’t realize how powerful a figure he is — or how racist the environment actually is. Oh, and did I mention that the President is…err…black? Remember Central High? Orval Faubus? George Wallace was a bigot out of expediency — Faubus…yeah, he was the real deal. And his kith and kin are still the people of Arkansas.
The White House wants to weaken the impact of the threats Labor could make to people who actually have something to lose — say, Harry Reid. They do that by trying to set the narrative, into which you have happily bought, that labor lost because the unions spent so much.
I’m saying that’s utter nonsense. $10 million bucks (including shoe leather costs)? That’s *cheap*.
PeakVT
@BTD: DC Dems can’t resist hippie-punching, because the Kool Kidz in the Village like it.
demimondian
@PeakVT: Oh, fooey. The DC establishment doesn’t care about the “progressive wing” of the party. Seriously, the progressives are good money sponges, and not much else.
jl
@ChicagoTom: I flushed some money down the toilet on Halter, and if it moved Lincoln to improve the finance regulation bill, I am glad.
Call me crazy, if you want to.
As long as Lincoln thinks she has a chance to win, she might have to follow through on her recent move towards constructive legislation.
If not, I think she would be very quick to throw in the towel and prepare for her future career as a ‘consultant’.
Let’s hope it’s the former.
I think there are some here to have let their hatred of the firebaggers cloud their judgment. Just because Hamsher supports something, doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad idea.
BTD
@demimondian:
Two points: 1 – Bill Clinton certainly was in Arkansas with the approval of the Obama Administration, but he likely would have been there anyway imo. But in either case, Bill Clinton’s being there was not seen as the same thing as Obama being there (see your own comment on race, etc.). Ergo, why pick this fight with Labor NOW, after the election? There was no rhyme or reason for it.
2 – You wrote “The White House wants to weaken the impact of the threats Labor could make to people who actually have something to lose—say, Harry Reid. They do that by trying to set the narrative, into which you have happily bought, that labor lost because the unions spent so much.”
I think you meant to refer to MisterMix as the “buyer” there. I think Labor made its point such as it is – Blanche Lincoln has paid a very steep political price for her actions. She did not lose YET, but she will. She probably would have no matter what, but her actions certainly have made it more likely.
And like you, I do not think the money spent, in the scheme of things was all that much. What is funny is thw WH aide’s statement that the money could have gone into “tough House races” – one assumes they mean like Heath Shuler’s race. That was what made the comment REALLY strange. Labor would be more likely to run primary challengers in those races than help people like Shuler in November.
This goes back to my point about what races progressives and Labor should involve themselves in.
BTD
@PeakVT:
That would be the most hopeful of explanations in that it would reflect some motive for the comments.
Because there clearly is no political upside to the comments.
cyntax
@demimondian:
Interesting point since it actually goes some distance in explaining what seemed to me an unnecessarily ham-handed response on the part of the WH.
jl
@Martin: I don’t understand this ‘deep in the hole’ business. In elections you win or you lose, and even before Halter Lincoln already looked deep enough in the hole for an incumbent that it did not look good for her in general election.
So, you had a vulnerable incumbent who had a good chance of losing and would cause trouble in Senate getting good things done during the remainder of her term, or an incumbent had a good chance of losing and would do constructive things in the Senate. If Halter caused the latter case, then it was a good move.
And I agree with kay that Lincoln caused a lot of her own problems in how she dealt with healthcare reform.
uloborus
@BTD:
Well, personally I don’t think an anonymous quote that could be from anybody or could be completely made up is the White House reaction, any more than I believed any of the anonymous quotes that have turned out to have nothing to do with Obama’s attitudes since he took office.
Other than that, I find the arguments on both sides here interesting, but have no strong opinion. I’ve heard some rather good arguments that the primary challenge did good, and whether or not that’s true I see it as meaning a reasonable decision maker in Labor could believe it.
Barry
@Sentient Puddle: “Lincoln also has a chair at conference. With an issue as high profile as financial reform, I’d put money on her fighting to make sure she doesn’t look weak and ineffectual. ”
If not wanting to look weak and ineffectual was a concern of the Senate, we could tune in to the webcam on the Wall St gallows, and watch the hangings, every hour on the hour. They don’t have a problem looking ineffectual if the Big Money wants them to.
Eric U.
OT: GOS front pager transcribing balloon-juice posts:
linky
eemom
@kay:
Same here. To paraphrase what Steve Benen said today, Reid knew he could turn the thing around if the republicans nominated the most batshit crazy opponent they could find.
Lo and behold, “Mission Accomplished.”
eemom
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Glad yer back, General.
Midnight Marauder
@demimondian:
Precisely. In the Halter campaign, you had a months in the making insurgency going up the colossal strength of the Democratic establishment, the White House, and Bill Fucking Clinton. And he still managed to come within a few points of knocking her off, after forcing a runoff in the first place. This is what they were reduced to in order to counter Halter:
And I still think it’s pretty suspicious what went down in Garland County last night. I haven’t really heard or seen any discussion of that anywhere:
PeakVT
@demimondian: My point was that the main audience for this little little leak was the DC press corps.
Chuck Butcher
You can either make yourselves important to politicians or you can just go along and watch other people drive agendas. Maybe a whole lot of you are happy to watch the Democratic Party turn into Rockefeller Republicans and figure everybody left of Joe McCarthy can go fuck off. You call yourselves realists when what you are is enablers of the status quo and its degeneration into rightwing nonsense. Following your lead in a decade the Teabaggers will be the new middle.
arguingwithsignposts
My biggest concern about this is that Obama was out with robo-calls asking for support for Lincoln. This is just like the deal with Specter. He should stay out of these primary fights and only lend his support to the Nov. elections if he can at all avoid it.
Martin
@jl: Lincoln was 10 points behind Boozman in March. She’s now 20 points back as of last week. The election hasn’t happened yet. Our situation in AR appears as of this moment to be worse than it was a few months ago. I’m all for primary challengers, but it would appear that we’ve got an extra 10 points to make up that we didn’t have before and from my perspective the narrative was that Lincoln couldn’t get elected and my assertion is that the Dems (particularly the activists) were undermining Lincoln in order to further that narrative. If she’s behind in the polls, I’m saying it’s because of the same people that claim they want to elect more and better Democrats.
Your claim is that Lincoln losing was a fait accompli. I think that’s false – at least as of a few months ago. Now, I think it’s likely true, but if she’s weaker against Boozman, it’s not because of anything she or the party has done, but because of the efforts of the activists. They could have approached this primary race differently – but they wanted Blanche’s head on a plate rather than to maximize our chances to hold that seat.
PanAmerican
Lincoln won Fayetville and Little Rock – about as close to liberal urban oases as you’re going to get in Arkansas. She carried the black vote 60/40. I suspect she carried what union vote there is in Arkansas.
Halter did well with rural conservative dems.
demimondian
@PanAmerican: Yeah…no
Little Rock is not a liberal oasis, and Fayetteville is adjacent to her home district.
Chuck Butcher
Twenty years ago the GOP right nut brigade having any control of the GOP was delusional daydreaming … today? Whatever you think of their agenda they managed to drive the Party in their direction. Now if you’re satisfiedt to have the Democrats follow right in their wake you’ll pull for status quo in search of the Nov victory even if it means the candidate’s (D) is meaningless.
If you want to worship at the feet of Terry McAuliff and Rahm and turn the Democratic Party into the GOP while the GOP turns into the Birchers, then say so instead of bemoaning political strategy that seems to cost Lincoln some points. I used “seems” deliberately because this is just post election and not even politically close to Nov.
If political discussion is not pushed, then the table is not set for victory later. I don’t give a damn what Obama specifically campaigned on, valid criticism sets the table for later. If you want some more for Health Care then criticizing what is possible now sets the direction for later. If you got all or more than you wanted, staying shut up will serve your interests.
Jade Jordan
Worse than I thought the Manchurian candidate does child porn.
File it under SC Dems do their research before elections.
LarryB
@Chuck Butcher: You’re arguing from an extreme: Because the Club for Growth has driven the GOP into a ditch political parties should exercise zero discipline whatsoever? It should be a rule: Anyone who bucks the party on a procedural vote gets primaried.
Chuck Butcher
@LarryB:
I have no idea what you’re complaining about?
taylormattd
@BTD: A better question: who the fuck cares what an alleged white house aid allegedly said to fucking Politico?
Oh wait, nevermind. The answer is OUTRAGE!
BTD
@taylormattd:
I don’t care. I imagine you saw my post that linked to this one. I focused on what Labor said, not what the anonymous WH aide said.
I think that is the more interesting part of the story. And in fact, I thought MisterMix and I were discussing that rather than the WH.
I admit I got sidetracked in a discussion here about it. But it is not my main focus of thought.
Corner Stone
Anytime I see this from one of you clueless fucking FP’ers I start giggling to myself a little.
Just a little
Dayv
5 days too late for anyone to care…
“Lincoln eeked out a win”
The word is “eke,” dangit! She *eked* out a win!
The English language: not actually as hard as people make it look.