A lot of beltway pundits have said a lot of stupid beltway things about the result of the Arkansas senate runoff between Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter. But at least a couple of outsider analysts have the right take. First is Ari Melber, who works for the Nation but also has a monthly column in the Politico. It’s really worth reading his newest piece in full, but here’s a good excerpt:
Take the senior administration aide who called Politico’s Ben Smith on Wednesday morning, eager to declare that unions “”flushed”” ten million down the toilet in a “”pointless”” primary. That public servant is either disingenuous or clueless.
“If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country,”the aide said, “that could have made a real difference in November.”
This criticism misreads the entire insurgency on the left – and may cause more heartburn in November.
President Barack Obama’s political team can wish that its base was focused on defending a governing majority. But labor has joined cause with anti-establishment, liberal groups that believe changing the membership of the party’s congressional majority is as important as growing it.
After watching Democratic incumbents freeze out a litany of progressive proposals, from the famous public option to the Employee Free Choice Act – which Democratic politicians have decided to support through speeches, not floor votes – some allies are wising up.
Greg Sargent is on the money as well:
For labor, not doing anything was tantamount to losing. Blanche Lincoln is terrible on issues important to labor. As long as she remains in the Senate, unions lose.
Yes, labor dumped $10 million on the effort. But they, you know, almost won. If anything, the closeness of the contest — recall that Halter forced Lincoln into a runoff three weeks ago — underscored that labor was right to undertake this effort. And putting aside that $10 million, unions are in some ways in a better position than they were before: It’s a simple fact that other Dems will think longer and harder before crossing labor on issues that are dealbreakers for them.
If labor had never entered this race at all, they’d still be in a losing position with Lincoln in the Senate. This is an unbearably simple and obvious point, but the only way for labor to reverse this situation was to try to replace her with someone better on their issues. They couldn’t do this, of course, without running the risk of losing. Doing nothing would have amounted to a loss, anyway — with no chance of ever winning. They were absolutely right to give it a shot. The alternative was much worse.
I’ll add a final thought, which is that for all the claims that DC loves to play the “expectations game,” the only thing that beltway bobbleheads understand is winning and losing. Smart baseball analysts know that good teams don’t win many close games – they win a lot of blowouts, because narrow wins are more a product of luck than skill. But in the cloistered minds of most tradmed pundits, only the won-lost record matters: you win, you’re golden, you lose, you suck – no matter how close the margin. This, of course, is foolish, and the establishment ignores Lincoln’s tight escape at its peril.
I think that since Halter, even if he had won now, would’ve still likely lost in November (even if by not as wide a margin as Lincoln) the amount of energy and enthusiasm invested in that race was somewhat foolish itself.
would find fault in spending money to support your positions.
It’s one of those disconnects between political hacks and proponents of political change. The hacks will never understand those who actually do things because they believe in them.
Halter’s challenge should be viewed in the context of Sestak’s too. It was a great use of money to get a better candidate in one place, and almost succeed in another.
The institutional hacks don’t like anybody challenging incumbents. Well boo-hoo, stop doing such a crappy job then.
As much as we criticize the Tea Party (and they’re certainly worthy of criticism), they’ve clearly accomplished something. Republican incumbents are now scared of getting “teabagged” by a primary challenge from the right. Imagine if the Republican Party weren’t worried about Tea Party challenges. Think more Republicans would be willing to be bipartisan and go along with some Democratic measures? Probably. But right now, they’re all scared shitless of getting primaried, so they’re essentially behaving the way the teabaggers want them to. Even though, off the top of my head, no Republican incumbent has actually lost to a teabagging insurgent, their point has been made.
And that’s the greater point here. Win or lose, Halter’s primary challenge to Lincoln — and the money that came with it — sent a message that labor wasn’t about to effectively rubberstamp the actions of the Democratic majority by supporting incumbents who vote against labor on important issues.
And, in fact, I think Lincoln was the perfect incumbent to challenge to make this point. Lincoln is probably going to lose in November either way, so if Halter had won the primary and then lost the general election, nobody could have plausibly said that a labor-backed challenge cost the Democrats a seat and put a conservative Republican in the Senate. Had labor backed a primary challenge in a seat we were likely going to hold with the incumbent in there, there would have been a lot more to lose.
It’s easy to get the feeling that even if the margin of victory was just 200 votes, if Lincoln won, the entire race would be declared a loss for labor and progressive activists. In reality, if labor could push a challenger to a Senate incumbent to a 49% vote total in a state like Arkansas with the 2nd lowest union membership in the country, then certainly candidates should be careful elsewhere, particularly in states with more liberal Democratic constituencies. The message was sent either way. In fact, everyone has always known that both Halter and Lincoln would likely lose in November. Therefore, it’s difficult to say that this race was about getting a candidate elected.
That’s a signigicant dropoff. That should be analyzed by someone smarter than me to figure out what happened here.
that their base is in fact moving left. Lots of excitement that the Republican base is moving right/reactionary, but somehow they want to believe in ‘balance’ or something like that and timidity of the Democratic base.
More exactly, ‘social issues’ are something of a lost cause and so is the question of tax cuts versus government programs. The evolution seems to be to what is the case in western Europe: Democrats seem to be trending/maturing into support of social democracy proper, Republicans and conservaDems (fading in numbers) are increasingly cleanly and clearly corporatist.
The current batch of Democrats in Congress and the White House has done what lay in their capacity to do- and their election mandate. They will only do more if and when their most conservative members are removed and a roughly equivalent number of substantially more liberal ones are elected.
Yes, it looks like a waste of money but the reasons for doing it are also very valid. At the end of the day the result here won’t make a damn difference in November. Point made by labor, time to move on.
in the general campaign, and that’s their right.
SEIU officials: Blanche Lincoln should forget about our support in general election
But now if Lincoln loses in Nov, unions (and progressives to some degree) will be looked at as the scapegoats for the loss by those beltway Dem’s.
And even by the White House as well. Robert Gibbs this morning didn’t really walk back the “flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet” remark by an anonymous WH person. Gibbs merely echoed that sentiment in a slightly less confrontational manner.
Gee, I wonder who it could have been in the WH who made that original comment.
and if he does, if any of this is sinking in . . .
Witness this quote:
“But labor has joined cause with anti-establishment, liberal groups that believe changing the membership of the party’s congressional majority is as important as growing it.”
If both Lincoln and Halter were going to lose, how was anything they did in Arkansas going to change the majority except to make it more Republican or 0 impact.
And this quote:
“It’s a simple fact that other Dems will think longer and harder before crossing labor on issues that are dealbreakers for them.”
Shall I assume EFCA will now pass in landslides in both houses now that Dems are thinking longer and harder before crossing unions? I didn’t think so.
And this quote:
“Smart baseball analysts know that good teams don’t win many close games”
I don’t even know what to make of this statement or where its even sourced from. I’ve never heard a pundit say good teams don’t win close games. Its universally thought that good teams win close games. Its not like the world series has a lot of 10-0 games each year.
And this quote:
“Take the senior administration aide who called Politico’s Ben Smith on Wednesday morning, eager to declare that unions “”flushed”” ten million down the toilet in a “”pointless”” primary. That public servant is either disingenuous or clueless. ”
Wouldn’t the $10M been better spent defeating all of the blue dogs that voted against HCR and EFCA in higher union % districts? This would thereby possibly effecting an actual change, rather than an assumed, presumptive change (the one I’m betting my life savings won’t come to pass).
SSP just links to that ‘cat fud’ Far Side comic. I know you all think that conservative ideas are beneath serious consideration, but there’s a pretty obvious double standard that you’re applying here.
Boozman will only last – at most – two terms. His first reelection campaign will coincide with the 2016 Presidential election. If Democrats nominate a southerner who can carry Arkansas(maybe Hillary will run again) Boozman is toast. Remember: Tim Hutchison only got one term.
I can understand an organization spending $10 million to replace a sitting representative with one more sympathetic to that organizations views. But it seems to me to be a very poor use of funds to defeat the incumbent in a primary when both candidates are likely to lose in the general anyway. It would be a different situation if the seat were a “safe” one for the primary winner, but Arkansas clearly isn’t in that category.
It seems to me that the resources would have been far better spent on, say, actually organizing more people for labor and growing their membership which would increase their political clout. Instead, labor blew a lot of cash and the seat will still go to someone hostile to their interests–and that would have likely been the case regardless of who won the primary (except that labor would have blown even more money in the general, so maybe it’s good for them that Lincoln won).
Others have posted that it sends a signal that the Democratic base is moving to the left. But the elections of 2006 and 2008 should show that the base isn’t enough to win or even retain seats; Rove’s “rely on the base” strategy eventually failed (when their terror-scare tactics wore off) and left too many in the center ready to change their votes. Moving a party puts seats at risk unless enough of the public moves too. Move the public, and the parties have to follow if they want to win elections. But the converse is not true.
The strategy here eludes me.
That White House aide pissed off the unions.
Are the unions going to turn on Obama now? By refusing to support his reelection campaign, or having someone primary him? I really wonder if this WH aide comment just lost Obama’s reelection campaign.