Why the Democratic Party supports anti-Democrats like Blanche Lincoln

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Make sure to read this Glenn Greenwald post in full, particularly if, like me, you tend to think of yourself as a fairly loyal Democrat. Here's a chunk of it:

The run-off between Democratic Senate incumbent Blanche Lincoln and challenger Bill Halter, which culminated on Tuesday night in Lincoln's narrow victory, brightly illuminates what the Democratic Party establishment is. Lincoln is supposedly one of those "centrist"/conservative/corporatist Senators who thwarts the good-hearted progressive agenda of the President and the Party. She repeatedly joined with Republicans to support the extremist Bush/Cheney Terrorism agenda (from the the Protect America Act to the Iraq War and virtually everything in between), serves the corporate interests that run Washington as loyally as any member of Congress, and even threatened to join the GOP in filibustering health care reform if it contained the public option which Obama claimed he wanted. Obama loyalists constantly point to the Blanche Lincolns of the world to justify why the Party scorns the values of their voters: Obama can't do anything about these bad Democratic Senators; it's not his fault if he doesn't have the votes, they insist.

Lincoln's 12-year record in the Senate is so awful that she has severely alienated virtually every important Democratic constituency group -- other than the large corporate interests that fund and control the Party. That record, along with her extreme unpopularity in Arkansas, is the reason Accountability Now -- the group I co-founded and run in order, among other things, to recruit primary challengers against corporatist incumbents -- targeted Lincoln and why it expended so much effort and resources to recruit Halter into the race. We knew that most key progressive factions -- grass-roots organizations, progressive blogs, civil liberties groups, and unions -- would want to see Lincoln removed from the Senate, and that's the type of formidable coalition needed to persuade a credible challenger that a 2-term Senate incumbent can be defeated.

So what did the Democratic Party establishment do when a Senator who allegedly impedes their agenda faced a primary challenger who would be more supportive of that agenda? They engaged in full-scale efforts to support Blanche Lincoln. Bill Clinton traveled to Arkansas to urge loyal Democrats to vote for her, bashing liberal groups for good measure. Obama recorded an ad for Lincoln which, among other things, were used to tell African-American primary voters that they should vote for her because she works for their interests. The entire Party infrastructure lent its support and resources to Lincoln -- a Senator who supposedly prevents Democrats from doing all sorts of Wonderful, Progressive Things which they so wish they could do but just don't have the votes for.

I'm all for a big tent that includes centrists/conservatives, and I'm all for standing by incumbents who, for the most part, are good Democrats. But at what cost?

In the case of Blanche Lincoln, who isn't really much of a Democrat at all, it seems to me that the cost is enormous, with the party establishment, including the White House, sacrificing its self-respect and the good of the party, given Lincoln's pro-Republican tendencies, to support an incumbent who opposes much of the establishment's agenda.

It can't just be that she's electable, because she's actually quite beatable this year, and it's not like no other Democrat could hold the seat. Halter certainly would have been a strong candidate.

So why the support? Because Lincoln, in a way, is the Democratic Party:

What's going on here couldn't be clearer if the DNC produced neon signs explaining it. Blanche Lincoln and her corporatist/centrist Senate-friends aren't some unfortunate outliers in the Democratic Party. They are the Democratic Party. The outliers are the progressives. The reason the Obama White House did nothing when Lincoln sabotaged the public option isn't because they had no leverage to punish her if she was doing things they disliked. It was because she was doing exactly what the White House and the Party wanted. The same is true when she voted for Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, serves every corporate interest around, and impedes progressive legislation. Lincoln doesn't prevent the Democratic Party from doing and being what it wishes it could do and be. She enables the Party to do and be exactly what it is, what it wants to be, what serves its interests most. That's why they support her so vigorously and ensured her victory: the Blanche Lincolns of the world are the heart, soul and face of the national Democratic Party. 

I'm still a Democrat, and I'm generally less critical of the party than Glenn is, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the opposition is so awful. Even Lincoln, after all, looks good compared to the extremists who dominate the GOP.

But Democrats -- real Democrats, Democrats who believe in the party and want it to stand for genuinely liberal-progressive values -- need to take the party back if it is be anything other than a milder version of the Republican Party. The way it is now is simply unacceptable.

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"My name is Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO and I'm proud to fight for working families and I don't hide behind anonymous quotes." -- in response to the anonymous White House official who (stupidly) bashed the unions for spending money on Halter.

If the White House does one thing well, it's alienating the people they'll need come November.

Lincoln wins in AR, Whitman and Fiorina win in CA, and more from Primary Night in America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Honestly, I just can't get too worked up about today's primary votes. Given how few people actually vote in these elections, I just don't think they mean nearly as much as the the chattering class of the 24/7 news cycle would have us believe, and I don't think we can learn all that much from them.

Does Sen. Blanche Lincoln's win in Arkansas against a union-backed challenger, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, suggest a broad rejection of efforts to unseat conservative elements of the Democratic establishment? Hardly. Lincoln had the distinct advantage of incumbency, Arkansas is a conservative state, Halter isn't exactly a progressive, the race was ultimately decided by a small group of committed electors (those who bother to vote in primaries), and, as tends to be the case everywhere, politics is as much about personality as about policy. It is certainly disappointing that she won, but perhaps her win will help Democrats hold onto the seat. Better Lincoln than a Republican, after all, regardless of how Republican she often seems to be.

Otherwise, on the other side, the California GOP apparently likes female ex-CEOs, eBay's Meg Whitman for governor (against Jerry Brown) and Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina for senator (against Barbara Boxer); Nevada Republicans chose between two crazies, Sharron "Tea Party" Angle and Sue "chicken bartering" Lowden, to go up against Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid; and, in South Carolina, accused marital cheater and target of intra-party racial/religious abuse Nikki Haley (the now-Methodist daughter of Punjabi Sikhs), backed by Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Jenny Sanford, now heads into a gubernatorial nominee run-off against a four-term Congressman.

Ho-hum. What I take from these and other Republican contests is that the GOP is entrenching itself as a party of rigid ideological extremism, much of it related to teabagging. As if we didn't know that already.

Things are looking up

By Greg Prince

It's the day after several primaries, plus a bonus election, and for the first time in a while thoughtful Democrats should have a spring in their step looking to November.

The media narratives will remain focused on the Republican't noise machine, according to which anything and everything is representative of "liberal" failure and is bad for Democrats and Obama, but the facts speak for themselves. Democrats had a good night, a very good night. And it was a particularly rewarding night for the Netroots, who saw their preferred candidates perform well against establishment candidates.

In fact, we see something at Politico that is seldom seen these days: "Republicans failed spectacularly." We'll come back to that.

First off, Arkansas is the gift that keeps on giving. Blanche Lincoln needed to come in over 50% to avoid a run off. She didn't make it. Lincoln is among the more brazen of the DINO conservadems and is owned by special interests. She's not particularly popular in Arkansas and re-election would be a challenge even without a primary. In other words, she's a prime target, and Bill Halter forced her to speak to Democrats for a change. Adele Stan observes:

When, during an appearance on "The Rachel Maddow Show" in the midst of the health-care debate, FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher threatened Sen. Blanche Lincoln with a primary challenge, people thought Hamsher was either full of bluster, nuts, or both. Tonight, nobody's laughing.

How you feeling about that public option now, Blanche?

Just having a primary challenger made a meaningful difference. Trying to bolster her progressive credentials, she went gung-ho in the Senate on derivatives reform under the current financial legislation. Thing is, Lincoln never was serious about derivatives reform. It was all for show, and amendments to weaken the proposals were to have been introduced as soon as polls closed in Arkansas. Inconveniently, Lincoln's problems didn't end when the polls closed, and the tougher language will have to be retained, for now. TPM reports:

A far-reaching proposal to regulate derivative trading will not be scaled back in Wall Street reform legislation, at least for now, multiple Senate aides confirm. The development comes as welcome news to an unusual mix of progressives, financial officials, and at least one conservative Democrat: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR).

Lincoln is the author of the derivatives title in the Senate's financial regulation bill, and for weeks has faced opposition from Wall Street, the White House, and members of her own party over a provision to force financial firms to spin off their derivatives trading desks into stand-alone entities.

It will be interesting to see what happens in two weeks, but typically supporters of the incumbent are less motivated to come out yet again for a special election. Stay tuned.

Pennsylvania gave us a twofer. Joe Sestak's victory over GOP defector Arlen Specter is something of a surprise given Specter's support from the Democratic machine, but he simply ran a better campaign and benefits from being a real Democrat instead of an opportunistic moderate who was caught on camera being very honest about changing parties primarily to avoid a spanking in the GOP primary.

The real news, of course, is PA-12. The GOP was hell-bent on winning this seat, and it seemed very doable for them. This district is not Obama-friendly, and economic stimulus and health-care reform don't poll well. In short, the race looked to be a very good opportunity for the GOP to nationalize the race, create a referendum on Obama's term, and establish momentum going into the midterms. Except for one pesky detail. Matthew Yglesias:

Mark Critz's win in the PA-12 House election is just straight-up embarrassing for Republicans. The Democratic strategy was straight out of the 2006/2008 playbook. Find a moderately conservative House district and run a somewhat heterodox Democrat. You don't win every race, but you win a bunch. You can't count on those guys' votes on all the key issues, but each of them is with you sometimes. Add up a shifting coalition of such members to the big block of solid House liberals, and Nancy Pelosi can put an effective governing agenda together.

This was supposed to stop working in 2010. The end of the Bush backlash and the rise of anti-Obama sentiment, combined with the reality of the legislation coming out of the Pelosi-era House is supposed to get Republicans back to baseline at least. To see a Democrat win an open seat in a district that went for John McCain will be a welcome sign to a large number of House Democrat incumbents from red districts.

Critz isn't a liberal, but a Democratic win here is great news for Democratic prospects nationwide and major egg on the face of the GOP establishment.

Kentucky also deserves some mention. Jack Conway will be fine as a candidate, but the real story is the victory of Rand Paul, the teabagging son of Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Spend some time listening to the son and you'll think the father is sane. Thing is, Paul ran on a platform that is pretty standard GOP fare, so it's hard to know just how strong the tea will brew for the general. But this is a best-case scenario for the Democrats. Paul can be beaten, and Conway is the strongest candidate on the Democratic side.

All in all, a very respectable evening for Democrats.

Still, there is a lot of voter anger. How will that translate into anti-incumbent, anti-establishment sentiment at the polls? That remains to be seen. The votes against Specter and Lincoln, as well as against Kentucky's GOP-favored candidate Trey Grayson, can be seen as defeats for the party machinery and traditionalists, but with the exception of Lincoln, the anti incumbent spirit is less clear. There is no incumbent in Kentucky, and Specter was not elected to his seat as a Democrat.

Similarly, wishes for a viable third party ring hollow. Being "not Democrat and not Republican" is not the same thing as a vision for governance and a platform to campaign on. The Independence Party of Minnesota is facing this challenge. A leftover from the Jesse Ventura days, they manage to attract a hardcore following but never reach critical mass to elect anyone to office – other than stealing enough DFL votes to keep sending Michele Bachmann to Congress, alas. But all they have going for them is being "other." Sometimes its candidates are liberal, sometimes conservative. There's no cohesive vision for voters to support. Even among the various incarnations of the Tea Party, there are few common threads around which to build a platform.

Minnesota primaries are in August. Then onward to November.

(Cross-posted from Greg Prince's Blog.)

Blanche Lincoln blinks

By Creature

With a primary challenge to her left, Blanche Lincoln is now willing to see what's in the companion bill before she decides on the merits of using reconciliation. Amazing what a little push from the left will do.

Conservadem Blanche Lincoln's new campaign ad

By Creature

And this is the person establishment Dems (yes, White House, I'm talking to you) are supporting. Amazing. It's time to give Bill Halter some more cash.

Blanche Lincoln's new primary opponent rakes in the cash

By Creature

Money talks, especially base money, but will those damn conservative Democrats listen?

Blanche Lincoln gets primaried

By Creature

And I just contributed to her new Dem challenger. Sometimes Monday mornings aren't all that bad.

Conservative Dems oppose reconciliation but deal still possible on health-care reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings

TPM: "Lincoln, Bayh Won't Support Passing Health Care Fixes Via Reconciliation."

Screw 'em.

**********

Okay, okay... fine. Let's expand on that.

The point is, the Democrats don't need Lincoln and Bayh (or Nelson). The Senate has already passed reform legislation and the House, which previously passed its own, more robust version, could pass the Senate bill as is, and then the Democrats could use the reconciliation process to pass additional reform elements.

Ezra Klein:

The virtue of running the compromise through reconciliation is that you can lose a couple of conservative Democrats. In theory, this could be a good thing: 51 senators could enact a better bill than 60 senators. The most unpopular compromises -- namely, Nelson's Medicaid deal -- came in the effort to round up those final votes. The bill's most popular policies -- like the public option and the Medicare buy-in -- were eliminated to placate conservative Democrats.

But will the Democrats rise to the challenge?

[I]nstead of seeing this as an opportunity to scrub the bill of some of its more noxious concessions and restore some of the legislation's more popular elements, Democrats seem terrified by the prospect of, as some Hill aides have said to me, "cutting another deal." When you've defined "deals" so broadly as to include votes on legislation and then taken such deals off the table, however, you've also taken legislating off the table.

You know, even if Democrats had 90 of 100 senators and a supper-massive majority in the House, they'd still find a way to defeat themselves.

As Steve Benen keeps saying: "Pass. The. Damn. Bill."

For fuck's sake.

With 60 votes, the health care debate is set to begin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln is a yes for debating health reform, but a no for the public option, and she and fellow centrists are making clear they expect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to scrap his current plan for a government-run insurance program.

Lincoln (D-Ark.) announced Saturday that she'd deliver the deciding vote to push forward with a sweeping health reform plan, ending days of speculation over whether President Barack Obama's signature priority would proceed to the Senate floor or suffer a debilitating blow.

The vote is scheduled for 8:00 pm tonight.

Lincoln, Mary Landrieu (D-La.), and other "centrists" continue to oppose the public option that is included in Reid's bill, and, of course, there is still the likelihood of Democratic support for a Republican filibuster, mainly from Joe Lieberman ("D"-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), so there's a lot more to be done. What is likely, it would appear, is that either:

a) the public option will be removed from the bill in order to secure enough votes to override a filibuster; or

b) Reid will use reconciliation to move the bill to the floor for an up-or-down, simple-majority vote.

Either way, Republicans will continue to use every weapon at their disposal either to bring the debate to a halt or to kill reform altogether.

Landrieu, for her part, opined that "it is going to be very clear at some point very soon that there are not 60 votes for the current provision in the bill and that the leader and the leadership will have to make a decision, and I trust they will figure out how to do that." Well, true enough. There likely won't be 60 votes, and Reid will have to pick a) or b). But why should there need to be 60 votes? Why should such a super-majority be required to pass legislation? Only to overcome a procedural barrier, of course. If it were just a straight vote, up-or-down on the floor, Reid's bill would pass with a solid majority.

If I had to make a prediction now, it would be that Reid will water the bill down (perhaps by putting in a public option trigger), but it does not seem that, short of removing the public option, the centrists can be appeased.

Needless to say, I'm in a pessimistic mood.

For more, see Steve Benen.

Worst Democrat of the Day: Blanche Lincoln

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For bailing on the public option -- because of its supposed cost:

For some in my caucus, when they talk about a public option they're talking about another entitlement program, and we can't afford that right now as a nation.

*****

I'm not going to vote for a bill that's not deficit-neutral, and I'm not going to vote for a bill that doesn't do something about curbing the cost in the out years, because it would be pointless... I would not support a solely government-funded public option. We can't afford that.

No, but the Democratic plan is actually... deficit-neutral. Which essentially renders Lincoln's opposition to it pointless.

Oh, but she has a point. The Arkansas senator is clearly pandering to her right-leaning constituency, what with her re-election prospects looking grim.

Benen: "This might be a good time to note that bloggers seem to be the only people in the country who realize that a public option would be cheaper than the alternative. If Lincoln is concerned about what "we can afford," she should be an enthusiastic champion of the public option. I suspect she knows this, but doesn't quite have the courage to explain this to her enraged constituents."

Indeed. And even if a public option were too costly, in Lincoln's view, what of the cost of doing nothing? The current system is simply not sustainable over the long term, with costs spiralling out of control (and with millions and millions of Americans either with inadequate coverage or without coverage altogether), and the situation is only getting worse.

But don't expect the likes of Blanche Lincoln to look beyond their noses, or even to put the good of the country before their own political ambitions.