Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Arkansas Elections If a tree falls in Arkansas ...
Posted by Max Brantley on Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 10:28 AM
... would anybody in Washington, D.C. hear it?
- Brian Chilson
- HEAR THEM ROAR: Women cheered Blanche Lincoln's victory Tuesday. Might there have been a gender gap?
Frank Wallis, a Mountain Home newspaperman, sent around a comment on MoveOn.org's effort to make lemonade out of Bill Halter's defeat with a statement that said, among others, that the lieutenant governor "was virtually unknown three months ago."
Wallis' comment: "Really?"
Good point.
Halter has only been lieutenant governor for four years after surviving a runoff and general election opponent; he is only the generally acknowledged father of a very popular state lottery that is just about to pour millions on thousands of Arkansas college students. He had less money than Blanche Lincoln, but he had millions and you'd be hard-pressed to find a Arkansas TV owner who couldn't tell you of Halter's days as a Catholic Rocket halfback or a Kroger grocery sacker.
But, of course, Halter wasn't well-known until recently by the people whose world ends at the beltways that ring Washington, D.C. This includes the small media herd that flocks in packs to the story line of the day, as determined by Politico or Fox News or one or another of the bellcows. It's an echo chamber. In this race, the labor/liberal megaphones in that echo chamber for once dominated. They produced the commentary, polls and narrative that Halter was going to march to victory Tuesday over another tired incumbent and wave the liberal banner high.
Oops. Halter lost and the two most liberal counties in Arkansas, despite massive mobilization, went heavily for Lincoln. I confess. I bought into the groupthink, too, with some, but insufficient, doubts.
Arkansas voters made their own call, as they always do. I think there are many different reasons. One thing for sure though. It wasn't because Bill Halter was a Johnny Come Lately the voters barely knew. It might be they knew him too well. And that they decided, finally, that they liked Blanche Lincoln better.
With the clarity of hindsight, I see now that Halter's main theme — he was not Blanche Lincoln — might not have been sufficient for voters who possess more sophistication than pundits often grant them. Maybe voters do want more specifics — like Lincoln's advocacy for corporate farmers, her late and tortured but ultimately welcome vote for health reform, her opportunistic but welcome blow for Wall Street regulation. Oh, yeah, and opposition to card check and clean air legislation.
I'd love to see exit polling on the gender gap. Lincoln was a target of opportunity for labor and liberal groups. She was vulnerable and they piled on to make a point. I know women who believe a male incumbent wouldn't have come in for the same treatment.
This is a good year to be a female candidate. Look at managerial ranks and board rooms all over Arkansas. Women, overwhelmingly, remain outsiders. Even long-time insiders like Blanche Lincoln benefit from this dynamic in a year like 2010. Sneer at women and diminish them with titles like Miz Blanche if you must; just don't think their sisters don't get it.
Comments (22)
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Blanche won; that's the good news for her. Now the really bad news. She had to blow all of her fundraising for the past 6 years on the primary. She enters the general election with very little money and having pissed off Wall St. with her derivatives bill, she won't be getting much money from them. She better beg Cargill, ConAgra, etc for money from every employee.
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"This is a good year to be a female candidate."
Please. These are party elections. Two wings of the Corporate Party that runs America. THE ELECTION is in November. Come back then and reassess these premature "election" consensus statements.
Bubba: "She had to blow all of her fundraising for the past 6 years on the primary."
And you know this because . . . ?
There are several story arcs in this campaign.
Although Sen. Lincoln voted for health care reform, the greatest social legislation since the Great Society, my liberal friends (none of whom are as liberal or progressive as I am) assured me first that she would block debate on the legislation. When she voted to allow debate, they intoned that she would vote against it. Then she voted for it. Now the mantra is that but for her a public option would have passed and that she really voted against health care when she voted against reconciliation. There never were fifty-nine other votes for the public option, and her courageous vote for what passed would have been a suicidal vote if she had cast it for the public option. Anyone who knows even a little about politics and government knows that legislative leaders give a pass to legislators whose votes are no longer needed, and she got that pass on reconciliation. Anyone who knows a little also knows that legislating is the art of the possible, but still I heard pleas for President Obama and Senator Lincoln and others putting the legislation together to "just be Democrats," as if that answered all questions. And she was invited to the signing ceremony.
I heard that her leadership of the Agriculture Committee did not matter. Since it is the committee that deals with child nutrition, it matters to me. She used that position to get a tough bill on derivatives. Then I heard that her buddies in D. C. voted for that in the hope that she would win without a runoff, so they could pull the bill down. It didn't happen. Now her sponsorship is derided as "opportunistic."
She voted for the stimulus package and for the "bailouts" that are hated on the right and the left. There was no clamor in Arkansas for her to cast those votes, and she was attacked for them. The bailouts saved our financial system and will not cost a dime ultimately, and the stimulus is helping pull us out of the Bush-Cheney-Iraq-tax cuts-lack-of-regulatory-oversight recession.
I am a rare Arkansan in that both of my grandfathers were trade union members. I have been a union supporter all my life. You had to be in my home. The SEIU and AFSCME had problems with Senator Lincoln's positions on the public option and card check legislation, but they did not have the courage to run ads against her on those issues. Instead they ran misleading and in some instances blatantly false ads alleging that she tried to cut Social Sccurity benefits and that she voted to allow insurance companies to continue to deny insurance for pre-existing conditions.
The idiot from "Politico" who proclaimed her a five-point loser yesterday was back on "Morning Joe" this morning and was not asked to wear a dunce cap.
Oh, yeah. When she was a freshman representative, she voted for the first Clinton budget, a measure that helped with the recovery from the first Bush's recession. In fairness, the recovery had begun, but it was more robust because of the good message that budget sent. It was a courageous vote. Ask the representatives who lost their seats in 1994 in part because of their vote for that legislation.
In the judicial primary, the DemGaz (it had to be Greenberg) compared Judge Karen Baker to Learned Hand. How long before we read that John Boozman is the reincarnation of Hnry Clay?
Lincoln's derivatives-swaps bill was/is window dressing. Even the POTUS doesn't like it which likely means Larry Summers doesn't like it. They won't approve it. But, it gave Corporate Blanche some credibility and spread a few smirks on the Street.
It's easy to assume this election was of, for and about the empowerment of women. Do you have any polling-survey evidence to support it? Exit polls?
To me it was about living wages, clean air, corporate welfare, concentration of wealth, and sweat shop labor laws. Good luck sticking a masculine or feminine symbol on any of those issues. If women voted for Blanche because of hormonal alignment then god help them trying to get wage parity.
The OWNERS of this country won yesterday. Senators are still sent.
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"Let the people who own this country run it."
Alexander Hamilton, first Sec of Treasury.
Lincoln won her run-off. No disputing that. She got the necessary votes. And she may win in November. If Arkansas' Democratic majority backs her, there's no question.
So those aren't the issues I wish to address.
I want to address her "being for Arkansas."
If during all the years she's been in Washington, with multiple opportunities to demonstrate her commitment to Arkanas so that Arkansans in general and Democratic voters in particular would be well aware of what she's done for our state:
1. Why did she not win the primary outright with a majority of 51% or more?
2. Why did she win her run-off with only a 4-point majority?
3. If she had done that much for the citizens of Arkansas, why was it necessary for the "out of Arkansas" corporations to pour multi-millions into her campaign?
4. If she had done so much for Arkansas, why was her campaign not on what she had done for Arkansas instead of on how opposed she was to the "big unions" that backed Bill Halter? Are we to assume that the working people who constitute those unions have harmed Arkansas more than the corporations who supported her, or that those working people stand to gain more from Halter's election than the corporations and capitalists do from hers?
5. If Ms Lincoln is really all that much "for Arkansas," please articulate her record of achievements for the citizens of this state.
Bubba,
Her corporate contributors' were quite aware that the derivatives restrictions existence is measured in hours, maybe days, or weeks, but that the death certificate for them has already been written and signed by 'Blank' and other members of the conference committee.
'Blank's problem now is convincing those same contributers and groups like the Chamber of Commerce that she's a better more honest politician than Boozman.
"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
Simon Cameron US financier & politician (1799 - 1889)
That may be somewhat difficult to do while she tries to convince the Halter voters that she is not just a DINO, but then maybe that technique of speaking from both sides of her mouth simultaneously is what endears her to the corporate contributers. I don't know that there is enough money to change the opinions of many of the Halter voters. Convincing them will require more than just "a lick and a promise."
In any case, she can contemplate what's next in comfort at home in Arlington, VA while she ostensibly prepares for the Senate Farm Bill Hearings June 30th. She's probably just resting with her family from the exhausting run-off. . . there at home.
P.S. I doubt the demozette or other news will carry it, but I suspect she'll be in VA in the morning or Friday.
No comments on Blanche’s win coming from Republicans?
“Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.” Pyrrhus
Nah. She's basically one of us.
All we're going to do in November is change the pronoun and remove the "basically."
Nothing much more to get excited about.
The ghost of DC Morrison was in this runoff. I voted for Morrison the first time, and Blanche the second. I'd rather have a Walton paid for senator (Blanche), than a union paid for senator (Halter). She's still in it to win, so now what will Blanch do?
Because somebody on Facebook is poorly informed. The deadline has passed for independent candidates.
Blanche Lincoln had the backing of former President Clinton, and that's why she won. The Obama endorsement might have helped in black and liberal areas, but I didn't hear much about it until after the election. Although Bill Halter has been Junior Governor for close to 4 years, does anyone really know what he stands for - other than himself and the jumping on the lottery bandwagon?
He is Roman Catholic and attends the Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock. Does he share the values of the Catholic church with respect to abortion, gay marriage, gay adoption, illegal immigrants, and so forth.
Well, this woman didn't vote for Lincoln. I remember meeting her 8 or 9 years ago and I told her then not to forget the Democrats. She ticked me off forever when she voted for the 2005 bankruptcy bill. I'll hold my nose and vote for her in November but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.
I see that you agree she was a sacrificial lamb
in order to elect “God’s little shield” Boozman.
“You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle
is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.” W. Somerset Maugham
I searched, but couldn't find the actual comment from my ol' buddy, and classmate, Frank Wallis. But I assume he was referring to how well Halter might be known outside of Arkansas. Really, until he forced the runoff, I doubt that there were a handfull of folks outside the state, who'd heard his name. For me, it was the stupid football commercials that almost persuaded me to pull the trigger for Blanche, but I figure all the noisy nutbags on the right have to be balanced by some equally rabid folk on the left - else the scales tip...again. It's like a job. Truthfully, I'd like to have somebody more like Michael Moore, but I'll take what I can get. Now, with Halter's defeat, I'll have to go with ol' Blanche, teetering there on the middle of the balance, while I wait for somebody better to come along. At least she doesn't, officially" have an "R" beside her name.
I'm a woman and I can't stand Blanche Lincoln.
I could care less about my representatives sex, they just need to get sh*t done. Don't send jobs overseas, don't lobby on behalf of millionaires and billionaires, lobby for health care FOR ALL (not just the rich and those that can afford their health insurance premiums + deductibles,) etc. You get where I'm going with this, right?
I'll be voting Green.
I believe the Supreme Court gave us W in 2000 and the purging of people off voter rolls in Florida.
Have you not seen Democracy Hacked?
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