I could see an argument for deploying challengers wherever you can find them just to throw the fear of God into Democrats in Congress. Perhaps the fact that Lincoln is almost certain to lose makes her an especially good target. There was a scene in “The Untouchables” where a federal agent, played by Sean Connery, is trying unsuccessfully to get one of Al Capone’s hireling to talk. So he goes outside the room, picks up the corpse of one of the bad guys, starts interrogating him as if he’s still alive, and then shoots him. The bad guy inside the room, unaware that the colleague that Connery shot was already dead, immediately becomes terrified and starts blabbing.[...]

If you’re not following my analogy, the progressives are Sean Connery and the corpse is Blanche Lincoln. If you’re going to make an example out of somebody, why not pick somebody who’s already (politically) dead? Or so the logic might go.

That’s pretty much the way I’d look at it. Lincoln is almost certainly going to lose anyway, so even if Halter is too liberal for the state, you’re not actually losing anything; the Republican candidate comes out on top either way. And it’s not as though Lincoln is a model Democrat. Yes she voted for the ACA, but she watered it down quite a bit as part of a bloc of conservative Senate Democrats, she flip-flopped on EFCA as soon as Democrats got 60 seats in the Senate, and as the Senator from Wal-Mart and Tyson, she’s not exactly hostile to corporate interests. And for what? Pretty much anyone could have told you she was going to lose her seat no matter what, so if she wanted to, she could have been a solid vote for the Democratic agenda.

There’s a bit of an incentives issue here too. If progressive groups look at Senators seeking re-election from states like Arkansas and give them the freedom to do whatever they have to do to get re-elected, there’s nothing stopping them from running as far right as they can. On the other hand, if they think they have to worry about primary campaigns as well as general election campaigns, that goes a long way towards keeping them on the reservation. And if they’re going to lose their seat anyway, then from a national standpoint you want to get something out of them on their way out, namely their vote on the party’s agenda while they’re still holding the seat.

Technorati Tags: Blanche Lincoln

Here, in a minimalist nutshell, is why Crist will lose to Rubio in a Republican primary:
If someone told you that Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, was going to leave the Republican Party to become an independent, would you believe them? Would you believe it about Marco Rubio? No. If you knew anything at all about politics, or anything about Rubio and Dinerstein, you would dismiss out of hand such a ridiculous report as not being credible and just another silly political rumor.

So tell me, do you believe it is possible that Crist will leave the Republican Party to run as an independent?

You do, don’t you?

And that is why Crist will lose to Rubio.

So what we basically have is someone who supports Rubio, or at least clearly doesn’t like Crist, and who also thinks that the GOP primary electorate’s ability to imagine Crist leaving the party will be a huge liability for Crist, spreading anonymously sourced tips that Crist is getting ready to leave the GOP. The self-serving nature of the claim is transparent, and leaves me skeptical, unless Fumari wants to disclose his sources and they confirm.

This isn’t to say that Crist won’t run as an independent, and certainly not that he shouldn’t. I basically agree that it’s impossible to see Crist beating Rubio in a Republican primary at this point, so if Crist really wants to be a Senator, his only chance to do so is by running as an independent and crafting an electoral coalition of Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans. I’m just saying that this particular “report” is a little too transparently biased and self-serving for my tastes, and I’m not sure I can believe it.

Technorati Tags: Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio

I don’t have a whole lot of original things to say about the news that Evan Bayh is going to retire rather than seek re-election this year. Yes Bayh was facing a tougher challenger than he’s used to, but Coats is a flawed candidate, and given Bayh’s stature in the state I have a hard time imagining him losing to Coats, even in a Republican year. And in any event, I don’t think Bayh would retire rather than face a difficult election. Rather, I think the most cynical answer is also the most obviously correct one; realizing that he’s never going to be President, Bayh simply has no interest in government anymore. He doesn’t particularly care for the rigors of being a member of Congress, especially one with so little institutional clout. He’s always wanted to be President, but unfortunately for him he never realized that positioning yourself as far away from your party’s national median voter isn’t a good way to do that. To say nothing of routinely insulting your own party. And in quintessential Bayh fashion, he lashed out at the party who denied him a chance at the Presidency by announcin his retirement a day before the deadline to file for the state primary, more or less guaranteeing they won’t have a chance to hold the seat. Stay classy Evan.

As for Bayh’s legacy, well, what can you say about the guy?  He spent a lot of time talking about the deficit, while favoring a lot of budget policies like the Iraq war and large tax cuts (he was especially disdainful of the estate tax). In 12 years of being in the Senate he managed to go without a single major accomplishment, even though he was regularly close to the chamber’s pivot point. I think Matt has exactly the right way of looking at it; Bayh spent his formative years watching his dad be a truly dedicated Senator working dilligently on policy issues and amassing a record of legislative accomplishments, only to have it ultimately come back to cost him his seat, losing to Dan Quayle of all people. Evan clearly concluded that the way to go about life as a Senator was to do nothing more than rhetorically positioning yourself in the middle of every debate while echoing the favored platitudes of Washington Post editorial writers. And to some extent it worked; Bayh was always presented as a Congressional centrist, made lots of Sunday show appearances, and was beloved by the Washington Post. But it had a downside as well, alienating him from his national party, more or less eliminating any chance he had of ever becoming more than a marginal Senator from a red state. And now, he’s leaving the Senate after serving fewer terms than his father, so in the end, although if he weren’t so clearly disinterested in it all it’s possible he could have had more.

In the end, however, I imagine Evan will wind up as little more than a historical footnote in his father’s biography, and future generations of political scientists and observers will note that Birch Bayh was such a respected political figure with such a force of reputation that his coattails even managed to create a political career for his useless, vapid son. And a fitting legacy (for Evan), it will be. Good-riddance.

Technorati Tags: Evan Bayh

I haven’t had much to say about the race for Ted Kennedy’s seat, because, frankly, I haven’t really known what to make of it. I wasn’t a big fan of Coakley’s originally; beyond the fact that she has a somewhat troubling record as a prosecutor, she was also easily identifiable as a poor campaigner, and also lacks significant legislative appearance, or any history with any major national issues she’ll be tasked with making policy on. Coakley’s nomination is a good example of why I’m not a huge fan of special elections; hasitly throwin together a contest with little time for candidates to prepare for it and, especially, campaign, with very few voters actively paying attention to what’s going on almost always produces a contest where the candidate with the highest initial name recognition wins, especially in the primary. Especially where Senate seats are concerned that seems like a problem to me.

But do I think Coakley might actually lose this race? Well, I guess anything is possible, but I’m still pretty suspicious. Enthusiasm gap or not, Massachusetts is still an overwhelmingly Democratic state. It’s so Democratic, it doesn’t have a single Republican in its entire Congressional delegation. And healthcare reform is pretty broadly popular there, which makes Brown’s decision to campaign almost exclusively around blocking healthcare reform somewhat odd. And now, Nate Silver confirms a suspicion I’ve had for awhile, that pollsters generally understate a party’s advantage in states that overwhelmingly favor them.

Anything can happen in a special election, of course. Still, I think at the end of the day, Massachusetts is going to remain as blue as it has been, and I don’t think the teabaggers are going to score a major win in one of the country’s most liberal states.

Technorati Tags: Martha Coakley, Massachusetts, Senate

Technorati Tags: Chris Dodd

I know I’m a broken record on this subject, but I do think it’s the thing most lacking from the insider conversations on HCR. Not that I really know, because I’m not an insider, but occasionally I get a wee sense of what’s actually occupying staffers in various places. “Voters liking this thing” seems to be at best an afterthought.

It’s sorta weird, really, because on most subjects it’s the first thing they think of, both about the policy itself and the myriad imaginary attack ads that can be run based on the policy. If voters don’t like this thing, it’ll likely be repealed before most of it even takes effect, either because Republicans take over or because frightened members of a Dem controlled Congress do so.

First of all, I think it should be said that the idea that a healthcare reform bill would be reformed is pretty fantasical. For one thing, Republicans would have to regain control of the White House, Senate, and House at once again. For another, they’d have to overcome the filibuster. And given that red state Democrats are the most likely to lose their seats in the near term, the Democratic Senators most friendly to repeal likely won’t be around to vote for it.

But beyond that, this idea that Democrats should be worried that the healthcare bill they pass will be unpopular and shouldn’t vote for anything that might cost them votes just seems bizarre to me, in large part because I simply can’t imagine a healthcare bill that’s popular with the marginal voter in the short term. The simple fact is that any healthcare bill worth passing is going to help the disadvantaged, whether it’s sick people or poor people, and passing legislation to help disadvantaged people simply isn’t good for short term popularity in this country. Among other things, banning discrimination against pre-existing conditions will probably increase the costs of premiums, as insurance companies are forced to cover people who are more costly to cover. Whether that’s popular depends on how willing the average person is to pay a higher premium price in exchange for not screwing over sick people. Perhaps Atrios has a more charitable view of Americans than I do, but from what I can see, one can never go wrong betting that Americans are perfectly happy giving a short stick to the poor or otherwise disadvantaged if it saves them a buck. With that in mind, progressives ought to be more concerned with how much a healthcare reform bill helps the people who need help than how many seats it might cost Democrats in 2010, or 2012, or 2014, because until we get a major change in the median view on social welfare spending that primarily benefits poor people in this country, passing any truly progressive legislation is going to require a willingness to incur short term political loss.

I’d certainly have to say that the most interesting deveopment of the past few days was Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), currently chairing the NRSC, telling NPR that Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist was “terrible.” That marks the first time a high profile, demonstratablu conservative Republican has criticized either since Obama took office, so far as I’m aware.

Digby thinks this is just so much kabuki, but as I said in comments, a wider reading doesn’t really seem to support that. For one thing, Cornyn’s job is to win elections for Senate Republicans, a role that requires him to be somewhat more in touch with electoral reality than your average wingnut. That’s not to say Cornyn isn’t as bad as anyone from a policy standpoint, but he does realize that it’s going to be very hard for Republicans to regain majority status if they drive their support amongst Latino voters down to the levels they get from African-Americans. And given that he comes from a state with a hefty Hispanic population himself, there might even be a bit of self-preservation going on. Cornyn also pissed of the Redstaters by endorsing Charlie Crist in Florida, and offering to go to bat for Arlen Specter in a Republican primary, until Arlen switched parties. So he’s showing some inclination to sleight the base when it’s obviously better for the GOP’s electral prospects. And he’s pronouncing her name correctly.

On the other hand, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is still articulating the rationale for a filibuster of Sotomayor, which makes no sense. Ultimately, Republicans just aren’t going to have the votes to filibuster an obviously qualified nominee, which means that they’re going to look foolish for even talking about it, and alienate Latino voters for nothing. But then, no one ever accused them of being rational did they?

Technorati Tags: Sonia Sotomayor