John Brummett, of the Arkansas News, on his early vote:
It turns out that I need to bring you up to date on how I voted, only because I related in a column some weeks back that I’d told a pollster I was voting, with nose held ever more tightly, for U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
Discerning readers probably sensed what was happening over the last few weeks. I have related repeatedly — ad nauseum, some say — my festering disenchantment with Lincoln’s cynically dishonest campaign.
In the end I simply could not reward her campaign with a vote.
Lincoln has persisted in vile mailers falsely accusing Bill Halter of out-sourcing jobs and wanting to harm Social Security when all he did was sit on a board of a company that placed a tiny percentage of newly created jobs in India and acknowledge a debate questioner’s premise that we need responsible spending increases and benefits cuts to make Social Security work in the long run.
Another mailer, this one creepy, smeared Halter as a participant in “shady drug deals.”
Lincoln’s excuse is that she’s taken special interest hits for two years over health care and labor issues, and is entitled to fight back.
She certainly is. But the better way — better than exploitation and misrepresentation — is called rapid response. The better tack is counter-punching.
You vigorously defend yourself and scoff at your attackers. You call their hand by making the election a referendum on you, a choice between what they say about you and what you say back in confident, authoritative defense of yourself.
But Lincoln obviously has not been confident enough in herself to call for that referendum.
She has pandered to some voters by distancing herself from Barack Obama and to others by embracing the president. She apparently assumes that neither of these groups is smart enough to see what she’s doing. That is to say she insults us.
She moved left on financial reform only for electoral purposes and then, according to a national business publication, had to rely on a more vigorous and committed colleague, Maria Cantwell of Washington, for defense of her new-found liberal position at a Senate Democratic caucus meeting.
Lincoln feigns liberalism on financial reform in Washington while a mysterious Republican group runs ads in her behalf attacking Halter.
Why would a Republican group back her now with John Boozman waiting for November? Is it that she’s approximately as good a Republican investment as Boozman? Or is that Republicans fear the outsider message of Halter?
So I went with Halter, who is smarter, supremely competent, superbly qualified by academic and work experience and perhaps more progressive.
This election is next Tuesday. Let's all help Arkansas Democrats choose the better, more electable Democrat in Bill Halter:
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