It was a big week in Arkansas, and for progressives, as Bill Halter launched the biggest primary challenge since the Joe Lieberman/Ned Lamont battle in 2006. Yup, it's been four years since we've engaged this heavily in a primary. And there were good reasons why the Netroots jumped aboard, with over $1.1 million for Halter in a single week (most of that in the first 48 hours):
Why
- Opportunity: There has been a handful of Democrats who did the bidding of the insurance companies, doing their best to kill meaningful health care reform: Max Baucus of Montana, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. While these four certainly got assists from the likes of Kent Conrad and Evan Bayh, it was those first four who did the heavy lifting. And of those four, just one is up for reelection: Lincoln.
- Accountability: Progressives don't have the money to compete against moneyed corporatist interests, and that disparity will only worsen with Citizens United allowing corporations to directly engage in political campaigns with virtually no restrictions. So if we can't buy politicians like the lobbyists and Wal-Mart have, then how can we hold them accountable to the voters? By playing in primaries.
We have to put the fear of god into elected Democrats, making them think twice before straying too far from the party's core principles. Currently, there is no retribution for disloyalty. Heck, Joe Lieberman got a standing ovation and a kiss from Blanche Lincoln when he came back to Congress in 2009 -- after he spent all of 2008 campaigning with John McCain and keynoting the Republican National Convention.
Take out Lincoln, and Democrats will begin to understand that there could be hell to pay for abandoning those core principles. They'll learn that their party's establishment, so eager to protect incumbents at all costs, won't be able to prop them up. They'll learn what former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine learned -- that Obama himself can't rescue them in time of electoral distress (a lesson also learned by Creigh Deeds in Virginia). They'll learn that if they choose their corporate benefactors over their constituents, someone will fight to hold them accountable.
Incumbents value reelection above all else. Their behavior will have to change if they want to avoid primary challenges.
- Coalition Building: I can't recall the last time a sitting incumbent Democrat faced the combined wrath of the netroots, labor and environmental movements. We netrooters have been going after incumbent Democrats for half a decade. It's now nice to see the big progressive orgs engage in the primary strategy. For labor, it was clearly Lincoln's flip flop on card check -- something she supposedly supported the last Congress when she knew it had zero chance of passing. But when Democrats hit 60 votes in the Senate, Lincoln took that call from Wal-Mart, got her marching orders, and dutifully turned her back on organized labor. They have responded with a $4 million commitment to the race, and counting.
For the environmentalists, it was obviously Lincoln's sudden embrace of the Murwkoski Amendment, which seeks to gut the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases. And for us? Health Care Reform was a key impetus, but as we seek better Democrats, this opportunity was too important to pass up.
- Raising the Senate's IQ: We can talk about Bill Halter's intellectual cred -- graduated valedictorian of his high school, graduated from Stanford with honors, was a Rhodes Scholar, blah blah blah. I'm going to focus on Lincoln's stupidity instead. Here's a senator with an approval rating in the 20s. We're used to seeing governors with those kinds of numbers, since they are accountable for how well or poorly their states do. But senators? I've certainly never seen numbers that bad absent scandal. Thus, Lincoln is so stupid, she has somehow managed to piss off her entire state. The more she opens her yap, the lower the numbers.
She ran against the DFH, pissing off the progressive base. But somehow, she managed to do it in a way that also pissed off independents (who appear disgusted at her grandstanding), and conservatives, who will never give her any props for anything. She could throw a shoe at Obama's head tomorrow, and it would do zero for her popularity among Republican voters. Yet she thinks that adopting teabagger positions will somehow generate goodwill among that crowd. Instead, they smell fear and weakness, and they're pouncing. And Lincoln, apparently unaware that her every move is backfiring, shows no sign of relenting.
Her first ad of the primary showed just how stupid she is, bragging about how she blocked health care reform and cap and trade, and how pissed off Democrats were with her. She apparently has no inkling that a primary and a general election are not the same thing.
- Electability: Quite simply, Blanche Lincoln won't be in the Senate in 2011. The only question is whether we can field a more electable candidate for the general, or she gets the nomination and kills our chances in the state. As noted above, her favorabilities are in the 20s. She is polling in the 30s against her various GOP rivals. She is DOA.
While Halter isn't currently running much stronger in the general, he's an unknown factor. He's not a DC incumbent like Lincoln and the likely GOP nominee -- entrenched Rep. John Boozman. This is a year in which an outsider populist message will play well, and the only Democrat able to deliver it will be Halter.
It'll be a tough election in the fall, no doubt. Halter would likely enter the general as the underdog. But at least with him, we have a fighting chance. With Lincoln, we might as well chalk Arkansas up as a Republican pickup.
The first week
- Initial Imapact: There's no doubt that Halter's entrance into the race shook the political world. The netroots has responded big time, led by the fundraising powerhouse MoveOn. As of this writing, Halter had raised, via ActBlue or MoveOn, $1,149,752. Halter has told media that his average donation is $29, which would meant that nearly 40,000 people have given to the campaign via those two netroots organs. This, of course, doesn't include Halter's direct fundraising, via his website, and any additional traditional fundraising he might be doing.
As mentioned, Labor has already committed $4 million to the race, with more sure to come. And Halter was the darling of both Arkansas and national media. Progressives are fired up.
- The Lincoln response: The Lincoln campaign has had a two-pronged approach to their counter-attack. First they claim that Halter is a carpetbagging LIIIIIBERAL, because he went to school and worked in Silicon Valley, and all his supporters are crazy liberals! They tried that line of attack in 2006 when he ran for Lt. Governor, and it had little traction then. I'm not sure why they think it'll work this time. And look at who that liberal (socialist!) Barack Obama is supporting and fundraising for! Hint: it ain't Halter. Of course, once you start talking about your opponent's donors, you open yourself up to attacks about yours -- 61 percent of Lincoln's money is from out of state, including big pots from D.C. and NYC, and her average donation is $1,500. It ain't regular Joes forking over a cool grand and a half for the benefit of Blanche's reelection effort...
The second line of attack is that he's actually not that liberal. Yeah, it contradicts the first line of attack, but shut up. See the part above about Lincoln being stupid.
The reason for the "Halter isn't really liberal" stuff is to wedge the insurgent from his progressive donor base, and it has manifested in attacks like this pathetic one claiming that Halter was all over the place on the public option, when he was singularly focused on "medicare buy-in" as a solution to the problem. They tried to wedge labor away by attacking his business success. You get the picture.
Halter, outsider: Halter is hated in Arkansas political circles. Hated. See this quote from Rep. Marion Berry:
"I don't know anybody that cares what Bill Halter is going to do except Bill Halter," [Rep. Marion] Berry said in an interview Thursday morning. "He is only of consequence in his own mind." [...]
Berry said a run against Lincoln "would probably be the end of Halter's political career in Arkansas because he'll get beat and that will be the end of it."
"He's pretty much exhausted his ability to raise money in Arkansas," Berry said. "It was kind of fluke he got elected to lieutenant governor's office" in 2006.
Halter ran an outsider campaign for Lt. Governor, which infuriated the Little Rock establishment, and they can't get past seeing Halter as anything but a fluke. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he has zero friends in that world. Watch Lincoln traipse around Arkansas picking up scads of endorsements from local elected officials, mayors, and anyone else tied in to the state's Democratic machine. Lincoln thinks it'll help her. It won't. Incumbents are a hated creature right now, and it's amazing how the Lincoln camp is apparently unawares of that sentiment.
- Halter and the issues: It's clear that the $1.1 million raised by the netroots was an anti-Lincoln $1.1 million. Halter himself has launched with a decidedly local approach, stressing his stint as acting head of the Social Security Administration (yawn) and his scholarship lottery, that whatever its merits, is pretty irrelevant nationwide. His answer on the public option ("medicare for all") has been stellar, probably the highlight of his policy responses. The card check answer, on the other hand, is terrible. While a simple "Yes, I support it", would seem to suffice, he instead has gone on and on about how there's a compromise solution that he could support because we're beyond card check yadda yadda yadda. Whatever, keep it short dude. The longer he goes on, the more Blue Doggie he looks, and it's clear that his hedging has turned off many potential supporters, at least here on Daily Kos.
But while he may be clumsy about it at times, one can sense his strategy: deflect on controversial topics, and instead focus on the values he supports. So when talking about card check, he eventually pivots to talk about making it easier for employees to organize, while protecting them from undue employer harassment.
While it's clear Halter would be a huge step up from Lincoln, the challenger must walk a tight rope -- between providing the red meat that would take his national standing to the next level, while remaining competitive with the Arkansas electorate -- an increasingly conservative bunch. This tightrope, which manifests in his "hedging", will turn off lots of potential national donors, no doubt. He's also made the decision to not criticize Lincoln directly. There may be valid strategic considerations for that move, but it won't help his national fundraising. And as noted above, he lacks the surrogates to deliver the attacks for him.
Still, that doesn't mean Halter couldn't be more full-throated populist. And he could build some confidence by coming out in favor of filibuster reform. That way, it doesn't matter if he's not with us on certain key issues, so long as he doesn't make common cause with Republicans to block the progressive agenda. Given the growing momentum toward filibuster reform among Democrats, it's the kind of issue that could provide progressives further incentive to join the tens of thousands who have already joined the effort to rid the Senate of Lincoln.
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Update: Here's a local-ish diary about the race.