Blanche Lincoln decided to appeal to the middle of the road (as she saw it). She decided to oppose a public option to the point of pledging to filibuster the Affordable Care Act in order to get it removed. She repeatedly went to the right to try to sure up some support from the right and or middle. According to common wisdom in the Washington Democratic Party, that should have worked in a place like Arkansas where Democrats control the state, but it tends to be more conservative.
Well, I have some bad news.
Blanche Lincoln lost by 21 points.
Did her centrist positions, her standing up against Obama from the right, her attempt to have it both ways impress voters? No.
Did her indecisive and wobbly way of not fighting for Democrats encourage them to turn out for her? No. Independents? No. Republicans? No.
No no no, she went down like someone sunk her battleship. And don't try blaming it on the Democratic Primary, the polls show that she was sunk before that even started.
http://bluearkansasblog.com/...
Very clearly, Lincoln was going to lose before any challenge formed as she was behind by 20 to 30 points before Halter challenged her.
In fact, it was a large part of our argument in challenging her that she was going to lose anyway. The polls reflected that.
Rather than try to make some huge argument about what this means, I will point out that this is simply one example of one political fight in one state during one election. It is inappropriate to extrapolate a single race to mean something as a generalization for all of American politics through all time and all places. This example simply shows this fallacy in another diary.