A lot of beltway pundits have said a lot of stupid beltway things about the result of the Arkansas senate runoff between Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter. But at least a couple of outsider analysts have the right take. First is Ari Melber, who works for the Nation but also has a monthly column in the Politico. It's really worth reading his newest piece in full, but here's a good excerpt:
Take the senior administration aide who called Politico's Ben Smith on Wednesday morning, eager to declare that unions ""flushed"" ten million down the toilet in a ""pointless"" primary. That public servant is either disingenuous or clueless.
"If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country,"the aide said, "that could have made a real difference in November."
This criticism misreads the entire insurgency on the left - and may cause more heartburn in November.
President Barack Obama's political team can wish that its base was focused on defending a governing majority. But labor has joined cause with anti-establishment, liberal groups that believe changing the membership of the party's congressional majority is as important as growing it.
After watching Democratic incumbents freeze out a litany of progressive proposals, from the famous public option to the Employee Free Choice Act - which Democratic politicians have decided to support through speeches, not floor votes - some allies are wising up.
Greg Sargent is on the money as well:
For labor, not doing anything was tantamount to losing. Blanche Lincoln is terrible on issues important to labor. As long as she remains in the Senate, unions lose.
Yes, labor dumped $10 million on the effort. But they, you know, almost won. If anything, the closeness of the contest -- recall that Halter forced Lincoln into a runoff three weeks ago -- underscored that labor was right to undertake this effort. And putting aside that $10 million, unions are in some ways in a better position than they were before: It's a simple fact that other Dems will think longer and harder before crossing labor on issues that are dealbreakers for them.
If labor had never entered this race at all, they'd still be in a losing position with Lincoln in the Senate. This is an unbearably simple and obvious point, but the only way for labor to reverse this situation was to try to replace her with someone better on their issues. They couldn't do this, of course, without running the risk of losing. Doing nothing would have amounted to a loss, anyway -- with no chance of ever winning. They were absolutely right to give it a shot. The alternative was much worse.
I'll add a final thought, which is that for all the claims that DC loves to play the "expectations game," the only thing that beltway bobbleheads understand is winning and losing. Smart baseball analysts know that good teams don't win many close games - they win a lot of blowouts, because narrow wins are more a product of luck than skill. But in the cloistered minds of most tradmed pundits, only the won-lost record matters: you win, you're golden, you lose, you suck - no matter how close the margin. This, of course, is foolish, and the establishment ignores Lincoln's tight escape at its peril. |
