Mike Lux has been one of the more unsparing critics of what he terms “the culture of caution” among Democratic Party leadership and the way it dims Dems’ electoral prospects. But in his Open Left post, “Thank You Republicans,” Lux nonetheless sees hope for Dems in 2010.

The good news, however, is that Republicans seem hell bent on saving us from electoral defeat by a dumbness that just seems built into their DNA: continually showing the American people how extremely right-wing they are. This will still be a hellishly tough election for Democrats to do well in, but the Republicans are at least keeping us in the game.
Their incumbent Governor of Texas is thinking about seceding. Their Senate candidates for highly targeted races like Nevada and Kentucky don’t like Social Security, Medicare, or Civil rights laws. The guy who would become the chair of the energy committee in the House, backed up by the Republican study group and many other Republican leaders, apologizes to BP. The man who would be the Republican Speaker of the House wants to raise the retirement age for Social Security to 70 years old, and considers the financial meltdown of 2008 and the resulting loss of several million jobs to be as trivial as an ant. The anti-immigrant nativists in Arizona are stirring up Hispanic voters. In successive Supreme Court nominations, Republicans in the course of playing to their base, insult first Latinos and now blacks by attacking civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall. Every one of these things, when voters are reminded that Republicans are saying them, will be repulsive to both swing and Democratic base voters.

A lot of high-profile Republican candidates of 2010 have some ‘splainin’ to do for their imprudent pronouncements. Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Joe Barton, Meg Whitman are just a few names that come to mind. And, despite the historical precedent of the party that holds the white house losing seats in their first midterm elections, Dems have a crop of exceptionally-solid candidates in high profile contests. In this context, a series of Dem campaign ads depicting the more clownish GOP statements, followed by a “Sober policies and serious leaders are needed for tough times” message might get some traction.
GOP follies notwithstanding, Dems could still lose control of both houses, if we fail to seize the opportunity. As Lux says:

It remains imperative for Democrats to embrace taking on the deep and persuasive corporate corruption of Washington. It is not enough to remind people how kooky the Republicans have become, Democrats have to become fierce advocates for change and reform, for a government that isn’t in thrall to the banks and BP and the insurance companies. When they do that, the contrast with the ever more extremist pro-corporate all the time Republicans becomes ever clearer.

As Lux concludes, “…Now the Democrats need to be bold enough and tough enough to take advantage of the gifts they have been given.”

Rhodes Cook, senior columnist at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, has some encouraging observations for Democratic candidates’ mid term prospects. Cook sees 2010 Dems in much better shape relative to the 1994 disaster. First, it’s about exposure, says Cook:

Fully half of the Democratic seats in that strongly anti-incumbent, anti-Democratic election 16 years ago were in districts that had voted for the Republican presidential ticket in one or both of the previous two presidential elections. This time, just one third of Democratic seats are in similarly problematic territory.
It is an important distinction since the vast majority of House seats that the Democrats lost in 1994 – 48 of 56, to be precise – were in “Red” or “Purple” districts. And this year, the Democrats have fewer of such districts to defend…The number of “Blue” districts they hold has risen by 43, from 128 in 1994 to 171 today, while the number of “Purple” districts they must defend has dropped by 39 (from 77 to 38). Meanwhile, the total of “Red” districts occupied by House Democrats is down this year by four from 1994 (from 51 to 47).

Even in 1994, notes Cook, “House Democrats ran very well in “Blue” districts that year. They lost barely 5% of those that voted for the party’s candidate in the previous two presidential elections.” If that pattern holds in November, Dems should keep their House majority.
Second, Cook sees Dems as “a more cohesive, top-down party than they were in 1994,” and adds,

Now, the Democrats have the look of a much stronger party. They are coming off a string of five consecutive presidential elections since 1992 in which their candidate has swept at least 180 districts each time. The byproduct of this consistent top of the ticket success has been the creation of more hospitable “blue” districts for House Democrats than their colleagues enjoyed in 1994.

Third, Cook finds encouragement for Dems in the House “special elections”:

But in recent decades, if a “big wave” election was brewing, there were signs of it in the special House elections that preceded the fall voting. That was the case in early 1974, when Democrat John Murtha scored a special election victory for a Republican seat in western Pennsylvania that proved a precursor of huge gains for his party that fall.
It was also the case in early 1994, when Republicans picked up a pair of Democratic seats in Kentucky and Oklahoma. And it was the case again in early 2008, when Democrats peeled off a trio of Republican seats in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi.
This election cycle, Republican Scott Brown has already scored a conspicuous special Senate election win in Massachusetts. But Republicans have been unable to post a similar high-profile breakthrough on the House side in spite of a handful of opportunities.
To be sure, Republicans did pick up a previously Democratic seat May 22 in Hawaii, where the incumbent had resigned to focus on his campaign for governor. But the victory by Republican Charles Djou was clearly a fluke. In a district that Obama had carried in 2008 with 70% of the vote, Djou prevailed with less than 40% as two major Democratic candidates divided the bulk of the remaining votes. There was no provision for a runoff election.
Much more noteworthy have been the special elections held over the last year in a trio of “Purple” districts. Republicans were unable to win any of them. Two were in upstate New York, the other Murtha’s seat in southwest Pennsylvania.
A GOP victory in the latter contest on May 18 would have been a loud reminder of 1974 – rekindling memories of how Murtha’s special election victory served as a harbinger of his party’s great success that fall.
That the vote last month was a loss for the Republicans, though, underscored the opposite – that winning a House majority this year might not be nearly as easy for the GOP as many political observers have predicted.

As Cook concludes, “…There are plenty of targets for the Republicans this fall. But there are not as many ripe ones as was the case in 1994.”

I’m liking the DNC’s just-launched ‘Accountability Project.’ It’s a gutsy idea, creating a video bank of Republican gaffes, which can be tapped for mash-ups by gonzo vj’s. This is another good sign that the Democratic party is shifting gears into more of an attack mode. The idea is not only to capture GOP gaffes, but also to encourage and support the making of political ads/video clips attacking Republicans by anyone who wants to try. Here’s how the Accountability Project explains it’s purpose on its new web page, which already has a few great clips:

For too long, our politics has been poisoned with misinformation, lies and double-speak. The most powerful way to combat these tactics is to drag them into the light of public scrutiny.
The Accountability Project is a volunteer platform to document Republican candidates and their public statements at local events, as well as their campaign tactics. The Accountability Project allows you to submit videos, recordings, and other items for publication online, so that candidates see that there’s a cost to their dishonesty.

Christina Bellantoni of Talking Points Memo explains it this way:

The Democratic National Committee today is launching a new effort to allow citizens on their side “keep track” of Republican candidates on every ballot nationwide, in hopes of a voter capturing a so-called “macaca moment.” The DNC’s latest effort to influence the midterm elections, called the Accountability Project, will act as a database of campaign events and, Democrats hope, every gaffe, goof and outlandish policy position.
The task: take a camera to a political event and “hold Republicans accountable for misleading claims, lies, and unseemly behavior,” the DNC says. The site will allow for uploads but also provide clips for download so voters can make their own mashups or ads.

Up till now, Dems have been a little too casual about documenting and using myriad GOP gaffes and their lamer policy statements — we use stuff that the MSM happened to tape and share, allowing them to be our first line editor. No more. From now on, Dems will more pro-actively seek out Republicans talking and otherwise behaving badly and make them answer for it.
More squeamish Dems may wince at the inevitable comparison to ‘gotcha’ journalism. But we are not talking entrapment set-ups here, of the sort that Republicans roundly applauded when the pimped-out young Republican toppled ACORN with his phony scam and was hailed as a GOP hero. Instead, the Accountability Project will film Republicans in their natural habitat, doing what they do best — paranoid bellowing at tea party demos, groveling at the feet of oil barons, snarling about immigrant workers hired by their contributors etc. Think Trent Lott, George Allen, Rand Paul, Joe Barton and the like tracked by progressive VJ’s. The possibilities are limitless.
Let a thousand YouTubes bloom.

They’re talking class warfare out in the Golden State, or at least Anthony York is, in his ‘PolitiCal’ blog at the L.A. Times. York spotlights a new ad (see below) from California Working Families entitled “Whitman’s World, which portrays the Republican gubernatorial nominee, not without reason, as a fat-cat jet-setter, who stashes her wealth in an off-shore tax haven. Here’s York’s take:

In the third ad released by California Working Families 2010, the group tries to make the connection between Whitman’s personal penchant for private jets and her economic policies for the state. The ad derisively describes “Whitman’s world,” — a place with “tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, but nothing for the middle class.”

Whitman has net worth in the ballpark of $1.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine. She is said the be the 4th richest woman in CA, coming from a background of “multiple lines of great wealth & great connections,” according to Hannah Bell of Democratic Underground. Here’s the ad:

Read more…

Open Left‘s Mike Lux, always one of the more insightful progressive bloggers on Democratic strategy, has one of his most perceptive posts to date, cross-posted at HuffPo.
Lux. a member of the TDS editorial board, begins by conceding that better polls indicate that the GOP is dominating the framing battle leading up to the November elections, with the meme that “big government,” controlled by Democrats has become “overreaching and ineffective.” He then addresses one oft-proposed remedy, that Dems move to the right, and provides a thorough shredding of the strategy:

This was the path followed by a lot of Democrats in the 1994 and 2002 elections, when the national tide was clearly moving against us. They played defense, started voting with the Republicans a lot, and ran a lot of ads bragging on how much they (a) disagreed with Clinton (in ’94) or (b) agreed with Bush (in ’02). This strategy arguable could have saved a few, but mostly it was a flaming disaster. Of the 52 House members and 8 Senators who lost in 1994, most of them were ones who went with that I’m-a-lot-more-conservative-than-the-national-Dems strategy. And the 2002 candidates who went that direction fared even worse- the only competitive Senate races where Democrats won that year were Landrieu in LA and Tim Johnson in SD. While neither of them ran as flaming liberals, they survived mostly because they put unprecedented amounts of money and effort into turnout out minority communities (Native Americans in SD, African-Americans in LA) in their states.
There are multiple reasons the almost-a-Republican strategy tends not to work. First of all, you tend to depress your base vote even more than it is already depressed. The biggest single factor in 1994, 2002, and the big defeats Democrats have suffered so far this cycle in MA, NJ, and VA was that the electorate has so many fewer of the youth, unmarried women, and minority voters that tend to vote strongly Democrat. They just aren’t coming out to vote. A candidate who moves steadily to the right isn’t likely to motivate those voters to turn out.
Secondly, moving to the right reinforces the negative anti-Democratic dynamic in voters’ minds. If the Democrat sounds like a Republican, and no one is articulating a Democratic frame, it’s a big problem for a Democrat to convince voters- swing or base- why they shouldn’t just go for the real McCoy, a genuine Republican. If no one is making the case why Democratic principles and policies are good, the electorate will keep moving right. Leaving the playing field re the essential framing of the race is never a good idea.
Third, a strategy of walking away from the Democratic Party keeps a Democratic candidate on the defensive for the entire election. The whole narrative of the race becomes “have they walked away enough from Obama/the national party/health care/the stimulus” ad infinitum. I have been volunteering for, working for, or consulting for candidates for about 40 years now, and I have rarely seen a candidate win who was on the defensive for the whole election. I understand how candidates react when they feel besieged and under attack, that you want to pull back the drawbridge and go into a defensive crouch. But if you set up the frame for the entire election in that manner- that even though I’m running on the Democratic line, I’m really not as much of a Democrat as my opponent says I am- you are likely to lose. The candidate, and party, on offense is the one that wins the vast majority of the time.

The better strategy, argues Lux, is to “to go on offense, and to reset the frame in this election” and then he provides this insightful distinction:

…There is genuine anger out there, but it’s not only anger at government or the Democrats; it is anger at the big corporate interests who have messed up our economy and who seem to control our government. The swing voters who are disillusioned with government are in great part disillusioned with the fact that government seems to be in bed with big corporate special interests. And the disappointment with Democrats by both swing and base voters not very interested in showing up to vote is that the Democrats didn’t deliver on the change they promised: the big bankers got bailouts and bonuses while unemployment stayed high; there seemed to be no change in the corruption that allowed BP to drill a faulty well with no decent plan in case of a spill; deficits keep going up while government contractors keep getting rich and regular folks don’t seem to be getting much of the benefit.
I think Democrats should be honest in recognizing those feelings, and not try to pretend the Democratic Party has done everything right in taking on corporate special interests. The frame needs to be about not just taking on big corporations, but taking on corporate corruption of our government…

Lux characterizes the 2010 campaign as “a blame election,” adding,

…Voters are in a foul mood, and they are trying to decide who to blame- or to put it in a somewhat more constructive way, who to hold accountable. Right now, they are leaning heavily toward that being the Democrats, since they control government and government hasn’t delivered jobs or the change that was promised.

It’s a painful truth to accept. But Lux charts a hopeful course:

…To change that inclination in swing voters, and to motivate their own disaffected base, Democrats need to be very aggressive in framing the election about cleaning up the corporate corruption that permeates our government.
It might not work, but it’s got a lot better shot than the I’m-kind-of-a-Republican-even-though-I-am-running-on-the-Democratic-ballot-line strategy that failed so miserably in 1994 and 2002. DC pundits and NYTimes writers like Matt Bai don’t believe a message going after big corporations works in modern America, but I don’t think they talk to enough folks like the ones I grew up with in the working class Midwest. Yes, there is anger at government and the incumbents who people believe have failed them. There is a feeling of bitterness that both parties have failed to deliver, and so we may see a third election in a row where the President’s party gets hammered. But the anger at corporations, and corporation corruption of our government, also runs deep. And if Democrats are brave enough to be aggressive about taking that corruption on, they could reap the benefit.
The Democrats have one chance to get this right. If they stay on defense, or are too tentative in their message, they will get swamped. If they gamble and take on the mantle of cleaning up Washington’s corporate swamp, they have a chance at doing a lot better than anyone thinks.

I think Lux’s prescription is right on time. The BP oil spill is providing vivid, horrific and daily reminders of corporate corruption to an unprecedented extent. Republican office-holders are providing tone-deaf gifts to Democrats in the form of their expressions of sympathy with BP and there is ample documentation of corruption in the Mineral Management Service under President Bush. If Dems don’t make the most of this opportunity to dramatize the connection between Republicans and “Washington’s corporate swamp,” we can expect the worst outcome in November. It’s the difference between riding a wave of discontent and being crushed by it.

The bumper sticker above says it well, Big Oil’s Republican toady in the House of Reps could well become the next chairman of the House Committee charged with preventing horrific oil spills. Rep. Barton’s groveling was disgusting enough, punctuated as it was by his ridiculous retraction, which should indicate to his alert constituents that his principles are somewhat flaccid, to put it charitably. According to OpenSecrets.org, Barton received more dough from Oil and gas companies during the entire 1989-2010 election cycle than all other members of the House of Reps. (For an amusing graphic take on the sorry episode, check out Mike Luckovitch’s cartoon here).
In my decades of watching party politics, I don’t recall a more emblematic moment for the GOP. This is who they too often are — groveling lackeys for Big Oil in particular and Big Business in general, even though it insults the families of the workers who were killed in the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, the thousands who have lost their livelihood and turns a blind eye toward the massive destruction of wildlife and our natural heritage. That they tried to wash it away with a half-assed apology was predictable. Most Republicans are pretty clever about hiding their worst impulses, when corporate abuse becomes a major controversy — we don’t hear much from Dick Cheney, for example, on this topic. But every now and then the cover is inadvertently lifted.
Barton may get re-elected despite his screw-up, and he may or may not be removed from his ranking position as chair-in-waiting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But If thoughtful voters, not just in Barton’s district, but in every House district in the U.S., needed a clinching argument to vote Democratic in November, Barton has provided it.

The ‘liberal Dems vs. Obama’ storyline has been getting a lot of play lately in punditland, likened to the neocon-tea party split in the GOP. But it’s a simplistic interpretation of what’s really going on in the relationship between the President and progressives in the Democratic Party. Katrina vanden Heuval, editor of The Nation, has a more nuanced explanation in her weekly column in the Washington Post:

There’s a tension between the Obama administration and the progressive movement, but it’s not the one mainstream media have been describing or that the White House seems to perceive….What’s happening on the left isn’t the equivalent of the anti-incumbent anger on the right. Most progressives support Obama and want his agenda to succeed…
At the same time, progressives have come to a realization. What we see, some 500 days into the Obama administration, is a president obstructed by a partisan Republican opposition, powerful entrenched corporate interests, and a minority of corrupt or conservative Democrats. The thinking is that if progressives organize independently and forge smart coalitions, building a mass movement for reform with a moral compass that can transcend left-right divisions, we may be able to push Obama beyond the limits of his own politics, overcome the timid incrementalism of the establishment Democratic Party and counter the forces of money and power that are true obstacles to change. As Arianna Huffington has said, “Hope is not enough. . . . We need a ‘Hope 2.0’ that depends not on what President Obama or other politicians say or do but on what we as progressives do.”

Vanden Heuval goes on to describe the white house overreaction to progressive groups’ support of Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s primary opponent and she offers this clarification:

Actually, the point of the exercise was that those opposing Obama’s reform agenda will not get a free pass. And there will be more efforts like it…This agitating role isn’t a new one for the progressive movement. Progressives organized a remarkable mass movement seeking to stop the Iraq war before it began. They built a counterweight in the blogosphere to challenge the mainstream media and the right. They created the coalition that beat Bush on Social Security. They gave Democrats their voice on Iraq, energy and health care that helped to take back Congress. And they inspired a junior senator from Illinois to think that something was moving with such strength that he might run and win the presidency.

This is what real progressives do. It’s not about sniping at the white house or whining about the President being too cautious. It’s about shifting the debate fulcrum leftward to give the President and Democratic leaders courage and room to move forward toward a more progressive agenda. Astute progressives understand that the President has to contend with powerful conservative forces and institutions that come with the job, just as an astute president understands that the job of the progressives in his base is, paraphrasing FDR, to “make me do it.”
As vanden Heuval says, “It doesn’t matter whether you think Obama has done the best that he can or that he has compromised too easily. What’s important is to alter the balance of power. And that means recruiting and mobilizing to unleash new energy into the debate.”
It’s much like the “creative tension” Martin Luther King, Jr. said was needed to break through the obstructionist status quo and energize the Civil Rights Movement. As vanden Heuval concludes,

…Progressives can help Democrats find the voice they need to avoid debilitating losses this fall…by challenging limits of the current debate…to show working Americans that Democrats are fighting for them…The tension between Obama and the progressive movement isn’t a threat to the president. Rather, it may be needed to save him.

A renewed commitment to this understanding will strengthen the Democratic Party, help cut losses in November and set the stage for victory in 2012.

The MSM is having quite a gush-fest about the Fiorina and Whitman primary wins in California. Fresh faces, huge amounts of campaign cash, historic wins for GOP women and all that. Dem nominees Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer begin their races dwarfed by a tidal wave of overwhelmingly favorable coverage for their opponents.
If not for Fiorina’s “so yesterday” gaffe about Senator Boxer’s hairdo, she would have gotten the same free ride that the bedazzled media has given Whitman since Tuesday. Boxer and Brown no doubt write it off as a familiar pattern of media coverage. The new kid usually gets the breathless MSM buzz after primaries, especially in a political year that has been roundly designated as a bummer for incumbents.
But it won’t be long before the sobering demographic realities of the California electorate force a reassessment among the punditry. In his WaPo op-ed, “Calif. GOP Primary Winners Look Headed for Defeat,” Harold Meyerson explains,

…California Republican primaries have a nasty habit of rendering their winners unelectable in November, and this year’s contest looks like it will be no exception. To win, Whitman and Fiorina — conventional conservative business Republicans both — had to take positions so far to the right that their chances of winning a state in which Barack Obama commands a 59 percent approval rating are slim. During one debate with her Republican opponents, Fiorina affirmed the right of suspected terrorists on no-fly lists to buy guns, presumably lest the gods of the National Rifle Association strike her dead on the spot. At a campaign event at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, Boxer, never one to let a hanging curveball go unswatted, contrasted Fiorina’s guns-to-terrorists stance with her own co-authorship of a law allowing pilots to carry guns in cockpits.

And then there is the thorniest (for Republicans) of issues:

But the issue most damaging for Whitman and Fiorina is immigration. Pressed by their GOP primary opponents and the Republican electorate to endorse Arizona’s draconian new law, Fiorina proclaimed her support for it while Whitman countered the charges from her right that she was soft on immigration by affirming that she was “100 percent against amnesty” and demanding a huge increase in border enforcement. To bolster her credibility, her ads featured former Republican governor Pete Wilson — champion of 1994’s Proposition 187, which would have denied all public services, including the right to attend primary and secondary schools, to illegal immigrants.
Wilson won reelection in 1994 by backing 187, which the courts subsequently struck down. But his victory was probably the most pyrrhic in modern American politics. Threatened and enraged by 187, California’s Latino immigrants began naturalizing, registering and voting in record numbers. Southern California’s Latino-led labor movement — the most energized and strategically savvy labor movement in the nation — became particularly adept at turning out Latino voters for Democratic candidates and causes.
…the California electorate has been transformed — moving the state decisively into the Democratic column. In the 1994 election, according to the nonprofit William C. Velásquez Institute, which seeks to raise minorities’ political and economic participation, Latinos counted for 11.4 percent of California voters. By 2008, they comprised 21.4 percent. And particularly when immigration is an issue, theirs is a heavily Democratic vote. “There’s a whole generation of Latino voters who don’t believe the Republicans look out for them,” Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO, told me on Election Day. “We ran against Pete Wilson for years after he was out of office. And, voilà! He’s back — he’s vouching for Whitman!” Labor will make sure the Latino community knows it. Already, the California Nurses Association is running an ad on Spanish-language radio that splices in a clip from a Whitman primary commercial in which she and Wilson discuss cracking down on immigration.

Meyerson concludes,

It’s not just that Republican nativism pushes perhaps a fifth of the electorate into the Democratic column. It’s that the state’s Republicans are simply far to the right of the majority of Californians — so much so that they do not have a majority of registered voters in any one of the state’s 53 congressional districts…In winning their nominations, they [Whitman and Fiorina] said things deeply offensive to a fatally large swath of California voters. Their campaigns may be gold-plated, but they have ears of purest tin.

Add to that the fact that Jerry Brown may be one of the most battle-seasoned candidates in history, having won grueling campaigns for Governor of California, Mayor of Oakland, CA Attorney-General and having won and lost presidential primaries. The media didn’t cover his comments well, but Brown will not be giving Whitman an easy time of it. He has already blasted Whitman for spending $71 million on her primary campaign, and added in his recent press conference,

“She paid herself $120 million, and then EBay had to lay off 10 percent of its workforce. Now, is that waste and abuse? Is that what you want?”

In stark contrast, Brown had an impressive record of budget management and job creation during his stint as governor, while living a life of unprecedented austerity for the chief executive of the nation’s largest state. As Brown noted in his news conference,

When I was governor of California, we built up the largest surplus in history — $4.5 billion. We created 1.9 million jobs. We reduced taxes by billions

Whitman has already gone into handler-imposed seclusion, issuing lame statements about Brown’s website not being up to snuff and bragging about her issues brochure, which Brown derided for being lavishly illustrated with photos, but way short on substance. Californians worried about their job security, pensions and education of their children are not likely to prefer Whitman’s track record to Brown’s.
As for Fiorina, last year the biz rag web site ‘Condé Nast Portfolio’ designated Fiorina as one of “The 20 Worst American CEOs of All Time“, noting also,

A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005…HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.

Not a track record to inspire working people to vote for her, either.
If Whitman and Fiorina had been business leaders who had track records of living modestly while keeping concerns for their employees front and center, maybe Brown and Boxer would have more to worry about. As Republicans, however, both Fiorina and Whitman have more in common with Gordon Gekko than Abe Lincoln. The guess here is that the working people of California ain’t having it.

The high-profile primary elections went pretty much as expected, with the exception of the Lincoln-Halter race in Arkansas, which pundits are calling an upset for Sen. Lincoln, who won by 4 percent. The Arkansas race was certain to be a tough experience for many Democrats, regardless of who won. The way it worked out, progressive Dems got a double dose of the pain.
Not only were progressives hugely disappointed by Lt. Governor Halter’s loss — he was an impressive candidate, who many believed could be a rising star in the Democratic party and who had momentum in the polls. In addition, Lincoln’s victory was tainted by unprecedented union-bashing from a Democratic incumbent and her surrogates, including former President Clinton. Whether Lincoln could have won without it will remain a topic for debate. But, if she loses a close race in November because of weak union support, the folly of the strategy will become clear.
There is no doubt, however, about the wisdom of bringing in the Big Dog, whose popularity is squared in Arkansas. President Clinton, whose 8 years in the white house were characterized by peace and a healthy economy, is still Elvis in his home state. Credit Lincoln with good strategy in leveraging his popularity, especially in today’s troubled economic environment.
Whether or not the union-bashing helped Lincoln, there is some potential for long-term damage here, especially if other Democratic candidates embrace it. In the long run, the Democratic Party needs a strong union movement to build a real progressive majority. Victories won with union-bashing are ultimately divisive and may well end up serving GOP candidates, even in a state with relatively low union power, like Arkansas. Alternatively, if we can only win by disparaging an institution that is the first line of defense for working people in their quest for decent living standards, who the hell are we?
For unions, a couple of lessons of Lincoln’s win come into focus. 1. Be ready for union-bashing. There will likely be more of it in other races. 2. Develop stronger media resources — a national labor movement cable channel with local programming capability is long overdue. Regarding the latter, union GOTV efforts are still an invaluable asset for Dems in many races. But the labor movement urgently needs an energetic nation-wide educational campaign, utilizing more than bumper stickers. Unions must do a better job of educating Americans about all that organized labor has done to create the middle class. They must also adapt their organizing strategy to fit the changing work force so they can grow again. With such a twin-pronged strategy, the labor movement can begin to create a climate in which no smart Democrat would dare to win votes by trashing unions.
I have to agree with WaPo columnist Chris Cillizza’s assessment that, despite all of the jabber about “a strong anti-incumbent wind” blowing around the country, “Lincoln’s victory provides — yet more — evidence that candidates and campaigns matter.” I would also agree with Open Left‘s Chris Bowers that Lincoln’s strong position on Wall St. reform helped her.
But the salient lesson of Lincoln’s primary win for Democrats won’t become clear until November 2nd. She has to do what she can to rebuild bridges to Arkansas progressives, especially unions, which won’t be easy. Lincoln can’t afford to write off any pro-Democratic constituency.
Even more important is her campaign’s ability to attack Republican nominee John Boozman, who leads in polls at this point, and inculcate the meme that he is a rubber-stamp for corporate interests, who wants to repeal Social Security and a liability for Arkansas working people. This should be possible, given Boozman’s track record as a garden-variety Republican who routinely votes with his party (97 percent of the time in the current congress) in support of big business and the wealthy against the interests of the middle class.

There is understandable excitement among Republican women this year because they have high-profile women candidates running for state-wide office in CA, NV and SC. Linda Feldman of The Christian Science Monitor even has a feature article entitled “Tuesday primaries: Year of the Republican woman dawning?,” and the hopes of GOP women are high that Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Sharon Angle and Nikki Haley will up the ante when all of the primary votes are counted today.
According to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), however, the Republicans still have a ways to go before they can make a convincing case that the GOP is the party that speaks to the aspirations of American women. According to CAWP’s most recent tally, for example, here is a breakdown of women office-holders by party:

13 Democratic women U.S. senators, vs. 4 Republicans
56 Democratic women House of Reps. members, vs. 17 Republicans
3 Democratic women Governors, 3 Republican women Governors
4 Democratic women Attorneys General, vs. 0 Republican women A.G.’s
50 Democratic women holding statewide office in the U.S., vs. 21 Republican women
70.5 percent of women state senators are Democrats, vs. 27.2 percent Republicans
70.3 percent of women state legislators are Democrats, vs. 29.4 percent Republicans

It’s an interesting phenomenon. You would think some smart journalist would call out the Republicans and ask them to explain the gap between the two parties. For Dems, however, our goal should be to recruit and elect more women candidates until something resembling gender parity among Democratic office-holders is a reality.