I take all polls this far out from an election with a shaker of salt, but you have to take heed of polls like this:
John Boozman will enter the Arkansas Senate race this weekend as the frontrunner. He leads incumbent Blanche Lincoln by an amazing 56-33 margin in our first poll of the race.
Lincoln’s approval rating has sunk to just 27%, with 62% of voters in the state disapproving of her. She’s at a middling 51% even within her own party and just 17% of independents and 9% of Republicans are happy with how she’s doing.
A look inside the health care issue gives a good indication of how Lincoln has managed now to get it from all sides. 61% of voters in the state oppose the President’s plan, and among those folks Lincoln’s approval rating is just 8% with 79% of them expressing the belief that she’s too liberal. But she’s managed to antagonize a lot of the people who support the Democratic health care plan as well- 36% of them think she’s too conservative and her approval with them is just 57%. Barack Obama’s at 95% with that same group of voters.
Now, I have two questions. If the “president’s plan” included a public option, would it be more or less popular in Arkansas. And, if Lincoln had been a champion of the public option instead of one of its most high-profile detractors, would she have a 95% approval rating among liberals, like Obama?
You can see where I am going with this. She tried to be ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist’ by seeking in a very public way to water down health care reform. In return, she’s won a 9% approval rating among Republicans and a 17% approval rating among Independents. We don’t know what those numbers would look like in the alternative universe where she was supportive of a public option, but they couldn’t be much worse. She got no bang out of her approach with the people you might predict would be pleased with it. Instead, she alienated her base. Just 51% of Democrats approve of the job she’s doing, and that is why she has no chance of winning reelection.
I think it is safe to say that prior to the health care debate Sen. Lincoln was a fairly popular low-profile senator. After the death of Teddy Kennedy produced a game of musical committee chairs, she was lucky to land in the chair of the Agriculture Committee. In that position, she is poised to do a lot of good for Arkansan farmers and businesses. Her reelection should be a no-brainer. But she did the absolute worst thing. She told everyone that the health care bill was too liberal and then she voted for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The best way for Democrats in McCain states to survive is to make the president more popular in their states. You don’t do that by bad-mouthing his policies and then watering down their effectiveness and attractiveness. Making the bill as unpopular with the left as it is with the right and then voting for it and then having it not pass in part due to your hemming and hawing? The opposite of priceless.
Goodbye, Blanche Lincoln. You should have kept a low profile and voted for the robust public option that the president campaigned on. Your ‘centrism’ cost you a career that was set to blossom into something meaningful.
