Matt Bai has an interesting take on Tuesday’s elections and what they mean for the national parties. His number one take-away is that the elections demonstrated that Obama’s insurgent campaign was no fluke. The Establishments of both parties have never had less control over who the candidates or nominees will be. Anyone with significant constituencies can raise sufficient money outside of traditional sources and make a run for high office. The old levers of influence don’t work anymore. Obama demonstrated that in 2008, and Rand Paul, Joe Sestak, and Bill Halter demonstrated it this week.
It’s no longer possible for a party campaign chairman to snap his fingers and clear the field for his preferred candidate. In Pennsylvania, even the president, vice-president, governor, mayors of Philly and Pittsburgh, the DSCC, the DNC, and the unions could not guarantee a victory for Arlen Specter over a candidate who didn’t even have a campaign manager. This is trailblazing stuff and it isn’t supposed to happen. It’s especially not supposed to happen in the Senate which originally had its members selected by state legislatures. I don’t mean to suggest that a former three-star admiral who worked in President Clinton’s National Security Council is some kind of outsider, but there’s nothing in Sestak’s blueprint for victory that couldn’t be emulated by someone else who has the constituencies needed to raise sufficient cash. Rand Paul proved that. He’s never held political office before.
It is possible to have a reasonable facsimile of the general electorate in the Senate for the first time in history. Is it any surprise that the Senate has slowly morphed into a smaller copy of the House? Nothing can get done in the Senate these days because the rules give the minority too much power and the people provide too much accountability. It’s supposed to be far removed from electoral politics. That was how it was designed and envisioned. That’s how it operated for a hundred and thirty years. Now everything is done with an eye towards fundraising and elections. Either we need to go back to indirect elections or we need to change the rules of the Senate to reflect reality. The people want to hold their Senators accountable.