Ever since I read Gene Lyons and Joe Conason’s The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, I have known that Arkansas is a weird place that is not easily understood by outsiders. Even as the Deep South has purged itself of Democrats, Arkansas has held on. Currently the governor, Lt. gov, both U.S. senators, and all but one congressperson are party members. Expecting Hillary Clinton to be on the ballot in 2008, the GOP didn’t even bother to challenge Sen. Mark Pryor. But then the skinny kid from Illinois came along and won the nomination. Suddenly, the formula for success came into doubt. Two out the three Democratic House representatives decided to retire, and Blanche Lincoln’s reelect numbers took a nosedive.
It’s easy to posit that the party is suffering because of resistance to a black standard-bearer in the White House, but it’s harder to understand why the Democratic Party was doing so well prior to Obama’s emergence. Arkansas was the hatchery of Bill Clinton’s New Democrat movement, although it is also home to the Blue Dogs. The Democrats thrived there because they were a different kind of Democrat. What’s hard to explain is why this strategy worked so well in Arkansas even as it proved disastrous throughout the remainder of the South.
Yet, one thing is certain. The party Establishment down there is close-knit and protects their own. Bill Halter was already a bit of an insurgent when he won the lieutenant governor’s race. But the Establishment obviously feels endangered, which is why a couple of congressmen opted to retire rather than try to win in this election cycle. It’s almost like they’re stuck in a tar pit. Someone may come along a thousand years from now and do an excavation. They’ll find the Democratic Arkansas Establishment frozen with their death masks. It’s almost ironic that someone in the White House chose to accuse progressives and unions of flushing their money down the drain in their effort to nominate Halter because the Democrats in Arkansas are already circling the drain.
Could Halter have changed things? Could he have saved the day? I don’t think so. It’s true that Blanche Lincoln made some missteps and angered most Arkansans at some point over the last year and a half. And it’s true that Halter would have brought a clean slate and some new energy into the fall race. But this primary split the party, perhaps fatally. Half of Arkansas Democrats are already considering reregistering as Republicans and the other half voted for the loser last night. The Establishment would rather lose the seat than lose control of the nominating process. The progressives won’t lift a finger to help the Establishment. Either way the election went last night, it looks to me like the party’s dominance is over.
So, was it worth it to invest in a challenge to Blanche Lincoln? Was it money well spent? I think the unions and progressives did the right thing. If we can’t get a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act when we have 60 senators then someone needs to be punished. And it was Blanche Lincoln who broke her promise to support the EFCA, making cloture impossible. She also broke her promise to support a public option, even going so far as to promise to filibuster one instead. She brought this challenge upon herself and it caused her tremendous pain. If she was going to stand with Republicans on key issues, there was little reason to lament the loss of the seat and, thus, little downside to taking a chance on a challenger. Besides, the polling said she was going to lose anyway.
I don’t think the message will be learned in Arkansas because they make a living down there by not accepting this kind of message. But the message will breakthrough in other places that saying one thing and doing the exact opposite has consequences.
