Here’s my column from this week’s Benton Courier on Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s campaign theme and rhetoric. Okay, now I’m officially done.
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC will be in Little Rock on Monday, March 22nd to speak at the Clinton School of Public Service. She will also be hosting her television program, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” at a to-be-determined location in the city.
For Arkansawyers connected to Washington, D.C., The Washington Post profiles the ultimate D.C. insider, Robert Barnett, a Williams & Connelly lawyer, book broker, and transition expert.
Quick on the draw, Rasmussen has the results of a telephone survey showing both Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter trailing GOP challengers in the race for the US Senate. GOP frontrunner Rep. John Boozman beats Ms. Lincoln 48%-39% and Mr. Halter 52%-38%.
The poll also notes:
Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters in Arkansas now think it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated in this November’s elections. Only 24% believe their local congressional representative is the best person for the job, and just 31% say their local congressman deserves to be reelected.
Here’s my column from yesterday’s Benton Courier.
On February 5, 2010, In Newspapers and Media, Social Media, By Blake
Only Google, Yahoo! and MSN drive more news traffic online.
Two more polls show Sen. Blanche Lincoln trailing all Republican challengers (or, at the the semi-credible ones). In a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, Ms. Lincoln trails Rep. John Boozman 56% – 33%. She has an approval rating of 27%. (Yeah, you would too if someone spent $6.5 million dollars telling voters how terrible you are.)
Rasmussen has a poll showing similar numbers with Mr. Boozman beating Ms. Lincoln 54% – 35%. According to the analysis that accompanied the poll,
The similarity of all these spreads makes it clear that this race continues to be all about Lincoln rather than a reflection of voter support for any of those who are challenging her.
You can take all these polls with a grain salt, but only to a point. If interest groups keep hammering her without a rebuttal she doesn’t stand a chance. I’ve been known to make outlandish predictions before, so here’s another one: Barring a dramatic turn of events (i.e. a substantial ad buy in the next few weeks), the failure by the Lincoln campaign to respond to to these attack ads will go down as one of, if not the biggest, political mistake by an incumbent running for office this cycle.
Like Bill Clinton or not, he was smart enough to know that it’s not enough to absorb GOP attacks, you have to hit back. He learned that from Michael Dukakis who got whipped in 1988. Mr. Clinton won handily in 1992 despite an onslaught of negative attacks.
If you’re not going to look at recent political history, at least look to the movies:
On January 12, 2010, In Newspapers and Media, Politics, By Blake
Here are my on-camera comments from very early this morning on KARK Channel 4. I have to admit my surprise that a local television station would be interested in the story. It’s newsworthy, Jerry, but has very little relationship to Arkansas. I expected my counter-part, Noelle Nikpour, to blast Sen. Blanche Lincoln, but that didn’t happen.
“Game Change” remained in the news today. I spotted this pretty funny profane-laced rebuttal from Jason Linkins of The Huffington Post. Glenn Greenwald of Salon also unloads on the reporting. Bob Woodward and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post talked about the book on “Morning Joe.”
The book currently sits at No. 1 on Amazon.
On January 11, 2010, In 2010 arkansas senate race, Arkansas, Local News, Newspapers and Media, Politics, By Blake
It’s political opportunism day in Arkansas. The Republican National Senatorial Committee issued a release attacking Blanche Lincoln for not criticizing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his comments about President Barack Obama, which are contained in a new book about the 2008 presidential campaign titled “Game Change.”
In case you haven’t been following the news, Mr. Reid described Mr. Obama’s electoral chances as good because he was “light skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Mr. Reid, like Ms. Lincoln, is up for re-election in 2010.
The RNSC claims that Ms. Lincoln, who openly and rightly criticized former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott for his praise of Sen. Strom Thurmond, a segregationist and civil rights opponent, is being inconsistent for not doing the same in this instance.
Here’s what Mr. Lott said of Mr. Thurmond at a birthday party in his honor, in 2002:
I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.
As Joe Klein of TIME opines, “These sentiments, both crude, are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum: Reid stands for the ultimate symbol of racial equality, a black man as President; Lott would have voted for a candidate who wanted black people at the back of the bus.”
There’s little merit, outside of election year partisan politics, in attacking Ms. Lincoln over her silence. The situations, after all, are quite different.
As Ken Rudin of NPR notes,
But is what Lott said in 2002 comparable to what Reid said about Obama? There are at least three differences.
– The person most offended by Reid’s comments, President Obama, has completely forgiven him. Blacks never forgave Lott for what he said about Thurmond (even though, if memory serves, then-Senate Dem Leader Tom Daschle initially brushed off the controversy).
– As for what pushed Lott out as GOP leader, while some Republicans insist that the Mississippi senator was pressured to quit by Democrats and liberals, it was his own party’s White House — the Bush White House — that made it clear Lott had to go. The administration quietly, but clearly, lined up behind Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist as Lott’s successor. The Obama White House is in Reid’s corner.
– Trent Lott was never seen as an ally of the civil rights movement, so it was easier to tar Lott with the “racist” brush than it is with Reid. While politics no doubt played a big role in forcing Lott out, the fact remains that his voting record was not, shall we say, universally applauded by the African-American community. Reid’s support for civil rights legislation is unquestioned.
On January 11, 2010, In Newspapers and Media, By Blake
A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that surveyed news gathering in Baltimore as an example of nationwide trends found that 95% of stories with fresh information came from “old media,” and the vast majority of that from newspapers.
“The expanding universe of new media, including blogs, Twitter and local websites — at least in Baltimore — played only a limited role: mainly an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places,” the study’s authors write.
On January 9, 2010, In Newspapers and Media, Politics, By Blake
Mark Halperin of TIME and John Heilemann of New York Magazine have completed their book on the 2008 presidential campaign, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.” Of the many interesting aspects of the book, as reported by The New York Times, they allege that then-Senator Hillary Clinton contemplated entering the 2004 Democratic Primary at a very late hour. Her pollster, Mark Penn, was working for Joe Lieberman at the time, but he polled Iowa and New Hampshire and the numbers were encouraging. The Clintons held a meeting at their home to discuss the decision with advisors, including their daughter, Chelsea. She is noted as one of the strong dissenters.
This is the fourth book to be releaseed on the 2008 campaign following “Renegade: The Making of a President,” by Richard Wolffe, “The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election” by Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz and “The Audacity to Win” by David Plouffe.
“Game Change” is available on January 11.
The venerable Daily Kos is calling on Sen. Blanche Lincoln to retire.
Democrats have a thick bench in Arkansas, and could make a serious bid to hold the seat. But Lincoln won’t pull it off. She’s toast.
If Lincoln cares about her state and her party, she’ll do the honorable thing like Chris Dodd and retire. Otherwise, let’s hope Lt. Gov. Bill Halter forcefully retires her in a primary.
I think Kos has this one wrong. First, consider the GOP candidates in this race. On a whole they’re incredibly weak. Taken individually, only state Sen. Gilbert Baker looks like a contender, and he may not get out of the GOP primary.
Second, consider the political history. Ms. Lincoln, hardly loved by the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is running in Arkansas, where voters overwhelmingly rejected Barack Obama in 2008. She’s won tough races before, including re-election to the House in 1994, and re-election to the Senate in 2004, when an anti gay marriage amendment was on the ballot. In that race she defeated Jim Holt, a staunch conservative from GOP dominated northwest Arkansas, who’s making another bid this go-round.
Third, her political standing is incomparable to Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd. She’s doesn’t have to answer for a Countrywide scandal or moving her entire family to another state. (Mr. Dodd moved his family to Iowa during the 2008 Democratic primary, going to so far as to enroll his kids in Iowa public schools.) Unlike Conn. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has a 78% approval rating among Democrats and a 70% approval rating among Republicans, there isn’t an obvious alternative, although Lt. Gov. Bill Halter looks good on paper.
Finally, I think the polling in Arkansas is misleading. Voters are frustrated, but they don’t have any real sense of the alternative. Ms. Lincoln is the Agriculture Committee chairman, and her efforts on health care, why sloppy at the beginning, righted themselves at the end when it mattered. She’s against cap-and-trade and card check legislation, which puts her in line with many Arkansas voters. Once they are better educated about these matters my view is that her numbers will rise (Which is why I have called on the Lincoln campaign to spend some of her $6 million war chest – a health amount for a political race in Arkansas – on ads explaining her committee chairmanship, her vote on health care, and her plan for the economy).
I get the political sex appeal of Mr. Halter, particularly by progressives and by organized labor. And Mr. Halter may very well enter the Democratic primary and then we’ll know. But suggesting Ms. Lincoln is “unelectable” a gross exaggeration.
Rasmussen has a new poll out for the Arkansas Senate race. It still shows poor numbers for Blanche Lincoln. She still maintains a low approval (38% – 39%) and trails leading GOP challenger, Gilbert Baker, by 12 points.
For me, I don’t believe that when given the choice voters will honestly approve of Kim Hendren, Curtis Coleman or Tom Cox by a ten-point margin, which is what this poll indicates.
Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic has given up on Rasmussen polls because vary by wide margins with other polling outfits. Rasmussen polls lean heavily Republican, at least at the national level.
UPDATE: A reader points me to this piece by Alex Idenstadt in Politico. Several political scientists and polling analysts raise questions about Rasmussen’s methods and results. Not to mention that Scott Rasmussen has never been a campaign pollster or adviser to a political candidate.
The second to last update of the year, although there’s not much to report. The bill has entered the conference phase and, as expected, a lot of that work is taking place behind closed doors.
In Arkansas, the esteemed editorial board of the Democrat-Gazette jumps on the pork bandwagon, harpooning Sen. Blanche Lincoln for not delivering more pork (aka needless federal spending for which the GOP regularly cries foul) for Arkansas. I’ve already argued how silly this argument is, and how hypocritical.
Today, The Arkansas Leader fires back noting that Ms. Lincoln, along with Sen. Mark Pryor, can trumpet a very important benefit to our state: Medicaid expansion. It will result in millions of dollars flowing through our medical institutions. That’s helps everybody.
John Brummett offers an assessment of the state Republican Senate race in light of the addition of Stanley Reed into this race. Interestingly, he offers commentary on Mr. Reed and Gilbert Baker only. It’s safe to say that this is a two-person race, but putting immediate stock in a candidate that has never run for office before is a risky investment at this point.
Money aside (and Mr. Reed has a lot of it), we have no idea what kind of candidate he will be. How will he like campaigning? Can he deliver a stump speech? Can he talk in soundbites? What’s his plan for health care reform (other than saying No, which is Mr. Baker’s plan). Will he be able to make the case that he rather than the Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee will better suited to address the needs of Arkansans?
It’s these questions that also make this race so intriguing. After all, he could be a terrific candidate, and his team, which includes David Sanders formerly of Stephens Media, may be able to craft an effective narrative.
Absent Bill Halter jumping into the Democratic primary, this race will grab lots of attention in the months ahead.
I was reminded this morning of this letter to former Saline County prosecutor Robert Herzfeld in response to a letter he sent to then Governor Mike Huckabee criticizing his clemency process.
It was only a matter of time before someone took the time to parody Mr. Huckabee’s clemencies on YouTube.
On December 3, 2009, In Newspapers and Media, By Blake
Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to Rupert Murdoch today with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In the piece Mr. Schmidt imagines the world in 2015 and forecasts how readers will be consuming news.
It’s the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp as in print, without a maddening wait for each page to load.
Even better, the device knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read. So while I get all the news and comment, I also see stories tailored for my interests. I zip through a health story in The Wall Street Journal and a piece about Iraq from Egypt’s Al Gomhuria, translated automatically from Arabic to English. I tap my finger on the screen, telling the computer brains underneath it got this suggestion right.
Some of these stories are part of a monthly subscription package. Some, where the free preview sucks me in, cost a few pennies billed to my account. Others are available at no charge, paid for by advertising. But these ads are not static pitches for products I’d never use. Like the news I am reading, the ads are tailored just for me. Advertisers are willing to shell out a lot of money for this targeting.
Here are my observations from the free health clinic yesterday in Little Rock, which I recorded for The Huffington Post.
It was just a matter of time before the unflattering poll numbers of Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln caught the attention of national political pundits. Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post’s The Fix blog wrote on Friday,
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) is getting squeezed between the demands of national liberals who want her to sign on to an up or down vote on the public option and the Republican bent of her state, which gave Obama just 39 percent in 2008. It’s not a comfortable place to be — particularly since polling data suggests Lincoln holds unimpressive leads over a series of unknown Republicans led by state Sen. Gilbert Baker. Lincoln, though, is bracing for a tough race with the national wind blowing directly in her face. And, she has demonstrated through four years in the House and more than a decade in the Senate that she knows how to find the sweet spot between the “D” after her name and conservative tendencies of Arkansas. This contest will almost certainly be her most competitive yet.
Mr. Cillizza ranks the 2010 Arkansas Senate race 8th in his ten most competitive Senate races next year. Barring a change in strategy from Ms. Lincoln, this race may continue to creep up his line.