Most major media in the United States has given up on covering politics as if it mattered. From talk radio to talk television to the Washington bureaus of too many of our dying newspapers, the coverage of the 2010 election cycle is framed in one of two ways:
A. A fight between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.
B. A fight between conservative Republicans and Tea Party Republicans to decide who will get to vanquish the liberal Democrats in November.
What’s missing from this calculus is the reality that this is an exceptionally volatile moment economically, socially and politically in the United States – a moment so volatile that both major parties are experiencing unprecedented turbulence within their ranks.
The first partisan primaries, last month in Illinois and this week in Texas, have seen intense multi-candidate contests for key nominations on both sides of the ballot. Incumbents are facing fights within their own parties, open seats are attracting contenders from all wings of the two major parties, and independent and third party contenders are waiting in the wings.
<snip>
In fact, Democrats will have as many serious primary contests for House and Senate seats this year as Republicans, and perhaps more. In California, for instance, progressive leader Marcy Winograd has mounted such a serious challenge to conservative Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman that Winograd is now being attacked by party leaders who are unsettled by the prospect that her anti-war, anti-Wall Street, pro-civil liberties candidacy might upset the incumbent.
Similarly intense contests have developed for Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Colorado, with incumbents Arlen Specter and Michael Bennet both facing tough challenges from credible challengers. (The Pennsylvania race between Specter and Congressman Joe Sestak is less of a left-right battle, especially since Sestak has tacked well to the right on foreign policy; but the Colorado contest offers a clear choice between a corporation-friendly centrist incumbent who polls very badly and a populist challenger, former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who polls far better against Republican prospects.)
Now, however, what could be the most interesting and important primary fight on the Democratic side has developed in Arkansas.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, the exceptionally uninspired (and uninspiring) Arkansas Democrat who has dragged her heals on health-care reform, labor-law reform and just about every other major issue that matters to grassroots Democrats while at the same time backing bank bailouts and trade policies that batter Arkansas workers and farmers, will face a serious primary challenge from the state’s lieutenant governor.
Bill Halter, who was elected to Arkansas’ No. 2 job with 57 percent of the vote in 2006, has positioned himself as a far more progressive player on education, health care and, above all, economic issues than Senator Lincoln.
<snip>
“Washington is broken – bailing out Wall Street with no strings attached while leaving middle-class Arkansas taxpayers with the bill; protecting insurance company profits instead of protecting patients and lowering health costs; gridlock, bickering and partisan games while unemployment is at a 25 year high,” says Halter. “Enough’s enough…”
That’s an old-fashioned populist appeal, as old-fashioned as Halter’s bashing of “Republican and Wall Street schemes to privatize (Social Security).”