On primary challenges
So, apparently Ned Lamont has narrowed the margins against Joseph Lieberman to 55 – 40 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, including undecided voters who are leaning towards a candidate in a poll from the state — wherefor Lamont stood at something like 18 percent a month or two ago.
And that there is the most threatening primary opponent in the 2006 election cycle. The Republicans’ best primary opponent for a hated one of theirs is Stephen Laffey, backed by Grover Norquist against Whig Party adherant Lincoln Chaffee — the only Republican senator to vote no for authorizing a war in Iraq, and a Republican who said that he did not vote for George W Bush, instead choosing to write in… George H W Bush. The Club for Growth recently released a highly unreliable poll with a huge margin of error that showed Laffey barking right up against Chaffee. If only this were so, for a Laffey victory would guarantee that the Democratic party wins Rhode Island… a pretty good sign that the Republicans are probably misfiring in trying to axe Chaffee — although, to be fair, that party is in a better position to shrug off their middlesome candidate, politics being the “art of the possible” and all. For example, Ben Nelson, like it or not, is Nebraska’s “kind of a halfway, Democrat/Republican senator” (as Chuck Hagel put it), and to deal away with him would be to toss off the “halfway”. Incidentally, the Democratic nominee-to-be in Rhose Island is “pro-life” — to whatever degree that means these days, Chaffee is “pro-choice”. I see rumblings that the two parties have strong factions of both factions in them, and come to think of it that sort of makes sense. Catholic Democrats. Prescott Bush Republicans. Rhode Island: drive through it in an hour.
I have this theory that a party’s rank and file basically has one quiver in the arrow in knocking out an incumbant member of their party per cycle, and they should choose this quiver carefully. Maybe I’m off. There’s a chance that Hawaii Democrats will knock off their incumbant Democrat Senator Akaka– though it’s not much of a chance and the malaice seems to be more of a token shrug at Akaka. Beyond that, Maria Cantwell in Washington faces meager opposition. Hillary Clinton faces symbolic opposition. The key is to shuffle away one candidate in favour of one who is prone to be elected.
Joseph Lieberman is all we’ve got, and the only one worth trying to choke. Concentrate accordingly.
In, 2004 Republicans looked to knock out Arlen Specter, a frustrating Republican to them and an even more frustrating Republican for “the side of good” for laughable attempts at historical credibility in the face of a Republican Party that is knocking him around but good. In 2002, the Republican Party apparatus stood aside and let one of their own knock out Bob Smith in New Hampshire. I’ll look into this one.
For the 2006, I suggest we take out Max Baucus, rumoured to be cutting a deal on the Estate Tax — a toxic mid-way to enacting horrible policy on par with Lieberman’s follies … and a worthwhile tact in the prairie populist state of Montana. Jon Tester just knocked off the would-be Max Baucus-esque candidate of John Morrison in the Democratic primary and is well on his way to knocking off the Republican incumbant Conrad Burns, perpetuating the “Brian Schweitzer transformation”, making Max Baucus’s corporatist “a little from section A, a little from Section B” passe, and a detriment to the Montana Democratic Party brand. Or so we would hope.