Greg Sargent says:
All we ever hear from the media is Tea Party this, Tea Party that. But the real upheaval you should be watching right now is on the left.
Next week, if Joe Sestak defeats Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Dem primary, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln is forced into a runoff against challenger Bill Halter, lefty insurgents will have scored two major victories against the Democratic establishment in Washington.
I usually agree with Sargent, but I have to give the media their due on this one. Joe Sestak and Bill Halter are slightly more progressive mainstream politicians who are arguably better candidates for the general election. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are disrupters who don’t poll as well as the establishment candidates in their races.
The tea party candidates are also part of an insurgency led in part by a sitting Senator, Jim DeMint, who’s endorsed Rand Paul in his leader’s back yard. There’s no similar inside-the-beltway support for Sestak and Halter.
I’ll be the first to agree that the media’s focus on tea party protests as a symbol of national upheaval was stupid, because they ignored protests from other activist groups that didn’t fit their “revolution” story line. Their focus on the crazy tea party challengers who look like they’re going to win is pretty sane reporting, because they might make a couple of Republican gimme seats competitive.
DougJ
Good points.
debbie
Finally: Hope and Change by stealth!
Hunter Gathers
Anyone notice that Specter sand Lincoln have veered right the past few days? Didn’t realize that screaming about the assault weapons ban and kicking hippies worked in Dem primaries.
stuckinred
@Hunter Gathers: Then you haven’t been paying attention.
djork
@Hunter Gathers:
Laying groundwork for independant runs, perhaps?
themann1086
@djork: Specter can’t; we’ve got a “Sore Loser” rule here in PA where a defeated candidate in a primary can’t run on another ticket. Dunno about Blanche…
Bill E Pilgrim
Because it’s essentially neither, but largely an invented packaging strategy for the base of the Republican party, which was there already. And “the media” most responsible for the lavishing is FOX News, who are part of the same group, which answers the question by coming full circle.
Then the rest of the media follows when they see that FOX makes money at it.
Krugman has a pretty good take on all this today. The only place I’d disagree somewhat is his emphasis on “the right is angry instead of the left being angry” and so on.
The right was always angry. Tea Partiers are a small percentage of the population. The “populist insurgency” of the right is bullshit, mostly. Purity purge, yes, but that’s not an insurgency. And it’s certainly not spontaneous, in the Tea Bagger protest sense, but heavily astroturfed. People almost seem to keep forgetting that.
geg6
@djork:
Not in PA. We don’t like sore losers here:
http://campaigndiaries.com/2009/03/08/specter-loose-ends/
El Cid
Well, this is also the media environment in which a health insurance-industry funded front group hires lunatics to go scream at Congressional town hall meetings and carry Obama=Hitler signs, so, pretty much anything, as long as it’s on the right, can be portrayed as a grassroots insurgency.
atlliberal
But they have to keep their narrative that “Both sides do it” or else they won’t be “balanced”. If they lose their balance they’ll be accused of having a liberal bias and that’s the worst thing you can say to a journalist, based on their reaction to it.
El Cid
@atlliberal: That’s why it’s safest to favor the right wing — they’ll always hate you and call you the liberal (secular) media, and you don’t care when liberals say you favor the right, so, job done.
Hal
Progressive Liberals aren’t running to ultimately toss Obama. Personally, I think Obama is a Liberal as he can be with this particular Congress, so if more Liberal members are nominated, then Obama will simply run more to the left.
Jean
@themann1086: Lincoln said she would not run as an independent (TPM source).
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
The tea party candidates are also part of an insurgency led in part by a sitting Senator, Jim DeMint, who’s endorsed Rand Paul in his leader’s back yard. There’s no similar inside-the-beltway support for Sestak and Halter.
There isn’t, and that’s key. Has any D.C. establishment figures said anything about the two Democratic races? Other than supporting the incumbents?
Adam Collyer
I like Joe Sestak very much. I think he’d be a terrific Senator. I am also appreciative of PA’s “sore loser” law.
That being said, the animosity toward Arlen Specter on the left is pretty surprising. I realize it’s residual from when he was in the GOP, but Specter has been a pretty good Democrat since switching parties. It always seemed like he was too moderate for the GOP anyway and was hanging by a thread there. He just fits in the Democratic caucus.
I’ll be cheering for Sestak because I think he gives us the best chance to hold the seat in an anti-incumbent year. But I won’t be devastated if Specter returns either.
BC
@Adam Collyer: I agree, if either Sestack or Specter wins I won’t be upset. But I think that Specter will be weaker in the general election than Sestack.
Jim
There is basically 100% chance that we will see Bill Halter get no true scotsman’ed by the left if he wins tomorrow and in the general. It’s a longshot, but if there’s any reason to root for Halter, it’s to anticipate the May 2011 posts on FDL: “Will Bill Halter fail to stand with our progressive change coalition alliance transpartisan grassroots team?”
PeakVT
@Adam Collyer: IIRC, Specter has been a pretty good Dem since Sestak decide to challenge him. Before that he was acting like Joe Loserman.
Allison W.
oh yes, I’m waiting for the “shock” and “out of nowhere” meme from the media this November.
debbie
Not really, especially for those old enough to remember how he treated Anita Hill.
SGEW
Check the lexicon for “spectering.” For some of us, the animosity towards Arlan is based on a long standing disgust.
demimondian
@debbie: So. True.
The bizarre thing about this whole affair. The leftie insurgents are really insurgents — self-organized, funded by the grass roots, running without the support of DC. The right wight tea-baggers? They’re funded by big business interests and reflect the core beliefs of the central party. They’re *not* insurgents in any real sense, but actually the natural evolution of the Confederate Party’s long flirtation with the reactionary right.
So, in fact, if Lincoln is forced into a run-off and Specter is given the boot, that will be a much bigger deal than either of the two Republican outcomes.
Oh, and Greg? It won’t be two. It’ll be *three*. Remember Lieberman?
Martin
Aren’t you actually proving Sargent’s point? I think what’s he’s getting at is that the primaries aren’t necessarily where to look for upheaval but the general elections. Who is more likely to carry the general election – Sestak or Rubio?
From what I can tell, the Republican primaries are turning into a race to see who can do worst in the general election. I wouldn’t call that an insurgency. It might be newsworthy, but not in the way the media are portraying it.
CalD
I generally like Greg Sargent’s work but he has got himself a chubby on for Blanche Lincoln. He also has a perennial tendency to let ideology and wishful thinking cloud his assessments of electoral politics in general.
feebog
If you examine the situations in PA and AR vs. the situations in FL and UT, there is a big difference. In both the Dem races the incumbent is in big trouble in the general election. Spector is and has been underperforming in the polls against Toomey, while Sestak has been steadily improving. Lincoln is dead meat against any Republican. Halter will have a good shot at retaining the seat.
OTH, Crist was an immensely popular Governer who would have cruised to election in November. Now, if Crist ekes out a win as an independent, he may well caucus with the Dems. In Utah, Bennett was a cinch for re-eleleciton, no doubt his sucessor will also win, but there is no net loss there.
Neutron Flux
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