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A New PPP poll shows Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) in terrible shape heading into the midterms. In a head-to-head matchup, Senator Lincoln loses to possible Republican opponent John Boozman, 33% to 56%.
Lincoln’s approval rating has sunk to just 27%, with 62% of voters in the state disapproving of her. She’s at a middling 51% even within her own party and just 17% of independents and 9% of Republicans are happy with how she’s doing.
A look inside the health care issue gives a good indication of how Lincoln has managed now to get it from all sides. 61% of voters in the state oppose the President’s plan, and among those folks Lincoln’s approval rating is just 8% with 79% of them expressing the belief that she’s too liberal. But she’s managed to antagonize a lot of the people who support the Democratic health care plan as well- 36% of them think she’s too conservative and her approval with them is just 57%. Barack Obama’s at 95% with that same group of voters.
This sounds like a classic case of Blanche Lincoln, in an attempt to find a centrist position, just ended up making everyone mad at her. The people who opposed reform in general are turned off because, in the end, she did vote for the bill; yet the people who supported reform are also angry at her, probably because she held the whole bill hostage to demand the removal of one of its most popular components, the public option.
This is not the first poll to show Lincoln in bad shape–her numbers have been bad for months–but this is one of the worst showings for Lincoln yet. At this point, it would be safe to say that the Arkansas senate seat is shaping up to be a likely pick up for Republicans.
Update – A new Rasmussen poll on Arkansas shows Blanche Lincoln in similarly bad shape. She is losing to Boozman 35% to 54%.
39 Comments
Obama too, just not yet, but soon.
Centrist is just another way of saying bad policy. Who the hell knows what the center actually is? If it was in the middle or something that everyone can at least sort of agree with it’s already been done. So they seem to gauge the center as pissing off the left and the right and ta-da you have the middle. Too bad the middle is full of corporate kick backs and higher taxes, the worst of both worlds.
Centrist is a euphemism for D corp whores. (With apologies to whores.)
sadly, it is not going to teach the centrist-seeking dimocrats a single thing.
only extinction will do that.
in MA.
Scott Brown won with about the same votes as McCain got in 2008 = 1.1 million
Coakley got 900k fewer than OB got: 1.9 million to 1 million.
It wasnt about independents switching. It was about progressives, young folks, democrats and independents who support progressives staying home.
When Rahms says: “Where are progressives and liberals going to go?”
Tell him the answer is: They wont go anywhere. They will just stay home.
Center = Do Nothing
How many people in Arkansas are either uninsured or under insured. Will Lincoln pivot or is it too late?
Even before the health care issue she was in bad shape. Her behavior specifically and the behavior of the Democrats in general have done nothing to help her. I see no action on the horizon in the Senate that could help her.
Maybe a rapid turnout of the economy but short of that she is in bad bad shape.
Will Blanche change parties and run on her true colours? Inquiring minds…
I plan on staying home and having a pizza delivered. Or maybe order a delivery from our local Chinese restaurant. Or perhaps from a nearby Mediterranean cafe. Because, you see, I have more real choice ordering food than I have in choosing a candidate. And no upset stomach and self-loathing afterward!
So she’ll be leaving her cushy Senate gig for an even cushier lobbying gig. Life’s rough for poor Blanche?
thanks for this post. i appreciate seeing it laid out with all the numbers. it’s so heartbreaking to not be able to root for our side. “our” side in this case being the blanche effect. in other cases, our soldiers at risk in iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, etc.
when do the Dimocrats move Joe to the basement two-room suite and take away his chair and chairmanship?
take away his chair and give him a beat up orange crate to work on – you know, down in the boiler room.
In a related story, Betty Crocker has sued Blanche Lincoln and is demanding her look back.
LOL. It’s very southern but better than the Texas Big Hair. :)
He works? I thought he just preened.
GOOD RIDDANCE…it is about time she gets booted. She was just awful!
She should retire and get a jump on all the others who are going to be looking for lobbying jobs.
Blanche will just get a big lobbyist job in DC probably for Wallymart, for 5X’s the cash. She’s a Corporatist whore.
Like we used to say in school: fail now & avoid the June rush.
Better yet, will she do the honorable, Chris Dodd thing, and retire. Let someone else(Bill Halter) run.
Gee, that’s too bad for Blanche Lincoln. So sad. Sure, she’s got a nice job as a Wal-Mart lobbyist lined up, but for now, i have bitter tears for poor poor Blanche Linc–
Oh, did I say “bitter tears for Blanche Lincoln”? I meant “for Americans”, because it didn’t have to be this way. Blanche COULD have supported single payer or a public option, and in doing so perhaps held onto her seat. Americans need health care and they need responsible leadership: losing seats to the GOP guarantees we will get neither, and for this we can blame the Democrats and their ghastly inability to govern.
So the Blue Dog way wins votes and Lefties don’t understand politics is that still Rahm’s thinking? Everything is going as we predicted months ago. Go Left on the issues or lose.
It already is while Lincoln is there.
Classy.
anytime
481,000 residents do not currently have insurance and 128,000 residents have nongroup insurance.
Bye bye, Blanche. You’ll be scrounging for decent health care with the rest of us, soon.
What’s the old cliche? That the only thing that’s in the middle of the road is “road kill” and a yellow stripe?
If you are going to take a centrist position on an issue you have to be ready to defend it from both sides (not simply use the talking points of one extreme and then the other) and make it clear it’s actually the only FUNCTIONAL workable solution. Most of the time the centrist position is a patchwork that actually makes the result completely disfunctional. It’s compromising for votes, plus giving out pork and making deals that could never survive scrutiny on their own.
And why should anyone on the extreme right support Lincoln when there is always someone that can out-flank her.
This is one gal that needs to be primaried with a real advocate of progressive positions who can win over the middle rather than to deceive them with arguments from the right wing.
Lincoln is now a smashed up Toyota and the Boozman will be getting behind the wheel.
I’d bet that for “services rendered” she’ll never again have to scrounge with the rest of us.
Have repeatedly suggested that the ironic thing is that Democrats came up with what is in actuality a poor bill on some misguided notion that they needed to for political purposes, when the irony is that they were only hurting themselves further by doing so.
Also, in September, it was asked here:
Conventional wisdom just might become right on this one. It will be because they didnt put together a good bill. If they had just put together a good bill, worked on selling and showing and communicating why, and stopped worrying so much about how people would perceive them and worked on properly framing that perception and defining the issues, they would have a) passed a good bill, AND b) done better in November.
Now, instead, they will pass no bill, and get slammed, because they couldnt even get a bill passed when over half the country (many passionately) think some kind of sensible reform is needed and when they nevertheless spent half a year trying to get this done, or pass something resembling the current bill, and get slammed, because they passed another large government does not address the root of the problem but adds to it never effectively sold etc etc bill.
Democrats, being presumptuous and taking for granted what people will think, including about them themselves, instead of just selling their ideas, and exposing their opponents.
Its why Fox is able to exist in its current, ridiculous, and almost Orwellian form, in the first place. No counterweight, no real clear cohesion or focus in terms of communicating to the country what fox is doing, and a vast underestimation of its role. But I digress.
Really. Dems crow that the center under Clinton balanced the budget, left us with a surplus and enacted welfare reform.
And they set the stage economically for the bubbles that ate what little that was left of our productive economy.
Is there no progressive primary challenger standing ready? If we’d like to supplant the Blue Dogs with better candidates, we need to know who they are, and somewhere to send contributions which doesn’t go via the DNC or OFA…
Blanche, it could not have happened to a more deserving gal. BTW, who is the primary challenger?
This reminds me of the saying, “you cannot cross a hole in two steps”, it seems the Dems try so hard to be centrist that they fall in that hole. Another saying that come to mind “neither fish nor fowl”. Bottom line Dems will not win by being Republican lite.
I think this is symptomatic of a general realization by Democrats across the country that having a “D” after a politician’s name does not mean he/she supports issues that benefit ordinary people. What people realize is that many, many Dems, especially in the Senate, are fully corporate-owned and controlled. Blanche Lincoln has always been that kind of dem, along with others like Diane Feinstein, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, and Max Baucus. It became obvious during the HCR sausage-making who the DINOs were and it’s time to be rid of them.
So, good riddance Blanche Lincoln(D-WalMart), and thanks for nothing. She should be ashamed to show her face in public after this year.
Just what I was thinking. I would throw in Lieberman, Conrad, both Nelsons, and Carper. Lot of housecleaning to be done. Too bad they were let in the door to begin with.