Blowout Tuesday

Blanche Lincoln beat New Progressive Bleu America/Accountability Now! candidate Lt Gov Bill Halter in the runoff for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in Arkansas last night, and the post mortems that have appeared (at Jane's and Markos's Places) have tried to market this loss as some kind of "victory" because, well, Blanche was "forced" to place "strong derivative language" in the Financial Regulation bill being considered by the Senate. So there's that. Eight million Progressive Dollars is all it cost. She wouldn't have done it without getting her ass primaried by a "progressive, non-establishment" candidate like Halter. Victory!

Horseshit.

The levels of self-delusion required by these blogospheric leading lights determined to be playahs in the game of Politics in this country is breathtaking, but when you realize that all of them are in business for themselves, and they are adding Political Enterpreneur to their operations, some of the delusion makes sense.

If they don't declare Victory! every time they lose, who's going to take them seriously?

And if nobody takes them seriously, there goes the business. It is that simple.

So Victory! it is, no matter.

And of course in the end, no matter who the Dems nominated, the Senate seat in question is widely considered to be an easy pick up for the Republicans in the fall. In other words, Blanche is gonna lose, and so would Halter if he'd won the runoff. As Markos himself says, "Say hello to Sen. Johm Boozman." Who would have beat either of them.


Given that Halter was essentially Blanche without a dress, and he ain't no "progressive," any objective person has got to wonder what the point would have been in any case? "To flex Progressive muscles!" Yeah, that's the ticket.

Nonsense.

More and more this "primary their ass!" business is looking like a racket. When every loss is a Victory! and too many of "progressives" who do get elected turn into Blue Dogs the minute they sit down in the August Chamber, we'd better start thinking there might be a systemic problem here that can't be corrected through the More and Better mantra.

A lot of us came to that conclusion a long time ago.