Legal Commentary

Where Does Blanche Lincoln Go From Here?

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Balloon Juice, Josh Green writes:

The assumption until a few minutes ago was that Lincoln would lose and her [derivatives] provision would quietly get stripped in the conference committee that's about to take place. Now that she's won--and won narrowly, and faces a very tough race in the fall--the calculus becomes a lot tougher. [. . .] The bank lobby and the Obama administration (both oppose the Lincoln provision) may simply prove too strong and do the deed anyway. But their task got a whole lot harder. The markup conference will now get a lot more attention. That could be tough for Lincoln. But it will be especially tough for Democrats who wanted to kill her provision without suffering any political damage.

What's fascinating about Green's writeup is the failure to examine why the Obama Administration and Democrats would want to kill Lincoln's derivatives proposal. Green assumes you know -- that pols are pols and do what they do and the banks have stuffed a lot of money in the pockets of the Obama Administration and Dems. This leads to the question I ask in my title - where does Lincoln go from here? Let's discuss that on the flip.

Lincoln has a split Arkansas Dem Party, no labor support, horrible poll numbers and frankly, no viable political strategy for November. She captured a nomination that for her is worthless. She can not win in November. I can not even see a vote maximizing strategy for her.

But pols are always the last to know they are toast. So Lincoln thinks she can still win. So if she thinks that, what will she do? Try to mend fences with Labor? Move way to the right? Run against Obama? Oppose him on everythung?

Where does Lincoln go from here?

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).