Word from Arkansas: Blanche Lincoln, Democratic Arkansas Senator up for rere-election in 2010, is in...(record scratch) trouble!!Looks like she'll be facing a TOUGH CAMPAIGN?! And she'll have to raise SEVERAL MILLION DOLLARS IN ORDER TO HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN?! And she's having to WATCH HER EVERY WAKING MOVE FOR THE NEXT YEAR AND A HALF?!
What's going on here?! Locusts! Famine! Boils! Down is up! Up is down! The weatherman is wrong and dogs and cats are sleeping together...IT'S MASS HYSTERIA!
Ugh. This has been the story since about December of last year. Polling numbers are usually only good if they're telling you something new. There isn't an amateur political analyst out there who doesn't think that Lincoln and her campaign manager Steve Patterson aren't fidgeting nervously about next November.
But nothing so far has changed. All of her potential challengers in the Republican ranks are rather puny at this point, able to be handled handily by a large bank account, which she undoubtedly will be able to muster at her whim.
State Sen. Bob Johnson, Bigelow's Democratic Senate President, has thrown a wrinkle into the story, but this shouldn't be altogether unexpected. There's got to be a more ambitious Democrat out there who might want to take a poke at the U.S. Senate -- Why not Bigelow Bob? It's certainly not a matter of party loyalty; that's why we have primaries in the first place.
So this is going to be a grinder in the Natural State. It will likely be that way until February. We will see if Bobby Boy really steps up to the plate against Blanche, where I suspect he would collapse under the weight of her checkbook and name recognition. Then she would face hitherto paltry opposition against the GOP.
There are three outcomes, all of which seem kind of probable at this point, verified by those same tired polling numbers we've seen rehashed and re-edited over and over again: She is defeated in a primary, she is defeated in a general election, or she will win it all.
Her bank account, name recognition and political tenacity make her a shoe-in for the last position. But those outcomes, statistically speaking, make her twice as likely to be defeated.
The result: No difference yet. Come back in a few months. Let's move on to a different subject: I don't think we're talking enough about this whole health care business, do you?
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