“Specter defeat signals a wave against incumbents,” the headline read above a story reporting that Sen. Arlen Specter had been defeated by Rep. Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.
That’s one interpretation. Another is that Pennsylvania Democrats (1) decided that 80 is too old to be seeking a six-year seat in the U.S. Senate at a time in our history when politics is a blood sport; (2) they remembered that Sen. Specter had been a Republican for 29 of his 30 years in office and had quite recently barnstormed the state with President George W. Bush at his side, a vision that cast a pall on Specter’s party credentials; (3) they accepted Sestak’s argument that Pennsylvania deserved a fresh face in its political lineup every 30 years or so.
Specter’s defeat by Rep. Sestak, a bright, energetic, former vice admiral in the U.S. Navy, says more about factors like these than about the big political picture.
A much more interesting election was held in Kentucky. Rand Paul, running as a tea party candidate in the Republican primary, overwhelmed Trey Grayson. Paul’s 24-point victory was a slap in the face to Sen. Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Re-publican in the Senate, who had backed Grayson and campaigned for him actively.
Paul triumphantly an-nounced that the voters had sent a clear message: the tea party had come “to take our country back” — take it back, apparently, from Sen. McConnell and other incumbents. Paul is the son of Rep. Ron Paul who ran for president in 2008 as a Libertarian and shares much of his father’s philosophy.
Paul, an eye surgeon, is a newcomer to elective politics and will face a tough opponent in Jack Conway, the Kentucky attorney general, in No-vember. That election will be carefully studied. It should provide a good measure of how broad the tea party appeal has become.
JUST WHAT the Ar-kansas primary meant will be determined in June, when Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces a run-off election to determine the Democratic nominee for the seat she holds and wants to keep.
Sen. Lincoln’s success is in doubt because she voted for the health care reform bill and other measures proposed or favored by the administration. Arkansas votes Democratic but its voters also share conservative views with many in the southern states.
Voters there, however, also are mad at Wall Street for its role in causing the worst recession since ’29. Sen. Lincoln played to that anger from her seat on the Senate Agricultural Committee with an amendment to the financial regulatory bill that would force big banks to get rid of their derivative trading desks if they want to have the government insure their accounts. While that hugely expensive re-quirement has been removed to help the bill pass, Sen. Lincoln won a lot of popular support from moderates and liberals with her campaign.
WITH DUE RESPECT to the headline writer, Specter, Paul and Lincoln don’t signal a wave for or against anything. Rather, they are three separate splashes in three separate political ponds. The political winds must blow stronger, longer, over broader waters before waves to ride to a conclusion begin to ap-pear.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
