With the defeat of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the victory of Rand Paul in Kentucky's Senate primary, and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln being forced into a run-off by her primary challenger, Lt. Governor Bill Halter, the conventional wisdom is what Markos Moulitsas promised us four years ago: "Activists seize control of politics," as Politico's breathless story puts it:
The cumulative results of the primaries will likely make a hard-to-govern capital even more treacherous. Politicians now on-notice about the power of activists on their flanks will be less inclined to find compromises in the center, and they barely did even before Tuesday.
This is, to put it bluntly, a bit silly. For one, as the authors concede, there was very little centrist compromise before today. Second, their argument betrays an ignorance of these candidates' backgrounds. It's hard to compare Joe Sestak, a center-left Democrat who supports the war in Afghanistan, with Paul or his future opponent Pat Toomey, both libertarians with hard-right views. As E.J. Dionne wrote Monday, the philosophy of Sestak and Specter are not very far apart. Specter was older, more out-of-touch, and mistrusted, but his views and votes are shared by the former Naval Admiral.
Meanwhile, Lincoln has forever been to the right of her party, and her challenger Halter is a Bill Clinton protege whose critique from the left doesn't even include support for labor's top priority, the Employee Free Choice Act -- he literally supports the compromise position to create streamlined secret ballot elections.
And in the Kentucky Democratic primary, a race ignored by Politico's analysis but not by TAP, the establishment candidate actually won: Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway beat Lt. Governor Dan Mongiardo. Conway, who had the support of many elected officials, two newspapers and the unofficial nod from the party in Washington, polled better against Paul than Mongiardo did and puts the seat into contention. While some observers are ready to anoint Paul a senator, he's got a lot of campaigning to do, and given last night's somewhat bizarre speech, he'd better sharpen up.
All in all, this doesn't look like a recipe for a major shift in Washington political dynamics. While activists have flexed their muscles in these campaigns, the Democratic side has hardly chosen Dennis Kucinich types -- they've found center-left candidates who can win. Republicans seem more willing to throw their lot behind folks on the far-right whose platforms contain repeated mention of the word "abolish." At the end of the day, I don't predict next year's Senate will act vastly different from the current crowd.
-- Tim Fernholz
