Are Democrats even trying to win anymore?
Lincoln was embraced by her colleagues on the Senate floor as a conquering general returning from war. Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), in charge of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort, gave her a hug and a kiss and said, "Now we just have to raise money." Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) held up two fists and said of her primary campaign: "Fighting Wall Street with one hand, unions with the other."
And he wants to be Majority Leader...
I understand you've got a neat little club there in the Senate and that one of your own just barely staved off a fierce challenge.
My question is whether you'll similarly greet Senator Boozman when he walks into the Senate for his swearing in next January. You know, with backing the completely unelectable incumbent in an anti-incumbent year and all...
Of course everyone knows about the "anonymous Senior White House official" who said,
"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise."
Then Robert Gibbs yesterday:
"I think we would certainly agree that we are likely to have very close elections in many, many places throughout the country in November. And while the President may not have agreed with the exact characterization, I think that whether or not that money might have been better spent in the fall on closer elections between people who cared about an agenda that benefited working families and those that didn't, that money might come in more handy then."
....
"I think that everybody that supported one of the Democrats will have an obligation to now -- as the President would and has in races that the nominee that he has supported hasn't one -- now support the Democratic nominee," Gibbs added.
So they expect Labor to turn around a back a candidate that turned her back on them and just campaigned about what an evil outsider force they were?
Hey Lincoln, why don't you get your buddies at the US Chamber of Commerce to go knock on some doors for you?
Oh, you think they won't back you now that it's between you and a Republican?
I seriously don't get why the Democratic Establishment is so set about publicly trashing unions, "libruls," bloggers...you know, the people that raise money and go knock on doors for them. Even for Blue Dogs "Democrats" who then turn around and employ the ol' punch-a-hippie style of governance.
You want to know why the Democratic party has such a shitty decade before Nov 2008? Unions have been facing an unrelenting onslaught from entrenched corporate interests for decades and the Democratic party was all too happy to stand by instead of fight with them.
They still don't get that union households overwhelmingly vote democratic. They don't get that union households were 36% of the population in 1950's and are now 12% today due to this unrelenting onslaught from corporate interests.
Do they not realize that if they help unions expand, they are also locking in votes for their party? Not just votes but people to knock on doors, fundraise, message, and campaign on their behalf? Do you want to piss away 13% of the general population that you could have locked in had you helped them?
Can you imagine the furor of teabaggers if a Republican so much as THOUGHT of saying something like that about them after a "Moderate" Republican staved off a fierce challenge?
Unbelievable. Just imagine what would happen if unions sat out an ENTIRE election. For ALL Democrats.
I think Blanche Lincoln's about to find out just how key unions are to the Democratic coalition.
UPDATE: Apparently, a clarification has now come in from Schumer's spokesperson via Greg Sargent:
But Schumer spox Fallon says it was just a reference to this recent ad, in which she said:
"I won't back down to the Washington unions or the Wall Street banks that don't care about Arkansas."
I don't consider this much of a "walk back", especially in the context of all the public union-trashing by establishment figures. Perhaps it's an overreaction on my part but I think a public push-back is very much in order to send the message that we're not your whipping boys.
In the end, temperatures will cool down and unions and Dems will not "break up" as mentioned in another diary. Lincoln, however, should be left out to dry as an example to other wavering Dems.