Eight Lessons from Tuesday’s Primaries

Eight Lessons from Tuesday’s Primaries
by Robert CreamerPolitical
Copyright by the Huffington Post
May 19, 2010 11:03 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/eight-lessons-from-tuesda_b_581675.html



Lesson #1. Bad news for Republican leaders. First and foremost, the results from Tuesday night were very bad news for the Republican leadership.



In the lead-up to the vote, Republicans set the bar, claiming that a win by Tim Burns to fill the Pennsylvania 12th District House seat of the late John Murtha would be the harbinger of this fall’s “Republican wave.” It didn’t happen. The overwhelmingly blue collar, Western Pennsylvania district elected former Murtha Economic Development Director, Mark Critz by a solid 53% to 45% margin of over twelve thousand votes. Democrats have won all of the last seven special elections for the House. The result in Pennsylvania 12th will damage the Republican “sweep” narrative that they hoped to use to raise funds and create momentum for the fall mid-terms. Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee sunk a million of its scarce dollars into the failed effort. In the Pennsylvania Senate race, former Admiral and Congressman Joe Sestak is likely to be much tougher for Republicans to beat than thirty-year veteran Arlen Specter. His image as an outsider and giant killer won’t hurt at all as he takes on “Club for Growther” Pat Toomey next fall. Of course, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was yesterday’s big loser as Tea Partier Rand Paul clobbered the McConnell establishment candidate, Trey Grayson, 59% to 35%. The magnitude of the defeat will fuel the mounting consensus that McConnell is an incompetent leader. Finally, Democratic turnout in the Kentucky Senate primary won by Attorney General Jack Conway far exceeded Republican turnout in the national “marquee” Republican Senate race. This bodes very well for Democratic chances to make the Kentucky Senate contest a major battleground this fall.



Lesson #2. Dance with the ones that brung ya. In politics, voters don’t like people who they think have abandoned their core constituencies or their core beliefs.



Sestak’s brilliant final TV commercial closed the deal on his argument that Specter had supported Bush’s Republican agenda until it served his personal political interest to jump into a Democratic lifeboat. Bill Halter forced Senator Blanche Lincoln into a runoff because the Democratic base – both inside and outside of Arkansas – thought she betrayed the core principles of the Party. That was especially true of organized labor. And Paul appeals to a motivated Republican base that feels disaffected from the Republican “elites” – people who hate Wall Street as much as they hate Washington.



Lesson #3. In primaries turnout is king. It will be in the mid-Terms as well. Any time you have an election that generates historically lower voter interest, turnout is the key variable that will determine victory.



Two factors affect differential party turnout:

Inspiration.
Organization.


In the Pennsylvania 12th CD, Democratic turnout was sparked by the hotly contested Senate primary, and by a well-organized ground operation conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Obama’s Organize for America. In the fall, Democrats must rely heavily on inspiring and mobilizing their base to win. That’s why the White House and Congressional leadership need to press hard to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform to inspire Hispanic voters and Clean Energy to inspire its younger voters. That’s also why they need to leave no stone unturned when it comes to get-out-the-vote operations.



Lesson #4. In this economic climate, populism always beats being an “insider.”



It’s almost always true that Democrats do better when they are positioned as populist outsiders than when they allow themselves to be positioned as “elite insiders.” That’s true especially in bad economic times. The Great Recession has left voters angry. The elites who allowed it to happen will be blamed. In the mid-terms, Democrats better make sure that the real culprits – the big Wall Street Banks and the rest of the “$10 million bonus” crowd -- are blamed and held accountable. If not, those who run government – Democrats – will be. Last night the candidates who positioned themselves as populist outsiders were successful. Those who were labeled as insider elites lost. Paul, Sestak, and Halter all successfully positioned themselves as populist outsiders. Lincoln would have done even worse, had she not become a champion of holding Wall Street accountable in the Senate over the last few weeks.



Lesson #5. The power of endorsements has big limits – and sometimes they backfire.



Endorsements in politics are massively overrated. They mostly matter when they are accompanied by money and troops – as in the case of the Labor backing for Halter against Lincoln in Arkansas. Specter’s material support by the Democratic organization in Philadelphia clearly kept him in the game, but even that was not enough. In fact, in the current anti-insider environment endorsements can be downright damaging. The sum of Specter’s endorsements probably did him more harm than good by branding him as the insider, Washington candidate. The same was true of Grayson in Kentucky. President Obama did what he had to do for Specter. The President had no choice but to back both Specter and Lincoln, since he has desperately needed their support for his initiatives in the Senate. But it is difficult to transfer political loyalty, and especially the personal qualities, that make Obama such an attractive candidate to a guy like Specter.



Lesson #6. All politics are personal. In the end, voters cast