The most super of the duper
What to watch for in the Tuesday political primaries
The most super of the duper
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
The Washington press corps has decreed today to be "Super Duper Tuesday," although I strongly question whether the average American has greeted the dawn with the stirring words, "Hey, honey, guess what - it's Super Super Tuesday!" Most people don't bother to vote in party primaries, assuming they even know that the primaries are being staged. Nevertheless, attention must be paid. Twelve states have primaries today. Briefly, here's where I'm focusing most of my attention:
In Nevada, we've all assumed that Harry Reid will be roadkill in November. But today the Senate Democratic leader may well catch a break - because Nevada's Republicans seem poised to nominate, as his autumn opponent, a fringe right-wing candidate with no money and zero appeal to centrist swing voters.
The likely winner today in the GOP Senate primary is Sharron Angle, a former state legislator who sets tea-party hearts aflutter. Beyond the conservative base, however, she has big problems. Whenever she articulates her positions on issues, the propeller atop her head begins to twirl.
She wants to kill the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy (great moves, in the wake of the BP oil spill). She wants to privatize Social Security (great move, in the wake of the ever-fluctuating stock market). She wants to eliminate the federal Department of Education (a GOP stance that died in 1996). She wants to privatize Medicare (a stance that no doubt will go over great with Nevada's growing senior population). She wants the United States to withdraw from the United Nations, and she wants to bring nuclear waste material to Nevada (whereas every successful Nevada politician has fought for years to keep such material out of Nevada). She has roughly $200,000 in the bank for an autumn election (because few people want to give her money), whereas Harry Reid is sitting on $9 million.
All told, a Nevada Republican strategist reportedly admitted yesterday, "the more she talks, the less people will think she is senatorial material." If Angle wins today, the odds are strong that swing-voting Nevadans will look more favorably on Reid as the lesser of two evils.
Meanwhile, today in Arkansas, Democrat Blanche Lincoln may well become the third incumbent senator to be ousted in advance of the autumn elections. The last time that happened, Blondie was a hot band. We're talking 1980 here.
Lincoln may well succumb to a challenge on her left flank from Bill Halter, the state lieutenant governor who has been heavily bankrolled by labor union groups. Labor has long been angered by Lincoln's center-right voting record, and apparently believes (against considerable evidence to the contrary) that a pro-labor liberal Democratic senatorial candidate can win in Arkansas this November. But less than five percent of Arkansas' workers are unionized. You do the math.
And lastly, we have South Carolina. I dearly hope that no candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary gains 50 percent of the vote today, because that would guarantee a runoff on June 22 between the top two finishers. The race in America's political cesspool is far too entertaining to end now.
Please, let there be two more weeks. There are still lots of Republican strategists and lobbyists who haven't come forward to claim they slept with Nikki Haley, the conservative, married gubernatorial front-runner. There's still time for more of her fellow Republicans to slime her Sikh upbringing in racist terms. (State senator Jake Knotts insists that when he called her a "raghead" last week, he did so only "in jest.")
And there's still time for everybody to strap themselves to lie-detector machines. So far, only rival gubernatorial candidate Andre Bauer has done this. He announced early yesterday that his polygraph proves that he had no role in spreading rumors of people sleeping with Nikki Haley. But wait, we now have some new polygraph results. A local Fox News affiliate persuaded GOP lobbyist Larry Marchant to be tested about his claim that he had a one-night stand with Nikki, and it turns out that the results were..."inconclusive."
Fox's polygraph expert said yesterday that as many as three exams are typically required to ascertain whether somebody is lying. To that I say, great. Let's keep this primary season going for another two weeks, and hook everybody up. Andre Bauer even said yesterday that he would "absolutely" take a polygraph to disprove the persistent rumors that he's gay. Let's hope that Nikki Haley draws less than 50 percent of the vote today in her four-way primary. South Carolinians, it's up to you.
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The sole proprietor of this blog is on the road for the month of June. Virtually all June posts will be briefer than the norm, except on those rare occasions when posts won't show up at all. Apologies in advance for this disturbance in the force. The standard verbosity will return on Monday, June 28.
tom: I guess I was making a semantical distinction w/ swedesboromike. I was responding to his statement "The private sector jobs are the ones that pay the bills and the jobs that really count. " (which I agree with, btw). Private sector jobs that exist only through government spending aren't the "good type" of jobs that he was talking about. To put it more directly, if you are hired to work on resurfacing highway XYZ, you job is over when highway XYZ is completed. Now hopefully you are then hired to work the next construction job. The purpose of a stimulus is just that - to stimulate, not sustain. That's the distinction I was trying to make. Obviously, people hired by a private company are technically in "private sector" jobs. If the government were to sub out the census work to private companies, then the 400,000 jobs created last nmonth would technically be called "private sector" jobs - but it would be extremely disingenuous to do so.— still_independent- log, show me the newspaper article or story link where a child died from lack of health insurance? Come on. I live in Philly and do the little kids look happy in N. Philly, no. Is it from lack of medical insurance, I doubt it. It's more from a lack of good schools & housing than anything else & who has been running the cities for 50 years? Progressives. I am glad to pay my fair share of taxes, but when the govt. is the only one hiring, when govt. workers make more in the same job as private workers & when the budget deficit yearly is $1.5 Tril under this President then something has to change as it is unsustainable. Why can't the govt. cut other things to pay for the changes? You see the states now buckling under as they can't deficit spend & the stimulus bill did nothing but extend the inevitible cuts needed to be made on the local level. As Europe is moving in the direction of less govt. spending & power, we in the US still are having the discussion but rest assured you can never tax & spend your way into prosperity. It is great to move into the future, but you don't throw away the good things about the past without careful consideration. We will discuss it at all at another time then:)— NEPhilly
- NEP, start with this: http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/— PA_Dutch
- I guess the part that Polman doesn't want to tell you is that Nikki Haley is up by 20 points. And even if there is a run-off she will win that. Then the democrats will be the ones start bashing her. Perhaps Joe Biden as an Indian joke he wants to re-tell.
- NEPhilly- http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/163856/child_dies_for_lack_of_dental_care.html?singlepage=true&cat=5 Man was this easy to find. I googled 'child dies, lack of insurance'. Granted, this isn't in Philly or West Virginia. This should never, ever happen in a 'civilized' society. This may happen again, but there's much less chance thanks to Democrats in Congress. It's a little thing called CHIP, and it literally saves lives. Thank you progress for saving the lives of future cops, teachers and maybe even presidents.— Logathis
- pa, 45,000 death a year? Not even the strongest backer of healthcare reform really believes that. log, that is a pretty big stretch & it was for lack of dental insurance not health insurance? I figured there would be 45,000 stories a year for the last say 8 years or so:)— NEPhilly
- ***Another recent report, written by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O’Neill and her husband, economist Dave O’Neill, said "that lack of health insurance is not likely to be the major factor causing higher mortality rates among the uninsured. The uninsured — particularly the involuntarily uninsured — have multiple disadvantages that in themselves are associated with poor health." Those disadvantages include education level and income.*** http://www.factcheck.org/2009/09/dying-from-lack-of-insurance/— NEPhilly
You poor saps assume that the coverage before the health care takeover will be of the exact same quality as after the takeover. If you have a system that covers everyone but is worse than before have you really accomplished anything? Oh yeah we "progressed". The progression really is more important than anything else as so aptly demonstrated today. I for one want the government who brought us Katrina, Vietnam, Iraq, WTC, Oil spill etc etc etc in charge of my health care.- swedesboromike: why wouldn't Polman want to tell us that? He was just hoping that a runoff is forced - thus continuing the SC soap opera for a few more weeks. At no point did Polman say that she was a bad candidate or that she couldn't win in a general election. Btw, her 20% lead still had her at 43%, which would force a runoff.— still_independent
- NEPhilly : that was a very "tom-ish" quote you selected :) Keep reading the next few sentences. Even according the the single study you're quoting from, it DID lead to a higher mortality rate. Earlier in the factcheck article it also cites many, many other studies showing the same thing (albeit with different numbers of deaths)... Instead of quibbling over the specific numbers, which are impossible to prove anyway, doesn't common sense dictate that if someone does not have regular access to medical care, prescriptions, etc. and only gets their "free" medical care at the ER when it may be too late, that some percentage of fatalities will occur that wouldn't have otherwise? Now maybe that doesn't justiify the health care bill that was passed (which I opposed), but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.— still_independent
- still, I'll take that as a compliment:) Imo the percentage is small of people who die of such diseases anyway & the percentage is very small of folks who didn't have regular access to medical insurance & died because they didn't go to the doctor early enough. You do know that 45,000 number is hogwash & was used to scare folks into passing healthcare reform, don't you?— NEPhilly
- More evidence of the democrats' civil war from today's NYT: "But if things in the capital were not going as the activists wanted, they held out hope for change should Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat they deem too conservative, lose in a runoff on Tuesday night for her party’s nomination. Liberal groups had mobilized behind her rival, Bill Halter, in what they called “a shot across the bow” to other centrists who obstruct or weaken the Democratic agenda. As dismayed as the left-leaning groups are by Congress’s Democratic leadership, which they see as too conciliatory to party conservatives, many of them ultimately blame Mr. Obama for not standing up more forcefully to Republicans."— CD75
- So if I pulled a death certificate, in the cause of death line, I would be able to see "no insurance" written there?— Ramon
- Still Independent- eh, ok if you say so. Seems to me that Polman is trying to score political points over the bigoted comments of a primary candidate with zero chance of winning. And once the Indian-American candidate wins we'll be watching the liberals bash her with reckless abandon.
- swedesboromike : if liberals disagree with the "Indian-American" candidate, why shouldn't thay bash her? Are they supposed to mindlessly support her simply because she isn't a white male? You continually claim that racism doesn't really exist any more, and that a person's skin color doesn't matter, but then attack liberals who go after a minority candidate or politician. Aren't they supposed to be color blind?— still_independent
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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