Politico covered President Bill Clinton’s appearance for Blanche Lincoln and essentially outlined Clinton’s argument for why Arkansans should vote for Blanche Lincoln. Here is the essence of the former President’s argument:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Former President Bill Clinton returned to his home state Friday to help a beleaguered ally and delivered a broadside against some of the most powerful interests in the Democratic Party.
“Some of the most powerful interests in the Democratic Party”? Really? What about a former President, a sitting Senator, the entire national and state party establishment, all of her PAC support, her support from outside groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, and her huge battle chest? Again, we see those with the power claim to be the downtrodden underdogs.
Using unusually vivid language to describe the threat against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Clinton urged the voters who nurtured his career to resist outside forces bent on making an example out of the two-term Democratic incumbent.
He pounded the podium with Lincoln at his side, warning that national liberal and labor groups wanted to make her a “poster child” in the June 8 Senate run-off to send a message about what happens to Democrats who don’t toe the party line.
“This is about using you and manipulating your votes to terrify members of Congress and members of the Senate,” Clinton said in the gym of a small historically black college here.
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Yet even though he lives in New York now, Clinton, who was governor here for 12 years, sought to prove he still knows how to reach Arkansans. Playing on both local pride and a wariness of outside influence, he suggested voters would be mere pawns for an agenda of party purification if they opposed Lincoln.
“If you want to be used that way, have at it,’ he said to about 200 Democrats at Philander Smith College, speaking without notes for 20 minutes.
Here’s the deal. Bill Halter would not have entered the race if three things didn’t happen in Arkansas. I stress “in Arkansas,” because that is what this race is really about.
Firstly, I have it on good authority that Bill Halter would not be in this race if we (Arkansans) had not begged him to. Quite literally, one of my friends actually got on knees and begged Bill Halter to run for US Senate. Beyond that, we gathered a group of nearly 1000 people, mostly from Arkansas, on facebook through online outreach and held events to let Bill Halter know that there were hundreds of Arkansans who felt strongly enough about him and their abandonment by Blanche Lincoln to fund and volunteer for his campaign.
Secondly, Blanche Lincoln was and still is extremely likely to lose in November. Bill Halter and many Arkansas Democrats realized this. We saw Bill Halter as our best chance to keep the seat Democratic in November. If we want to keep this seat, Bill Halter has to win the primary.
Thirdly, Blanche Lincoln made Arkansas Democrats (as well as Independents) angry. She didn’t do this simply by voting with or against the President or the national Democratic Party. The problem is that she voted against us. That is the problem here. Arkansans would not be voting her out if they didn’t feel like she had put other interests ahead of normal Arkansas working families, not the big businesses and big agri-businesses in Arkansas, but the rest of us. That is just the start.
The best example and most easily seen is her opposition to a public option. People, and you Mr. President, can make this about national groups all you want, but the truth is the opposite. Arkansans overwhelmingly supported a public option (55% to 38%). Blanche Lincoln claimed to support it until she was so far on the fringe, that she pledged to filibuster the entire health care bill over this one issue. At the very same time, highlighting the problem, her website stated that she supported a public option. She did this, I reiterate, as the state and her constituents supported the idea by a +17% margin. That poll was taken after the August town halls.
This isn’t about Blanche Lincoln and the party line. This is about Blanche Lincoln abandoning her constituents, her state party, her most ardent local supporters, and her principles (she previously supported it and her office lied to me personally on the matter) in order to either attempt to save her job (wrong move) and/or to satisfy the out of state insurance companies and other large special interest groups so that they would fund her reelection campaign. She has done this on issue after issue from health care to the environment to financial reform (voted against limiting credit card companies from ripping off their customers). I have heard stories from other Bill Halter supporters (her constituents) about issues ranging from the military to the environment where she lied to their faces before voting against them days later.
The national progressive groups like DailyKos, MoveOn.org, PCCC, and DFA along with the unions came in to support us when we needed them. Since working Arkansans were the ones to convince Bill Halter to run, we needed help to battle an entrenched establishment and an incumbent Senator with a $6,000,000+ battle chest. Sure, we here at Blue Arkansas are progressives and we agree a lot with the national groups, but we also see why Bill Halter is right for the rest of Arkansas. Bill Halter’s work for the free health clinics and the lottery scholarship show that he is willing to take action and fight the establishment and special interests to do what is right for the people of Arkansas. During the time when Blanche Lincoln was abandoning us, Bill Halter was highlighting why we so desperately needed health care reform. While the rest of the establishment in Arkansas was standing against the scholarship lottery, Halter got it passed by letting us decide.
And there we are. What this is really about is Democracy with a big ‘D.’
No one is manipulating us Mr. President, we begged Bill Halter to enter the race. It is in our best interests to elect him. If that happens to send a shock wave through the rest of the Washington D.C. establishment, all the better. They could use a good shock every now and then to keep them on their toes. Isn’t that exactly why we have a Democracy, to have the ability to challenge the already powerful in a peaceful and cyclic way?
Lincoln, smiling broadly after Clinton’s effusive endorsement, picked up where the former president left off, pleading with Arkansans not to take out their frustrations with the political status quo on her.
“My vote in Washington has never been for sale and yours shouldn’t be either,” she said.
And just as Clinton did, Lincoln suggested she was an undeserving victim of a general sense of electoral discontent– and that voters ought not to let such emotions dictate their votes.
“I was raised to learn that you do not use anger and hatred to try and solve your problems,” she said.
With all due respect Senator, we are not resorting to anger or hatred to solve our problem. We are resorting to the ballot box, something I thought all Americans understood. The seat isn’t yours, it is ours. We get to say who keeps it. By the look of things, if we want a Democrat in that seat, it will have to be Bill Halter. And that way, we will also have someone who is representing us and not the special interests.