I can’t say that I am an expert on Arkansas politics. What I know is that the state has remained friendlier to Democrats than the rest of the Deep South. Until last year, it enjoyed a special status, with a popular Democratic governor, two Democratic senators, and a Democrat-majority congressional delegation. In 2010, Sen. Blanche Lincoln barely survived a primary challenge and then was thumped out of office. Meanwhile, the Democrats lost two congressional seats and are poised to lose another next year. Maybe the legacy of the Clintons is starting to wear off.
It seems to me that the state has now started to behave like other Deep South states, which means that Democrats are at a major disadvantage. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) must be a little worried. He was fortunate in 2008. Because the Republicans expected Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination and to have major coattails in Arkansas, no Republicans filed to run against Pryor. His only opposition was from the Green Party. Pryor knows he won’t be so lucky in 2014. He also knows that President Obama is unlikely to do well in Arkansas next year. As a historical matter, the president’s party doesn’t do well in his sixth year in office, so Pryor had plenty of reasons to be concerned about his prospects when he faces the voters three years from now.
I understand his predicament, but I wonder if he has a good plan for weathering the storm. Part of his strategy is to maintain some distance from the president and from the national Democratic Party. That’s why he was one of just two Democrats (along with Joe Lieberman) who filibustered the president’s bill yesterday to fund teachers, police officers, and firefighters. Even if Pryor had supported the bill, it would have come up nine votes short of the magic sixty needed to pass anything in the Senate these days. So, essentially, it was a free vote for Pryor. In voting against ending debate, he did little more or less than pad his record of disloyalty. I guess he hopes this will help him somehow three years from now.
But I think he’s got it all wrong. If his state is generically inclined to support a conservative candidate, they need some reason to vote for a Democrat instead. Pryor can try to solve that problem by being very conservative himself, but then he has to distinguish himself on some issues or people will prefer the more conservative candidate to the lesser one. Where better to make that distinction than on economic populism. He can be socially conservative, like almost all Arkansas politicians, but simultaneously stand up for the little guy against the big New York banks and the East Coast elite. Here was a bill that put a small tax on millionaires to put more teachers in the classroom, and more firefighters and police officers on the beat. It seems like the perfect bill for someone like Pryor to support to demonstrate to the people of Arkansas why a Democrat is preferable to a Republican. And, yet, he voted against it.
Perhaps he is looking at polling that shows that stimulus spending is unpopular in his home state. Or, maybe, he’s seeing that the president is very unpopular in Arkansas, and he wants to maintain his distance. My argument against that is that it’s all relative. The worse the president polls in Arkansas, the harder Pryor will have to fight to be reelected. When the president is making an argument that can actually sell well in Arkansas, Pryor should hop on the bandwagon and push that argument as hard as he can. Poll results are affected by how the questions are worded, and even if stimulus spending doesn’t poll well in Arkansas, taxing millionaires to fund more teachers, firefighters, and police officers surely does. Sen. Pryor should be out there “wording” the debate in his own favor.
But, instead, he’s falling in line with the conservative narrative. For the life of me, I can’t see how that helps him.
You despair, but I wonder if this isn’t all planned out ahead of time.
It’s funny to watch the names and faces change on each vote. I almost think Dem senators are playing a game here where they make sure 51 are there to keep voting for cloture each round, but somebody new gets to be the one to cast the empty no vote for their reelection down the road each time out. Instead of all at once in the beginning.
First, it was Nelson and Tester. This time, it was Pryor and Nelson.
If I’m right, Manchin will get a turn soon. But Lieberman, will as always, remain a gigantic dick. Some things never change.
I think it’s stupid. They just want to be able to say that they vote against their own party x percent of the time. I watched Feingold do that for two years leading up to his defeat. He kept voting with Republicans on all these stupid failed amendments, just so he could argue that he’s not a liberal. How’d that work out for him?
I will be happy to see Lieberman go.
Pryor is pathetic and useless.
I’ll always associate Pryor with his interview segments in Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” where Maher questioned him on some of the more absurd tenets of Pryor’s oft-professed faith. It’s possible, of course, to discuss such issues, defend one’s personal faith, and come off as thoughtful anyway. Maher’s editing may have been misleading, but Pryor came off like a credulous idiot.
Given that and my personal experience with politicians (including US Senators), it’s very possible that Pryor just isn’t all that bright.
It destroys the partisan narrative that the President is trying to frame. And they’ve done it over and over. One begins to feel that its personal, not political.
Had the President been able to let Blanche Lincoln hang out to dry and enforced some party discipline before 2010, this behavior might have been broken. I understand all the reasons that it didn’t happen, but Pryor is killing the Democratic Party in Arkansas.
It just underlines why the Occupy Wall Street movement is necessary. Both parties are seriously broken. And it’s the campaign cash and media bombing that they are afraid of.
And there is a nascent Occupy Wall Street movement in Arkansas – Fort Smith, Jonesboro, Fayetteville, Little Rock. Mostly college oriented outside Little Rock.
Have they had the vote on teacher jobs yet? That should add a few more people to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
These blue dog dems are so infuriating. Whether it’s Ben Nelson, Pryor, Mary Landreiu or even Lieberman, I still grit my teeth and am glad to have their vote on a Supreme Court nominee. Lieberman is done and I am with Kos on this one, it would be so much more rewarding to take his ass out in an election rather than letting him retire to become a Fox contributor.
The party needs to primary these folks though. Boo is right, they cannot win a race trying to outconservative some GOP crazy, they need a contrast in candidates. We need more and better Democrats in the congress. Since the deep south is so hard to compete in, we cannot afford to let open seats in places like Arizona go without a huge fight.
I’m all over the place in this post but rather than gripe about Obama not being liberal enough or whatever, give the man some real Democrats. Roosevelt and Johnson has super majorities in their day and a minority party that was not hell-bent on obstruction at all cost.
What is Pryor’s income? How much does the millionaire’s tax affect him personally? Also, doesn’t Arkansas politics revolve around Tyson Chicken? Those Tyson executives don’t want their bonuses taxed.