I think we should get out of the habit of calling corporate Dems "centrist" and "moderate". That's how they want to be perceived, but that's not who they are. Their political posturing does not matter; whose interests they serve does. When the media or reasonable, moderate, grown-up Dems in the rank-and-file accept the posturing as substance, they show they don't know they are being fleeced by the corporate-Dem long con, and they make victims of us all. Bill Clinton was/is the master of this game; Arkansans were merely his first victims. But it would seem from the results last night, Arkansan Dems haven't learned from past mistakes, but then neither have most of the rest of us. And so it continues.
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Update from the Washington Post:
LITTLE ROCK — For all the millions that both sides spent on the bruising Arkansas Senate Democratic primary race, Yvonne Thomas admits she went to the polls not having much of a sense about the candidates.
What she did know, and what turned out to be the only thing that mattered in her decision to cast her ballot for the embattled incumbent Blanche Lincoln, was this: "Obama wanted us to vote for her," said Thomas, who is African American. . . .
The black vote "was definitely something we had to pay close attention to," said campaign manager Steve Patterson the day after Lincoln's victory.
And while the campaign has not yet broken down the results by precinct, the effort appears to have paid off.
On Tuesday, Lincoln beat Halter in all but one of the Arkansas counties with the largest African American populations, said Janine A. Parry, director of the Arkansas Poll; by comparison, in the May 18 primary, he took two.
"Lincoln did very well in those counties, despite the efforts by Halter and the unions to really court black voters," Parry said. "In a race this tight, that kind of activity makes a difference."
(h/t Greenwald)
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From a commenter at Hullabaloo:
Come on, everyone. Obama is presented with a historic opportunity here and I don't think he'll miss it. He has the potential to disenchant an entire generation of young people through four years of cowardly, non-confrontational kabuki dancing with destructive corporations and insane conservatives. . . .
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