The latest Rasmussen totals for AR-SEN are brutal for the incumbent (65/27 Boozman/Lincoln), and the RCP average isn’t much better. Which is not precisely news, but it does lead to a couple of observations:
- First, given this kind of lopsided Republican dominance of the Senate race, is it legitimate to say that either the Democratic incumbent in AR-04 (GOP candidate Beth Anne Rankin), or the Democrats trying to retain AR-01 (GOP candidate Rick Crawford) and AR-02 (GOP candidate Tim Griffin) have any kind of advantage in the general election? There is a very real possibility that Arkansas is about to flip from 3-1 DEM/GOP to 4-0 GOP/DEM; which is something that hasn’t happened since (I think) the tag-end of Reconstruction.
- Second, did you know that the state legislature of Arkansas is dominated by the Democratic party, in both houses? That might not be all that true after November.
- Third, it’s currently conventional wisdom that incumbent Democratic governor Mike Beebe (GOP candidate Jim Keet) is too popular to be shifted. Maybe so. Then again, maybe not: at least some of the people showing up to flip the Senate seat and the House ones are not going to be inclined to make an exception for any Democrat.
All in all: while I agree that the Left sent the Democratic party a pretty powerful message in the Arkansas Senate primary, I’m not sure that the text of that message was the one that the Left wanted to send…
Moe Lane