by Jules Witcover

The late House Speaker Tip O'Neill's admonition that all politics is local is still worth listening to, based on the latest primary results that many predicted would clarify the outlook for November's supposedly pivotal midterm elections.

Instead, many of the votes from South Carolina to California turned on local issues. Remaining are unanswered questions about the depth of anti-government, anti-Washington, anti-incumbent rage across the country, and particularly about the clout of the tea party movement.

In Arkansas, Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the incumbent most widely predicted to be a dead duck, survived an onslaught of organized labor opposition fired by her failure to support easier union organization rules.

Ironically, an old labor favorite, former President Bill Clinton, threw in with Lincoln in his home state and was credited with helping drag her across the finish line in her primary fight with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, running on big union money.

In the other major primary that could affect the outcome of congressional control and leadership in November, the tea party folks in Nevada carried anti-Washington apostle Sharron Angle over three other Republicans for the right to face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the general election.

But with national polls indicating the tea party is losing credibility, Angle's extreme views have Reid backers declaring her nomination as a welcome gift to his reelection chances. These include privatization of Social Security, opposition to tougher regulation of Wall Street and abolishing the Department of Education, all positions that should encourage Democratic turnout for Reid.

Elsewhere, the latest primary results provided cause for considerable rejoicing among women's groups, with female Republicans winning their party's nominations for U.S. senator and governor in California. Two well-heeled former business executives, ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina for senator and one-time e-Bay boss Meg Whitman for governor, poured multi-millions of their own money into their primaries.

But California remains a Democratic state by registration, and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is leaving amid serious economic and budgetary woes in Sacramento. As both Fiorina and Whitman are now, he was a political neophyte when elected eight years ago. Both women will face experienced Democrats, Fiorina against three-termer Barbara Boxer in the Senate race and Whitman against former two-term Gov. Jerry Brown. At 72, he is seeking his old job again after more than three decades in other elective posts in the state.

In South Carolina, another female Republican striving to become the state's first woman governor, former State Rep. Nikki Haley, closed in on the nomination but must win a runoff. Local allegations of infidelity, stoutly denied, are haunting her in a state still reeling from the scandal of the admittedly unfaithful Republican Gov. Mark Sanford.

None of these primary results have contributed much to Republican strategists' hopes to "nationalize" the fall elections; that is, making the Democratic Party in Washington in general and President Obama in particular the brunt of anti-government and anti-incumbency sentiment in these states.

If there is to be any one national issue benefiting Republican candidates in November it is likely to be general public dismay over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its long aftermath. Obama has acknowledged that the buck stops at his desk. While British Petroleum and not the president is the prime villain, his early perceived ineffectiveness should fuel Republican votes more than any local issue.

In most midterm elections in the past, voters' personal approval of their incumbents or at least lack of dissatisfaction has reelected 90 percent or more of congressional officeholders. But this year polls have shown a much greater expression of voter willingness to throw a local incumbent out, whether he or she is a rascal or not: 63 percent in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

The Democrats may have expected that after the public rejection of the Bush administration in the 2006 and 2008 elections, there would not have been any great voter yearning to put the Republicans back in power only two years later. If so, they need to remember that in 1968, only four years after GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater suffered the greatest landslide defeat up that time, the voters elected Richard Nixon.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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2010 Elections: Cloudy Tea Leaves | Politics

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