Reflections on Yesterday's Election

On yesterday's election day for primaries, along with a special election to fill the late Democrat Jack Murtha's Pennsylvania House seat, all of the media buzz was about the anti-incumbency narrative that is supposedly this year's "theme". And to be sure, yesterday's results were partially indicative of that. In Pennsylvania, incumbent party-hopping senator Arlen Specter lost his bid to win his first Democratic senatorial primary to congressman Joe Sestak. In Arkansas, incumbent Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln finished closely ahead of her closest rival, setting up a runoff vote there three weeks from now. But really, where are all of the other races in which incumbents lost out?

The big spotlight seems to be on Kentucky's Republican primary, where scary-looking tea party candidate Rand Paul (supported by retiring, equally-scary-looking senator Jim Bunning) easily made short work of his establishment-supported rival. The network political analysts were all talking as if this were an "anti-incumbency" result and acting as if Paul were already a senator! Reality check: the race had no incumbent, while Paul's Democratic counterpart in the upcoming general election campaign, current Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, won his race receiving more total votes than did Mister Teabagger (as did the Democrat who finished second behind Conway). Yet the only station that gave fair coverage to Conway was C-Span, which showed his acceptance speech. I have to say that I was very impressed with Conway's speech and think that he, not Paul, should be the favorite to win that seat in November. And since Paul has already foolishly stated that he might not support keeping fellow Kentuckian, Senator Mitch McConnell, on as party leader, I don't see Mr. McConnell doing very much to help him with his campaign (other than obligatory party functions). Would you?

Anti-incumbency has often been interpreted to mean "throw out the party in power". But this wasn't the case in that Pennsylvania congressional seat election, the only contest with national significance that pitted a Democrat against a Republican. The Democrat, Mark Critz, easily won this election which had been described as a "toss-up" in a previously Democratic-held district.

You can't tell in May what is going to happen in November, anyway. All yesterday showed was that places with strong challengers can topple or at least compete with incumbents. But since when hasn't that been true? So I'm left with nothing in particular to derive from the results, except that the one race in Pennsylvania should give the GOP stalwarts pause for reflection and temper their cocky presumptive arrogance about taking back the House and the Senate in the 2010 elections.