May 19, 2010
Voter Insurrection Turns Mainstream, Creating New Rules
By MATT BAI
Americans have been cursing their incumbents - and periodically rising up to
eject them from office - since angry Bostonians took a bucket of tar and
some feathers to their customs commissioner in 1774. Such uprisings have
become an almost cyclical occurrence in Washington, and after this week's
primaries in Arkansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, 2010 seems destined to be
one of those years.
Word has reached Washington that an anti-incumbent tsunami is roaring its
way, and frightened politicians are already trying, sometimes comically, to
put some distance between themselves and the tide. "My gosh, these people in
Washington are running the country right into the ground," Senator
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/orrin_g_hatch/
index.html?inline=nyt-per> Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, lamented this
week, despite having lived and worked there for the last 34 years.
But to suggest that this week's primaries are just part of the latest revolt
against incumbency, brought on by pervasive economic angst, is to miss some
deeper trends in the electorate that are more consequential - trends that
have brought us to an unprecedented disconnect between, on one side, the
traditional shapers of our politics in Washington and, on the other, the
voters who actually make the choices.
The old laws of politics have been losing their relevance as attitudes and
technology evolve, creating a kind of endemic instability that probably is
not going away just because housing prices rebound. Nor is that instability
any longer driven only by ideological mini-movements like
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/moveon.
org/index.html?inline=nyt-org> MoveOn.org or the tea parties, as some
commentators suggest. Voter insurrection has gone as mainstream as
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/miley_cyrus/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-per> Miley Cyrus, and to the extent that the parties in
Washington take comfort in the false notion that all this chaos is fleeting,
they will fail to internalize the more enduring lessons of Tuesday's
elections.
The first is that this age-old idea of "clearing the field" for a preferred
candidate, so as to avoid divisive primaries, is now, much like the old
party clubhouse, a historical relic. This should have been clear to everyone
after 2008, when
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> Barack Obama, shunned by most of his party's major
contributors and its Washington establishment, simply shrugged off
endorsements and raised more than half a billion dollars from his own
constituencies.
Now the Obama effect has trickled down to the likes of
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/rand_paul/inde
x.html?inline=nyt-per> Rand Paul, who beat his party's preferred Senate
candidate in Kentucky, and
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/joe_sestak/ind
ex.html?inline=nyt-per> Joe Sestak, who toppled the new-and-improved Senator
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arlen_specter/
index.html?inline=nyt-per> Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. (It makes you
wonder whether Mr. Obama and his aides really thought they could "clear the
field" for Mr. Specter, as they suggested, or whether they knew from their
own experience how wishful that was and were just bent on to luring him
across the aisle.)
A new generation of politicians has been raised with more consumer choice
and less loyalty to institutions, and they are no more likely to take their
orders from, say, party leaders like Senator
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mitch_mcconnel
l/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, than
they are to drive a Malibu just because some car magazine tells them to.
Nor, thanks to the Web, are they reliant any longer on the party structure
to raise the necessary cash.
A second, related lesson is that less affinity for parties makes incumbent
politicians less safe, generally. That's because when fewer people bother to
engage in party politics, it takes a smaller group of ultra-motivated
activists to overturn the traditional order of things.
Senator
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/joseph_i_liebe
rman/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Joseph I. Lieberman found this out in 2006,
when an unknown but jaunty cable executive named
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/ned_lamont/ind
ex.html?inline=nyt-per> Ned Lamont - and a capable army of bloggers and
antiwar crusaders - drummed him out of the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/democra
tic_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Democratic Party in Connecticut. (Mr.
Lieberman won re-election that November as an independent.) Mr. Lamont, who
is now running for governor, was the prototype for Mr. Paul and Mr. Sestak
and scores of other primary candidates this year.
A final truism to emerge from Tuesday's primaries is that the politics of
issues, the stuff of which parties have most often crafted their core
identities, has now been largely displaced by a politics of personal
conviction. In other words, Tuesday's results were less about the
ideological purging of either party than they were about a rejection of the
culture of both, a sense that Washington acts from expedience and little
else.
So while Mr. Specter may have thought he was being transparent by announcing
to the world that he was switching parties in hopes of continuing to pursue
his life's work, what a lot of voters probably heard is that his beliefs
were fungible in the service of his own ambition - a vulnerability that Mr.
Sestak exploited with one of the most eviscerating advertisements in recent
history. ("My change in party will enable me to be re-elected," Mr. Specter
said in a clip shown several times in the ad.)
Similarly, the sober-minded Senator
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/blanche_lamber
t_lincoln/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Blanche Lincoln, running for
re-election to the Senate in Arkansas, may not have helped herself much in
the closing weeks of her primary, when, under assault from unions over her
centrist record, she took an uncharacteristically populist stand against
Wall Street in the debate over regulating the financial industry. The move
appeared calculated for political gain, which, after all, is the very
impression of Washington that may be fueling much of the resentment to begin
with.
What all this probably means is that we are living in the era of the
upstart. Thirty years ago, when you needed a party infrastructure to make a
serious run for higher office, taking it to the establishment was quixotic
venture undertaken on the national level, where a
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/jesse_l_jackso
n/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Jesse Jackson or a Pat Buchanan could at least
make a powerful statement along the road to obliteration. (Recall
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/jimmy_carter/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> Jimmy Carter's indictment of Jerry Brown in 1976:
"Don't send them a message, send them a president.")
Those days are gone. The intraparty rebellions now will be increasingly
local, sufficiently financed and built around credible candidates - the kind
of campaigns that made Barack Obama president and that may yet give us
Senator Paul or Senator Sestak. My gosh, these people in Washington are in
for it now.
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> Copyright
2010 <http://www.nytco.com/> The New York Times Company
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Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared
to try, could produce and excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar
stumps and empty match boxes.