How Popular Will The Obagenda Be This Fall?

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With her latest ad, Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) plays “Name That Party” on herself, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post writes:

Embattled Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) began her television advertising campaign today with a commercial that amounts to a defiant poke in the eye to the liberal left despite a serious primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.

The ad, which was produced by Steve Murphy and Mark Putnam, portrays Washington as a classroom full of unruly children, throwing money around willy-nilly.

“This is why I voted against giving more money to Wall Street, against the auto company bailout, against the public option health care plan and against the cap and trade bill that would have raised energy costs on Arkansans,” says Lincoln. “None of those were right for Arkansas.”

The ad’s tagline reaffirms Lincoln’s general election messaging; “I don’t answer to my party, I answer to Arkansas,” says Lincoln.

It’s an interesting strategy given the amount of attention — and money — Halter has gathered from the liberal left in the first few days of his campaign.

Polling done for the liberal Daily Kos blog — admittedly no friend to Lincoln — last fall showed her with a 42 percent to 26 percent edge over Halter in a primary matchup, a solid but not entirely secure lead for a two-term incumbent Senator.

This first ad, however, is very much a general election commercial — touting Lincoln’s willingness to break with Democratic orthodoxies for the good of the state.

Is Lincoln whistling past a primary political graveyard? Or is she simply playing the only card she has left — that of a political independent who votes her conscience not her party?

As Ann Coulter noted in 2003, because so much of the liberal agenda is toxic to the majority of Americans, all politicians run as Republicans in a presidential election — but that was before the post-November of 2008 Hopenchange MSM mantra of  “We’re All Socialists Now”, Obama is a sort of God, the second coming of FDR revolution, etc. So how’s that playing out these days? And come this fall, how many more Democrats will run away from the agenda they either publicly or tacitly supported?

(H/T: OJ)