Oh, Blanche, Blanche, Blanche

Several weeks ago we wrote about our despair over Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who was one of the key Democratic Senators who, a few months, ago almost completely derailed Pres. Obama's health care plan. We suspected, then, that Blanche had been paid off by Arkansas insurance giant, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and many chroniclers of the national political scene are now agreeing with us. Blanche's feeble excuse for not supporting Obama's plan was that "the people of Arkansas didn't want the new health care plan". Unfortunately for Blanche, though, MSNBC and other respected pollsters took polls in the state of Arkansas and found that, in every poll, 65-80% of Arkansans said that they did want Obama's new health care.
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Now, coming from people who struggled through statistics class in grad school, we can tell you that you can get any result you want from a poll, whether it's factual or not, but regardless of the accuracy of the Arkansas health care polls, the perception of Blanche Lincoln as a pocket-lining, dishonest Washington politician was set. And now Blanche is paying for her sins. Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter announced on Monday that he's challenging Blanche for her senate seat, and already, Halter has raised over $1 million dollars for his campaign, primarily from progressive groups outside of the state of Arkansas. Blanche is now in more trouble than just inside the walls of her own state, now she's been marked nationally as a "DINO", Democrat In Name Only, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants her gone.
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Today, Blanche began running a t.v. ad, and at the end of the spot, Blanche comes on and says something like, "I don't answer to my Party, I answer to Arkansas." Right, Blanche, just keep digging that hole deeper and deeper. And meanwhile, hey, don't trip over that pile of insurance company money on your way out.