Primary Voters Rebel Against Establishment
The mood of the electorate is, primarily, anti-establishment, and rank-and-file Dems may be every bit as engaged as GOPers, voters proved on Tuesday night.
Starting with PA, Rep. Joe Sestak (D) did not simply defeat the party-switching, 5-term Sen. Arlen Specter (D). He also toppled the chosen candidate of Pres. Obama, VP Biden, Gov. Ed Rendell (D), Sen. Bob Casey (D), '04 PRES nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the PA Dem state party and even the SEIU.
In other words, Specter had all the establishment and institutional support he could gain. That suggests Sestak operated from the complete opposite spectrum, drawing his support entirely from netroot liberals and rank-and-file PA Dems.
During his victory speech, he used rhetoric similar to that of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) after he won the MA special election over AG Martha Coakley (D) earlier this year.
Sestak called his victory "a win for the people, over the establishment, over the status quo, even over Washington, D.C."
"I will never forget that it was the people of Pennsylvania that made it happen tonight," he added.
In KY, ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R), backed by the Tea Party, walloped Sec/State Trey Grayson (R). Outgoing Sen. Jim Bunning (R) backed Paul, while the vast majority of the KY GOP establishment stood with Grayson. Paul's victory was similar to Sestak's in PA: he went up against the establishment and won. And his rhetoric sounded as anti-establishment as Sestak's.
LG Bill Halter (D) forced a runoff with Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) by holding her well under 50%. Lincoln, like Specter, had the backing of Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton, Sen. Mark Pryor (D) and 2 of the state's House members. Unlike Sestak, however, Halter won the backing of labor and traditional liberal interest groups while also receiving help from the liberal netroots.
On the other hand, Lincoln and Halter both received a healthy amount of "a pox on both your houses" votes against them as farm loan originator D.C. Morrison (D), who vowed to support the GOP nominee if he was unsuccessful, received double digit support.
At debates, Morrison debated like a GOPer, coming off as a strong abortion opponent, anti-government spending champion and a Fair Tax supporter. The thousands of votes for Morrison should signal to Dems that there is a segment of their own base that is upset enough to back top-tier choices; that could suggest unity problems in the fall.
That does not mean GOPers should be rejoicing though. In AG Jack Conway's (D) narrow win over LG Dan Mongiardo (D), the losing candidate actually pulled in more voters than Paul despite the GOP primary's national attention. Just to show that's not an abnormality, the Dem primary in AR received much more attention than the GOP primary, which Rep. John Boozman (R) led. Dems turned out by massive margins over GOPers.
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