Obama's Man Goes Down

Arlen Specter - Obama's man up until to the last couple of days when Obama saw the polls turn toward challenger Joe Sestak and ditched him - lost tonight in the Democratic Primary in PA.

In Kentucky, Tea Party candidate Rand Paul - son of Congressman Ron Paul - beat the Republican establishment candidate Trey Grayson.

Senator Blanche Lincoln (D) - champion of Big Business, Big Pharma, and the HMO's - may go down tonight in Arkansas as well.

Signs are not good for the Democratic Party this November.

They may lose the House and could come close to losing the Senate.

NYC Educator said a few days ago in a comment thread that the Democratic Party has lost him as a voter and he will only vote for candidates who support teachers and public education.

I have seen similar sentiments from Norm at Ed Notes and others in the education blogosphere (at least from those of us who are not best pals with Joel Klein and funded by the Gates Foundation and/or the hedge funders.)

I feel the same way.

I want to see Democrats get HAMMERED this November, not because I think a Republican-led Congress will bring better policies for education or the environment or the economy, but simply because those Dems who have supported Obama on all his corporatist policies - from the Wall Street bailouts to the oil drilling to the education deform to the health care giveaway for the HMO's - need to be sent home so they can be replaced by Democrats who support working class people over the corporations, union members over management, patients over the HMO's, and mom and pop investors over the Wall Street crooks and the banksters.

For now, it's good to see Arlen Specter - Obama's man right up until the polls turned last week - get sent down to defeat.

It is a defeat not just for Specter, but also for Obama.

Maybe, just maybe, President Accountability himself will heed the message he is going to get now and in November from rank and file Dems like NYC Educator and myself who stay home.

But it is doubtful.

We're going to have to send the same message to President Accountability in 2012 as well.

UPDATE: Lawerence O'Donnell on MSNBC just now (paraphrasing): "The White House political operation is reeling from this result tonight...so far in 2010, a White House endorsement has gotten nothing...they endorsed a candidate in Mass, that candidate lost...they endorsed Specter here in PA and worked for him right up until they saw he was going to lost...and he lost."

They ought to be reeling. If Dems lose the Murtha seat in Western PA and Lincoln doesn't win in Arkansas, it will be a trifecta of Obama losses.

Of course he'll probably blame somebody else for this mess.

Like teachers or something.

But the blame belongs to him.