Elizabeth Warren To Wall Street: Drop Dead

[merrily]

86. It may be simply the same things that have been ailing Democrats all over the country.

IMO, that general pattern goes back to whether it's actually true that center right Democrats are more electable, as the DLC, Third Way, the Progressive Policy Institute and others assert, or whether Truman was correct when he said a Republican cannot beat a real Democrat, but a fake Democrat will lose to a Republican.

As far as Halter v. Lincoln, this may apply: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6396919

Pay particular attention to the links Schumer's comments, as he made avoiding primary challenges for Senate races official policy in 2005. Siding with the incumbent, if the incumbent is running, can be seen as simply going with someone you know won the state in the past. But siding with the incumbent is also a very good way of discouraging primary challenges.

The risk is that the damage done to the primary challenger may not be reparable if the challenger becomes the nominee anyway. That is my perception of what is part of what may have happened in the Lamont (D) v. Lieberman (I) race (the Republicans having abandoned their candidate, who was a bad one). And even that does not explain the Crist (I) v. Meek (D) v. Rubio (R) race, when it almost seemed to me almost as though Crist was really the choice of "official" Democrats. But, it may well had relevance to the Halter v. Lincoln stuff.

And, yes, I can see why that would have caused disaffection among Halter's supporters. And that is another risk the Party seems very willing to take.

My own view is that the Party should stay out of primaries, but that does not seem to be the conventional wisdom du jour.