midterm predictorama
i haven’t been paying enough attention to be able to make intelligent predictions about the results of today’s senate primaries, but i can confidently predict how they will be covered (i’d say ‘spun,’ but that phrasing implies the active manipulation of coverage by political operatives, as opposed to the much more depressing reality that the art of spin is more or less obsolete because beltway hack framing is already the operating system that the brains of political reporters run on).
if halter and/or sestak win, we’ll hear about how lincoln and specter are honorable ‘moderates’ who were hounded off the ticket by out-of-state liberal pressure groups & bloggers funding attack ads. this will be presented as the perfectly symmetrical equivalent to the purges and purity tests being carried out against moderate republicans. they will point to this exquisitely balanced rorshach inkblot of hyerpartisanship, and they will bemoan the loss of civility and the extreme ideological rancor as universal and uniform ills of our political discourse across the spectrum. the WH will have very little to say about it, but if pressed for comment they’ll say more or less the same thing.
if lincoln and/or specter win, it will be read as a move to the center as the democratic party recalibrates for the inevitable walloping in november, and a signal that the public is clamoring for their elected officials to work together toward bipartisan solutions. robert gibbs will shout it from the rooftops of pennsylvania avenue. (this will not stop the same commentators five months from now from repeating and implicitly validating GOP assertions to the effect that these moderate democrats are effectively — by virtue of the D after their names — liberals poised to reap the just anger of an electorate in the throes of anti-incumbent fever. it may or may not stop the WH from saying more or less the same thing either before or after the general election.)
just watch, it can only go one of two ways. smart reporters already have two versions ready to file for either contingency. tell me tomorrow whether i’m right.
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