The Untold Story

Written by: Levana L on May 21, 2010 9:29 AM EDT

Benjamin Sarlin at The Daily Beast gets it right when he points out:

Tuesday’s primaries may have been billed as a bipartisan rejection of party leaders. But the real winners were progressives, who exceeded expectations all over the country.

Forget the upstarts bucking the establishment. The real story line, largely overlooked in the mainstream media coverage of Tuesday night’s primaries, was the strong showing of progressives across the board.

Sarlin talks about the amount of support establishment candidates received:

Despite receiving backing from the White House, his state’s powerful Democratic governor, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, recent Democratic convert Arlen Specter went down to defeat on Tuesday.

 . . .

Like Specter, Lincoln had the support of the establishment; the DSCC and White House backed her in the primaries and President Clinton cut ads for her.

Which leads to a tremendous imbalance of money in both of these races.

Candidate                                Receipts:

SPECTER, ARLEN                $ 7,516,099   

SESTAK, JOSEPH A JR         $ 6,110,778   

LINCOLN, BLANCHE L          $ 7,159,516   

HALTER, WILLIAM A           $ 2,639,471

       (FEC: 2010 House and Senate Campaign Finance Reports)

In both races the incumbents outspent the challengers, and in the case of Bill Halter, who faces a runoff in a few weeks, he was out spent by more than 2 to 1. In spite of all that money, however, Halter did much better than expected. In the end, volunteer power made a bigger difference. In AR, for example, in the 48 hours before the election 392 volunteers from DFA, MoveOn, and PCCC contacted more than 50,000 voters on behalf of Bill Halter. Now according to Arkansas: Election Line:

In the Democratic run-off election for the U.S. Senate, the Arkansas Election Line rates the race "Leans Halter."

Clearly, establishment candidates who choose to ignore the grassroots do so at thier own peril. Sarlin:

ABC's Rick Klein described Specter's loss as a sign Democratic leaders "have not only lost touch with their grass-roots, they’ve watched them turn into thickets that can entangle even the most experienced tenders of electoral gardens."

DFA is unique in that our endorsed candidates are chosen by our members. DFA members made it clear who they wanted to support and then enthusiastically went out there and supported them.  Volunteers should take pride in the fact that your personal investment and skills went a long way against big odds this Primary season. It was really progressive people power that won out in last few days.

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Location: Burlington, VT 05403