Oh Blanche!
by digby
John Brummet at the Arkansas news has the goods on Blanche Lincoln’s bogus claims about Bill Halter here. It’s hard to believe she’d go here too, but she is:
Now, in an attempt to court the Obama voters she’s repelled throughout the past year, Lincoln is running ads on African-American radio in Arkansas claiming she “stood with our president to pass healthcare reform.” The ad continues: “Even though the Tea Party and insurance companies attacked Blanche Lincoln, she never abandoned our president, nor you.” The ads also take a shot at Halter’s main accomplishment as lieutenant governor–creating a state lottery to pay for scholarships for college, a popular program in the low-income state. “Bill Halter keeps talking about lottery this, lottery that,” says one man in the ads. “The lottery doesn’t give me access to healthcare.” In response, the Halter campaign began running this ad: “Who is Blanche Lincoln trying to fool on healthcare?” says the narrator. “Here’s the deal: she didn’t stand up to the special interests, she worked for them. She sided with those Republicans who tried to kill President Obama’s reforms unless insurance company profits were protected. Insurance companies and HMOs rewarded Lincoln with more the $800,000 in campaign cash…Senator Lincoln, my people aren’t fooled. Bill Halter is the one who’ll stand up for us.” In addition to the healthcare ads, Lincoln has been touting her “A” rating from the NAACP, which the organization’s Arkansas chapter takes issue with. “If I had to grade her even on health care reform she definitely wouldn’t get an A,” said Dale Charles, president of the Arkansas NAACP. “She’d maybe get a C minus.”
I’d give her an “L” for liar.
She deserves absolutely no support from her African American constituents. She voted for the Senate bill only after extreme coercion and we’ll never know if she would have voted for the final conference bill. She didn’t vote for the reconciliation fix, so I’m thinking probably not. In any case, she was an enemy of the kind of health care reform that her Democratic constituents preferred and made it more difficult to pass anything at all every step of the way. She certainly does have chutzpah, though, in trying to send this message under the radar. I suppose she thinks that her Republican rivals won’t use it against her because it’s playing on black radio stations. Good luck with that.
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