...turned back a challenge from the left last week when she won her primary in Arkansas over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. The White House has famously characterized the union-backed effort to defeat her as a mistake:
"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."
Maybe so. But without this pressure from the left, Ms. Lincoln almost certainly wouldn't have been motivated to sponsor a provision in the financial regulation reform that would effectively bar banks from trading derivatives. In the Times today, it says:
On Monday, Mrs. Lincoln offered to ease some of the toughest elements of her provision (Surprised? Don't be. She has to tack to the center for the general now, remember?), but not enough to assuage Wall Street’s concerns.
Under her latest proposal, banks would have two years to spin off their derivatives arms. A bank holding company could still maintain a derivatives operation — but as a separate affiliate with its own capital, not as part of a commercial bank. In addition, companies that are not major dealers in derivatives would be exempted from her ban.
Even so, the six largest Wall Street banks, which dominate the derivatives trading business, quickly indicated that they would lobby fiercely to defeat the entire provision.
Now whether or not you think that that provision is necessary (and I don't), there can be no denying that Ms. Lincoln has been nudged to the left. And even if she loses to Republican John Boozman in the fall (as many observers expect), at least Ms. Lincoln should be a more reliably progressive voice in the meantime. So maybe the liberal wing of the party accomplished something after all.
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