Arkansas: Lincoln

That's the headline on a Newsweek report that attempts to explain why Sen. Blanche Lincoln is such a reluctant vote on health care legislation while representing a state with such enormous needs and, polls show, an electorate favorably disposed toward government intervention depending on how you frame the question.

UA pollster Janine Parry says something I've said. It could be that Lincoln truly is intellectually conflicted on  the issue, not merely a captive of special interests or a political coward.

"Isn't it possible that she's not being risk-averse, but that she actually really just has strongly conflicted views about the issue?" asks Parry. Perhaps Lincoln's position accurately mirrors that the ambivalence of many Arkansans, whom Parry says want to do something about health care but just aren't sure whether the current plan is the right path to head down.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln was for a public option health plan before she was so ringingly against it in her speech Saturday. Better clean up that website, Sen. Lincoln.

Again: Would Lincoln have voted for Medicare and Medicaid. Or is a public option as bad as she cracks it up to be?

Nate Silver offers some statistical evidence to back up my thinking that Sen. Blanche Lincoln didn't help herself by ultimately positioning herself as THE decisive vote on health and the focus of national reporting and interest groups. He looks to Montana, where two leading Democratic politicians have supported health care, but the one who's been quiet about it has fared better in polling. Sen. Max Baucus, out front on the issue, has stumbled.

Baucus, indeed, is not alone in this department: virtually everyone who has tried to play a dealmaker role in health care has seen their approval ratings decline, from Chuck Grassley to Olympia Snowe to Harry Reid to President Obama.

If I were Blanche's Lincoln's Chief of Staff, my advice to her would be as follows:

1. Vote for cloture.
2. Vote against the bill itself.
3. Articulate this position clearly.
4. And then Shut The Hell Up.