The primary defeat of incumbent Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (confirmed by her concession yesterday) by former judge Joe Miller is generally being interpreted as another scalp for the Tea Party Movement in its assault on Republicans deemed too moderate on this or that key issue. But there’s something going on a bit deeper, if you consider Alaska’s exceptional dependence on the federal government and the past political track record of politicians like Murkowski’s mentor, the late Ted Stevens, who aligned themselves with the anti-government GOP but emphasized their ability to “bring home the bacon” via appropriations.

It’s another Tuesday, and believe it or not, there are no primaries today! In fact, the next batch is not until September 14, when seven states plus the District of Columbia hold elections. This last weekend, however, voters in Louisiana and West Virginia went to the polls, with the latter limited to a special primary election for the late Robert Byrd’s Senate seat.

Tuesday’s five-state primary/runoff extravaganza produced plenty of drama, several close races, and a few surprises — especially in Alaska’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, where former judge Joe Miller, endorsed by Sarah Palin and fueled by the Tea Party Express, ran slightly ahead of incumbent Lisa Murkowski despite being heavily outspent.

Today’s primaries range from dogs that didn’t bark—AZ GOP Senate and gubernatorial primaries that turned into snoozers—to noisy kennels of nastiness in Florida.

Florida

Florida’s Democratic Senate and Republican gubernatorial primaries were originally supposed to be snoozers, with Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) expected to win the former and Attorney General (and former congressman) Bill McCollum (R) expected to win the latter without a whole lot of trouble. Then, near the end of the qualifying period, billionaire investor Jeff Greene jumped into the Democratic Senate primary while multi-millionaire (his net worth is estimated at $218 million) former hospital exec and anti-health-reform lobbyist Rick Scott (R) jumped into the gubernatorial primary. Nothing’s been the same since then.

It’s one of the great ironies of this political era of discontent that some of the most exceptional indicia of economic inequality in recent American history are being accompanied by a populist backlash against income redistribution, even in its most time-honored forms.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, who wrote an important analysis of latter-day conservatism and it impact on political discourse in Off Center, have returned with a book on the politics of inequality: Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.

Tuesday’s primaries in Washington and Wyoming didn’t produce a lot of drama, other than a close three-way race for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in the Cowboy State. But political junkies have been staring at the results of Washington’s “Top 2 blanket primary” (in which all candidates appear on the same primary ballot, with the top two finishers, regardless of percentage, advancing to the general election) for auguries of what will happen in congressional races in November.

It’s a relatively quiet Tuesday on the electoral front, with just two states, Washington and Wyoming, holding primaries today, and no one expecting any dramatic results of national import.

Washington

Washington has an unusual “Top 2” primary system, in which candidates from all parties compete on a single ballot with the top two finishers advancing to the general election (this is the system recently adopted for future elections in California via a successful initiative). It’s important to note that a majority vote does not (as in Louisiana’s “jungle primary”) obviate the need for a “runoff” in the general election.

When you add it all up, Tuesday produced four gubernatorial general election contests—three in states currently controlled by Republicans—in which the Democratic candidate is, at the moment anyway, the front-runner. Quite a tonic for distressed donkeys everywhere.

In Colorado, The Republican gubernatorial primary was a messy affair in which the “winner” – little-known, underfinanced, and rather kooky Tea Party activist Dan Maes – will now come under sustained pressure to fold his campaign and allow the state party to pick a more suitable candidate (possibly Jane Norton), in hopes of also squeezing Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo out of the race.  If GOPers don’t pull off this gymnastic series of maneuvers, Democratic nominee John Hickenlooper will be a heavy favorite in November.

This is the busiest primary day since the June 8 blockbuster, with three states (CO, CT and MN) holding primaries and a fourth (GA) holding a runoff.  So there’s a lot of ground to cover.

Colorado

A factor in all the Colorado races is that most counties in the state went to an all-mail-ballot system this year, which could boost overall turnout but will definitely affect the timing of votes (though Colorado’s had heavy early voting for a while now).

As Congress prepares for a big debate on the fate of the Bush tax cuts, there’s an internal debate breaking out in progressive circles on how to deal with tax rates on the very wealthy, not just those currently in the top income tax bracket.

This debate-within-the-debate is being driven by two external data points: First, the fact that income inequality in the United States during the last two (or arguably, the last four) decades has especially manifested itself in the concentration of wealth at the very top of the income ladder; and second, the fact that higher taxes for “millionaires” consistently polls well.

It’s been a very busy week on the primary front, with a block of midwestern states — Kansas, Michigan and Missouri — on Tuesday and Tennessee on Thursday.  In all four states, a heavy menu of Republican primaries dominated the landscape, with a few notable Democratic tilts.

I did a reasonably thorough summary of the Midwestern primary results for P-Fix on Wednesday, so I’ll focus today on Tennessee.

Yesterday J.P. Green did a post on the Missouri “ObamaCare referendum,” noting its rather tilted character and echoing Jon Chait’s endorsement of a progressive way around the unpopularity of an individual mandate for the purchase of health insurance, as designed by Paul Starr.

But there’s another aspect of the Missouri vote that ought to be mentioned: the individual mandate that was the target of the the state law ratified by Proposition C wasn’t just a feature of “ObamaCare.” It was also a central element in RomneyCare, Massachusetts’ pioneer health reform effort. And amidst all the rationalizations that Romney has offered in an effort to distinguish RomneyCare from ObamaCare, he hasn’t repudiated his support for an individual mandate.

So let’s say you’re a Republican politician who’s been working the far right side of the political highway for years, getting little national attention other than the occasional shout-out in Human Events. Or let’s say you’re a sketchy business buccaneer with a few million smackers burning a hole in your pocket, and you’ve decided that you’d like to live in the governor’s mansion for a while, but you can’t get the local GOP to see you as anything more than a walking checkbook who funds other people’s dreams.

What do you do? That’s easy: Get yourself in front of the loudest parade in town by becoming a Tea Party Activist!

There has been incessant discussion over the last year about the size, character, and intentions of the Tea Party rank-and-file. But, by and large, the political discussion has passed over another defining phenomenon: The beatific capacity of Tea Party membership, which enables virtually anyone with ambition to whitewash his hackishness—and transform from a has-been or huckster into an idealist on a crusade.

Yesterday’s primaries in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri didn’t get a whole lot of national attention, but they produced some interesting results.

As I mentioned yesterday, MI gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder ran a campaign very much at odds with the CW that the only way to win a GOP primary is to loudly and repeatedly proclaim one’s fidelity to conservative principles and policy positions. The self-proclaimed “nerd” won handily, with 36% of the vote as compared to 27% for congressman Pete Hoekstra and a very disappointing 23% for Attorney General Mike Cox.

This week’s political menu features four state primaries, today in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri, and on Thursday in Tennessee. Since none of these states have 50 percent requirements for party nominations, the primaries will be decisive, and in many cases involving large fields of candidates and low turnout rates, nominees will head towards November without a whole lot in the way of demonstrated public appeal.

Speaking of low turnout, estimates are that about 20 percent of Kansans (a closed primary state) will vote today, with perhaps 25 percent in Michigan and Missouri (open primary states).

The marquee events in Michigan are competitive gubernatorial primaries in both parties (Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm is term-limited). On the Democratic side, House Speaker Andy Dillon, generally regarded as a moderate, held the lead for months, but seems to have lost it to a late surge by labor-backed Lansing mayor Virg Bernero. According to a survey last week from Michigan-based EPIC-MRA, Bernero leads Dillon 40-32, though the undecided vote remains high. On the margins, the Democratic turnout could be influenced by the high-profile efforts of one Republican candidate, former Gateway executive Rick Snyder, to encourage a crossover vote (Michigan allows voters to choose which primary they will participate in after they enter the voting booth).

Just the other day I was wondering if it was a sign of hard times that movies and television shows seem to be featuring obscenely wealthy people, even more than is usually the case. Similarly, it seems like there are an awful lot of people running for office this year who have personal money to burn, having clearly done very well financially even as their fellow-citizens suffered.

I still can’t prove my theory about movies and television, but according to a well-researched Jeanne Cummings article in Politico, this is indeed a very big year for self-funding candidates:

About 11 percent of the combined $657 million raised by all 2010 candidates has come in the way of self-financing — nearly double the 6 percent measured at the same juncture in the 2006 midterm, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.Of the $134 million raised by all Republican House challengers as of June 30, a whopping 35 percent of the cash came from the candidates’ own bank accounts, the analysis found. Among Democrats, the percentage of self-made donations was just 18 percent.

If such spending stays on course, the Institute’s Executive Director Michael Malbin expects the GOP challengers’ field to eclipse the 38 percent self-financing high-water mark set by Democrats in 2002. “This is or is near a record,” he said.

Anyone who has been active in politics since the prediluvian era of the 1990s can probably remember a time when a central event of every weekday was the arrival on the fax machine of The Hotline, once the Daily Bread of the chattering classes.

You can revisit those days–or, if you are younger, discover them–via a long article at Politico by Keach Hagey that examines The Hotline’s past, present and future in some detail. It certainly does bring back memories.

I know it probably seems like this year’s primary season has been unendurably long. But as July comes to a close, there are 23 state primaries (plus runoffs in, so far, Georgia and Oklahoma, and a special election in West Virginia) still ahead. Next week’s schedule includes primaries on August 3 in Kansas, Michigan and Missouri, and on August 5 in Tennessee. Most of the action is on the Republican side, except in Michigan. Kansas has a close Republican Senate primary and two competitive GOP House contests; Missouri has two big Republican House primaries; and Tennessee has a close three-way Republican gubernatorial contest. In Michigan, both parties have very complex and competitive gubernatorial primaries (including that rarest of phenomena, a Republican candidate campaigning as a moderate), and there’s another strong challenge to Democratic Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick.

In an interesting argument over at OpenLeft about the biggest mistake recently made by Democrats, Chris Bowers suggests that fighting Republican efforts to gut the right to filibuster back during the “nuclear option” debate of 2005 had truly fateful consequences:

[N]ot allowing Republicans to destroy the filibuster back in 2005 is the biggest mistake made by not only President Obama, but by the Democratic trifecta as a whole (and, I admit, my biggest mistake too). This would have resulted in a wide swatch of changes, including a larger stimulus, the Employee Free Choice Act, a better health bill (in all likelihood, one with a public option, and completed in December), an actual climate / energy bill, a second stimulus, and more. If Democrats had tacked on other changes to Senate rules that sped up the process, such as doing away with unanimous consent, ending debating time after cloture is achieved on nominations, eliminating the two days between filing for cloture and voting on cloture, and restricting quorum calls, then virtually every judicial and administration vacancy would already be filled, as well.

At CQ today, Roll Call columnist and election handicapper Stu Rothenberg has a piece today complaining about Democrats who are arguing that it was inevitable all along that they’d have a bad midterm outcome, regardless of the economy or other objective developments.

I’m not sure which “Democrats” Rothenberg’s talking about, since the only person he cites who believes the economy is irrelevant to the midterms is Joe Scarborough.