Governing by Political Pressure

Matt Yglesias has a very good post on the underlying problem with Obama's attempt t governing so far:

What I’ve come up with is that neither of these are really the crucial game. What’s been missing from Obama’s approach is what, for lack of a pithy name, I’ll call “objective political pressure.” One of the striking things about the Obama presidency is that throughout his time in office not a single Republican Senator has been in serious fear that he or she is going to lose her seat in 2010. That was true even when Obama’s approval ratings were in the high-sixties. And it’s true even though Obama won a number of seats represented by Republicans.
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The Obama/Baucus theory of writing a bipartisan health care bill seemed to basically amount to “have a lot of meetings with Chuck Grassley.” A different theory would be “have Tom Vilsack run against Chuck Grassley with a nice war chest so Grassley feels it’s in his interests to strike a deal.”

One can think of a number of states where this would be helpful - Iowa definitely. Maine, which has gone Democratic in the last 4 or 5 presidential cycles (and where Collins or Snowe could be pressured). Delaware. This is also applicable to conservative dems, although you have to pick your challenges with care. FDR in 1936 tried to purge conservative/obstructionist Dems from the Senate and failed miserably. A senator like Ben Nelson, in deep-red Nebraska, is significantly more popular than Obama or the generic democratic party, and only stays elected by running on the theme that he's "not really a Democrat". An attempt to primary Nelson would at best lead to a victory for the primary candidate (who would then go down in flames in the general) or would maybe just irritate Nelson so that he's less interested in any of Obama's other priorities (or alternately jumps ship to the GOP).

This kind of pressure work if used judiciously. Arlen Specter was a moderate Republican, and I would have expected him to be a moderate-to-conservative Dem when he switched parties. However, because he's being primaries by Joe Sestak, he's now a pretty liberal Dem. Kirsten Gillibrand was a conservative House member, who has become much more liberal as a Senator, partially because of the threat of primaries from the left. In states that are fairly liberal, or states that Obama won (like Indiana), it's reasonable to think that the threat of a viable primary opponent might make the Evan Bayhs of the world a bit more willing to play ball.