By John Brummett

Until all of a sudden last week, we’d seen a run of polls showing U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln uncommonly weak, losing by several points to anyone not being Blanche Lincoln.

It was mostly pointless considering the timing, except for the small matter of encouraging the Republicans nationally to ponder pouring a lot of money into Arkansas next year, as they might.

That would be good for local television stations, who could use the help, apparently, but not for the causes of fairness, accuracy and worthy public dialogue and debate. A lot of money means a horrid October 2010 against a bombardment of superficially inane and dishonest television commercials, not all of them produced and aired by the Republicans.

These bad polls for Lincoln, from independent sources, were snapshots probably suggesting an alarming antipathy in Arkansas toward President Obama and whatever his program and intentions are perceived (most likely wrongly) to be.

And they probably revealed that Lincoln, afflicted with a certain centrist fuzziness in her rhetoric and philosophy, lacks a natural connection to, or any base of energetic support from, the state’s liberal element.

So she becomes susceptible to a double whammy, a squeeze, if her relations with the rural conservative culture start to erode through her partisan association with that aforementioned unpopular president.

That’s what seemed to be happening to her in those polls. But, after all, it’s 13 months from her re-election and Lincoln has over $4 million in her campaign treasury. As soon as she can get health care behind her, she’ll have a new chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee to exploit for contributions and good rural will.

And these Republicans who were leading her, the ones who’ll provide the final context, meaning an actual choice even if the lesser of evils — no one knew anything about them even as there was a lot about them for voters to get a load of.

So it appears that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had just about had it with all these bad polls for Lincoln. So the DSCC put out one last week showing her handily beating, by 13 or 14 points, two of these Republicans, state Sens. Gilbert Baker of Conway and Kim Hendren of Gravette.

Why anyone would pay the least attention to a self-favoring poll put out by a party’s campaign arm, especially one in which the methodology and questions were not publicly shared, is a mystery. But a popular blogger with The Washington Post — he’s not in the real paper, but on the Internet — regurgitated these numbers, and they got some play from there.

In Arkansas, a Republican blogger posted that he’d talked to somebody who said that the candidate pairings were posed only after negative factors were invoked about Baker and Hendren. Baker got sideswiped, at least, in that Lu Hardin mess at UCA and he once offered ill-advised character testimony in court for a dubious character. Hendren called U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer “that Jew.”

Why anyone would pay attention to a partisan blogger’s criticism of a partisan poll — well, once you’ve paid attention to the latter, you’re almost obliged to pay attention to the former.

Some people call this a “push poll,” whereby you try to drive the numbers. It serves one dishonest purpose and one valid one. The dishonest one is that it produces manipulated findings if, that is, you try to present them publicly as credible. The valid one is that it can instruct you in how to attack your opponent.

I suspect it was all manipulated. I therefore think the numbers shouldn’t have seen the light of day without more transparency than was offered.

But partisans dictate news coverage any more. Journalism sinks as partisanship rises. And I think the poll is instructive to Democrats about how to run against those two candidates, with Baker the one they’ll probably face.

My best bet is that both Lincoln and her generic Republican opponent are currently under 50 percent. And I don’t think we’ll know much beyond that until this health care debate gets settled and the combatants start spending money to tell us how sorry the other is.

She called us un-American, the Republican will cry. Well, at least I never testified in court for the good character of a brutalizer of a woman, she will counter.

And the drumbeat of our modern democracy will play on.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.