I knew this would happen: As with many incumbent Democrats, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Ark. has been stung by association with the president’s agenda.

From The New York Times:

It has come to this for the chairwoman of a powerful Senate committee, a former up-and-comer in her party and onetime favorite daughter in a state whose political royalty includes President Bill Clinton and former Senators J. William Fulbright and Dale Bumpers.

She appears abandoned by voters, who have favored [her Republican opponent, Representative John] Boozman by double digits in nearly every poll in recent months. She has been forsaken by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has essentially written off her race and apportioned almost no money to it, and she has been dismissed by pundits, handicappers and operatives who are focused instead on a cluster of tossup Senate races in states — like Colorado, Illinois, Nevada and West Virginia — that absolutely do not include this one.

Mrs. Lincoln, whose come-from-behind defeat of Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in a Democratic primary runoff brought her fleeting hope in June, now finds herself very much on the wrong side of the triage that takes place in the final weeks of a Congressional campaign. This is particularly true in a midterm election in which both parties are engaged in a national chess game, deciding which races are winnable or within reach and deserving of their vast but finite means.

This beyond-hope fate befalls dozens of candidates in every national election cycle. But what is striking — and oddly poignant — about Mrs. Lincoln is the degree to which such a formidable incumbent who is, in large part, well respected by her colleagues and well liked by many of her constituents, finds herself as seemingly left for dead.

Mr. Clinton is the rare national Democrat who is popular here these days — President Obama, who lost this state to Senator John McCain in 2008, is box-office poison at this point.

As with many incumbent Democrats, Mrs. Lincoln has been stung by association with the president’s agenda.

But by and large, Mrs. Lincoln’s support for such divisive White House-driven legislation as last year’s economic stimulus bill and especially this year’s health care overhaul — which she voted for only after equivocating, upsetting both liberals and conservatives — has put her in a seemingly inescapable box.

“She can be tough, but she is wishy-washy by nature,” said Max Brantley, a longtime political columnist here who is the editor of the left-leaning Arkansas Times. “This is no year for that on things like health care. She made the worst of a bad situation by temporizing and creating a drama in which she became the star last vote.”