This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, June 10, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

The elections this week may point to bigger wins down the line for Republicans, but so what?

They're only trusted slightly more than Democrats right now.

John Samples, author of the new book The Struggle to Limit Government and Director of the

Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government says if Republicans want to make inroads

they'll need to reject the failed policies of the Bush administration sooner

rather than later.

It is true that in Arkansas and the Democratic primary on Tuesday that Blanche Lincoln survived.

She faced a formidable effort funded largely by out-of-state interests, labor unions, and a fairly decent challenger.

She won big last time when she was elected to the Senate.

So on the one hand it says that an incumbent won

despite a big challenge.

On the other hand, she won by four percentage points

in a state where she's been the Democratic senator for two terms now.

So you can read that both ways.

It does suggest that as an incumbent she was in a difficult state. I think the other thing it says

though is that it may suggest that people more to the right of the political spectrum can withstand some of this anti-encumbent

sentiment.

She was ultimately attacked and faced a challenge because of her more conservative views.

But other than that, I think we had a fairly stable primary situation,

but there wasn't a lot of openings for incumbents to lose.

2006 and 94 were the last two big shifts in power in Congress. What does this election for the fall look like relative to those two elections

...