Is she intentionally throwing the race? First, she goes on vacation during a short election runup. Then, she’s caught fundraising with lobbyists in Washington. No Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
There was a theory put forward the Dems want Brown to win so this health-care bill will fail and they can blame the Republicans during the fall campaigns. Then push the health-care bill through in the next Congress.
Again the problem for that Dim strategy is that the bill is so disliked by the public. Thus if the bill is going to fail, all the Dims throwing themselves under the bus for this bill, Ben Nelson, Lincoln, Landrieu, maybe Bill Nelson, etc will bail on the bill and it will fail by too large a margin to blame it on the GOP. If you are not going to get the second LA purchase or the Cornhusker bribe, then why get caught voting for a bill the public wants you to vote against?