Pay No Attention To The Quack Behind The Curtain

Is there a doctor in the house?

A real doctor?  

Okay, Mehmet Oz is a real doctor, but, given his embrace of pseudoscience and alternative medicines, it's a wonder he hasn't lost his license.  He also proved in his U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania that he's as good a politician as he is a doctor, claiming that carbon isn't so bad when it's only four-one hundredths of a percent of the partleices in the air and finding no fault in extending the Second Amendment to not-so-well-regulated militias. His incompetence as a doctor and his incompetence as a public servant coincided when he suggested that hydroxychloroquine could cure COVID.

And, just to show how extreme he isn't ("I'm a moderate!"), he attended a rally just before the election with Donald Trump and failed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Douglas Mastriano, two guys not known for moderation.

CNN's Jake Tapper, who grew up in Philadelphia, said that knowing a thing or two about Pennsylvania politics, he could not imagine Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman being a viable contender.  He obviously knew absolutely nothing about Mehmet Oz. 

Fetterman Does The Oz

John Fetterman bombed completely in his one and only debate with Dr. Mehmet Oz in the U.S. Senate election campaign in Pennsylvania.  Or so you might think after reading headlines like this one from the Associated Press:

Fetterman struggles in Senate debate against Oz after stroke

Or how about this one from the New York Times?

Fetterman’s Debate Showing Raises Democratic Anxieties in Senate Battle 

Here's one from Politico! 

Fetterman’s debate performance prompts Democratic handwringing 

And from NBC News . . .

Fetterman's debate performance has Democrats on edge in crucial Pennsylvania Senate race 

Really!

Listen, people . . . Democrats are worry-warts by nature.  You'd be, too, if your party kept losing one or both houses of Congress two years into the administration of a President of your party.  You'd certainly be nervous if the opposition party nominated a telegenic celebrity to run against your guy.  And you'd certainly wring your hands knowing your best issues are the issues voters care about the least.   

To play up Fetterman's struggles in Tuesday night is to suggest that no one knew that Fetterman was recovering from a stroke.  He made it clear that no one should expect him to do as well as Dr. Oz because of what he called "the elephant in the room" - not Oz's wife but the issue of his health, which Fetterman's doctor - unlike Oz, a practicing doctor - says is good and improving every day.   So they poor guy flubbed a bit on the fracking issues.  Big deal.

As for Oz, who owns nearly a dozen homes and none of them in Pennsylvania (a few of them are in Turkey), he showed about as much intelligence about abortion as he does toward diet supplements. He proposed that abortion rights should not be decided on by the federal government by "women, their doctors, and local political leaders" . . . as if local political leaders had anything resembling the medical expertise Oz allegedly has.

Oh yeah, if Fetterman is finished, why did he rake in half a million bucks after the debate?

Chill out, Dems, you should do just fine in Pennsylvania.

It's states like Nevada and Georgia, where Democrats actually hold those seats up for election as opposed to the open GOP-held seat in Pennsylvania, that you should worry about!

(P.S. I was only kidding about Oz's wife Lisa, I'm sure she's a lovely person.)

Playing With Fire

Boy, did I call the U.S. Senate Republican primary in Pennsylvania or what?  The race between Mehmet Oz and David McCormick is still too close to call, and it may not be decided for days.  Kathy Barnette wasn't even much of a factor.  But as entertaining as all that is, I must divert your attention to something far more serious that came out of the Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary.

On the Republican side, State Senator Doug Mastriano won the nomination, while Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is the Democratic candidate.  Mastriano is a dangerous right-wing pro-Trump ideologue who was instrumental in bringing protesters to Washington on January 6, 2021 to demonstrate against the electoral vote count for the Presidency to help Trump stay in office.  He's also been subpoenaed by the January 6 House committee over his role in the demonstration.  The Shapiro campaign actually sent out flyers and ran TV ads to play up Mastriano because it figured that he was the easiest Republican gubernatorial candidate to defeat.

I can only draw one conclusion from this:  Democrats are incredibly stupid.  

Doesn't anyone remember how President Carter's 1980 re-election campaign wanted Ronald Reagan as the Republican opponent because the Carter campaign thought he was unelectable?  Didn't I bring up just recently that Hillary Clinton played up Donald Trump to ensure his nomination for President by the Republicans because she thought he'd be easy to defeat?  And, like Hillary with the Presidency, Shapiro was so formidable in his bid for governor of Pennsylvania that potential Democratic gubernatorial candidates decided not to run.  Unlike with Hillary, Shapiro had no opposition whatsoever.  His election to succeed term-limited, outgoing governor Tom Wolf is seen as - shhh!  - "inevitable."

Yeah, right.  Shapiro is playing a dangerous game.  Mastriano has a chance as long as Pennsylvania voters, like votes in other states, are dissatisfied with the way things are in the country, and polls show that they're not only dissatisfied, they're disgusted.  And they blame Democrats because they are the ones in power, including the leadership of Pennsylvania.  But if Mastriano wins the Pennsylvania governorship, he'll use the levers of power to ensure that Pennsylvania voters, if they vote for the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, will have their choice overturned by a Republican Secretary of State (secretaries of state serve at the pleasure of the governor in Pennsylvania, not elected by the people) and a Republican legislature (the GOP has been successful in keeping the Pennsylvania legislature under their control), who will send electoral votes for the 2024 Republican presidential candidate to Washington to be tallied on January 6, 2025. 

As Lawrence O'Donnell noted this past week, Pennsylvania was where American democracy was started, and now it could be the place where American democracy ends.

Keystone Kops

Crazy things are going on in today's Pennsylvania primary elections.  On the Republican side, a racist black female conservative - she sounds like a Jerry Springer guest - has thrown a monkey wrench into things in the Senate nomination contest, while on the Democratic side, a tough guy with bad fashion sense and a heart of gold could beat a mainstream Democrat for their party's U.S. Senate nomination.

Kathy Barnette has surged in the polls for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania for the state's open seat, mainly for being farther to the right than even Donald Trump, bashing Muslims and gays while using her own circumstance - she's the result of her mother's rape - as an argument against all abortions.  Trump likes her and thinks she has a future but doesn't think she's ready for prime time now.  His choice is New Jersey resident (shh! - don't tell anyone! 😀) Mehmet Oz, a daytime TV show who says he's a doctor, though hedge-fund manager David McCormick is running a close race with him and could easily win the nomination by being more like Trump than Oz.  Now Barnette has made it a three-way tie in the polls, which means the election results could be unavailable for days.

On the Democratic side, Conor Lamb, a moderate congressman from the Pittsburgh area who looks so much like a senator that he could get away with wearing a toga, is well behind in the polls, with Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a Bernie Sanders-style progressive so causal he campaigns in sweatshirts and gym shorts, in the lead.  Lamb, a former Marine and a former assistant U.S. attorney,  has a dream candidate's resume in his favor . . . and that's all.  Pennsylvania Democrats have decided that a safe choice is no longer desirable, simply because they believe that a Senator Lamb could go to Washington and fail to get anything done because of the way the Senate "operates" these days.  Fetterman is seen as a fighter who will fight for core Democratic values.  Lamb is seen as someone who lives up to his surname.  

Independent commentator and Pennsylvania resident Michael Smerconish worries that Pennsylvania voters will be turned off in the fall by the possibility of extreme Senate candidates in a state where only registered party members can vote in primaries and independents have to stay home, and some Republicans are looking forward to a potential Oz-Fetterman race, thinking Oz can win such a match because of middle-class familiarity with the not-so-good doctor.  I'm not sure about that. Fetterman is a working-class hero who always talks about how blue-collar voters and the middle class constantly get screwed by the system, making him a populist at a time when populism is, well, popular.  He can sell progressive populism because he's a regular guy, not some coastal intellectual or some social-media-happy showhorse.       

Fetterman has one thing against him.  He suffered a stroke a few days ago.  How that plays into today's voting remains to be seen.  One thing I'd like to note; former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley has supported both Fetterman and Lamb in earlier elections, Fetterman for his previous U.S. Senate run and Lamb for his first U.S. House run.  O'Malley is neutral this time, mainly because he can't be bothered with any political campaigns other than his wife's bid for Maryland Attorney General.  

The gubernatorial primary is more straightforward.  Far rightist state senator and 2020 election result denier Doug Mastriano is a shoo-in for the Republican nomination while Pennsylvania Attorney Josh Shapiro is running for the Democratic nomination unopposed.  Both sides agree that Shapiro will likely win the governorship in a landslide in November if Mastriano is his opponent. 

Trump Can Still Win. NOT!

 Some people just won't take no for an answer.

Donald Trump, who still can't believe that he lost to Joe Biden - the same Joe Biden who accidentally appropriated a British politician's' life story in his first bid for the Presidency and once referred to Franklin Roosevelt addressing the nation on television from the White House after the 1929 stock market crash - is still contesting the election after nearly a month since Biden was declared the winner.  When he got a recount of votes in two countries in Wisconsin, Biden ended up getting more votes to add to his statewide popular victory.  Trump then sued to get 20,000 ballots in Wisconsin thrown out after the results were certified.  He did that even as Arizona certified its results for Biden.  After failing to get thousands of votes thrown out by a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania, his lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.  No such appeal has since been filed.

And now that Georgia's presidential vote has been counted thrice and certified, Trump is suing that state and complaining about how Republicans there have run the election, raising the possibility that Republicans in Georgia won't come out to vote in the U.S. Senate double runoff in January because they don't trust the system - because Trump told them not to trust it.

This all prompted Gabriel Sterling, prompting a Republican electoral official in Georgia, to tell Trump to cut it out or someone could get hurt by some reactionary nut out to take action against GOP "traitors" who won't help Trump overturn the election - an election that even Attorney General William Barr says was free of mass voter fraud.  This puts him in concurrence with Chris Krebs, the former Trump Administration cybersecurity official who got fired for saying that the election was safe and secure.  Even Lindsey Graham is telling Trump to put up or shut up in regard to offering proof that the election was stolen.  And yet Trump went online for over 45 minutes to talk about how there was fraud, and no one cared a twit about a word he said.   

You think it was bad that Trump lawyer Joe DiGenova saying that Krebs should be executed (and Krebs is looking at suing him)?  Consider the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn calling for martial law to allow the election to be done over.

Give it up, Donald - haven't you done enough already?  

Biden's Fossil-Fuel Fumble

So how did the last debate go?  Joe Biden presented himself well by showing empathy and knowledge regarding COVID-19, racial justice, and immigration.  Trump was more restrained and civil, meaning that he lied through his teeth quietly.

Biden did leave one wrinkle, though.  He opened himself up to an issue that Trump can use against him in the few remaining days in the presidential campaign.  And it's not his son Hunter.  Biden reiterated his opposition to ending hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas from the ground (though he opposes allowing it on federal land) but insisted the he wants to see it phased out while making a transition to cleaner energy.

"Oh, transition," Trump said, with a tone suggesting sarcasm.  "That's a big statement."

And it could be a big f---in' deal, to cop a phrase Biden once used.  Trump went on to say that Biden's stand on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," would be dangerous for the economy.

"Because basically what he’s saying is he’s going to destroy the oil industry," Trump continued.  "Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?" 

Here Biden let himself open to charges - charges that will continue to the end of the campaign - that his energy policy will cost oil workers and gas workers their jobs in those states, especially Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for Biden.  Bear in mind that Pennsylvania is the the state where the American oil industry began in 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States.  Fossil-fuel development is a hydraulically fractured keystone in the Keystone State.  And if Trump succeeds in getting enough oil workers and gas workers to doubt that Biden's policy is good for them - even though Biden would help them get new and better-paying jobs - that means that just enough voters in Pennsylvania could tip the state to Trump and possibly give him the Presidency again.

Biden not only supports a careful transition to cleaner energy, he supports ending tax subsidies for the oil companies.  Which would make gasoline more expensive.  Which would mean we'd have to buy smaller cars - like this Volkswagen Polo, which is currently unavailable in America.

Not surprisingly, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  But most Americans, who consider cheap gasoline a birthright, would.  Expensive gasoline means that people would have to give up their SUVs.  You can imagine a conservative columnist saying, "First our guns, now our sort utility vehicles!"  (Actually, I don't have to imagine it - Cal Thomas wrote that back in 1998.) And don't forget pickup trucks.  The Ford F-150 is America's bestselling motor vehicle, and Chris Matthews, back when he was covering the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign before he was forced into early retirement, said that no Democratic presidential candidate should dare make anyone think he or she would come for their F-150s. Electric vehicles?  Please.  The sort of swing voters Biden and Trump are competing for dismiss electric cars as wimpish, namby-pamby appliance cars for self-righteous, latte-sipping, foreign-film-loving white-collar bourgeois liberals.   

Some folks think Trump's hardline pro-fracking stance may not help him much out of concern for the environment, as this Daily Beast column suggests.  Maybe.  But when you remember that the election results in Pennsylvania, like other swing states such as Michigan, Florida and possibly some other state that doesn't require a front license plate for your Jeep Grand Cherokee, could be decided by a couple thousand or even a couple hundred votes, Trump doesn't have to reach every voter to win.  Just a very small bunch of them.

Battleground Bungle

Poor Donald Trump.  He's long had the ability to travel to election-battleground states that Joe Biden has lacked, but he doesn't seem to get any mileage out of the visits to such states that he's made this month.

In the first full week of May, Trump toured a factory in Arizona making N95 masks to fight COVID-19 while not wearing a mask himself.  As he toured the factory, Guns N' Roses' 1991 cover of Paul McCartney and Wings' "Live and Let Die," the theme song for the James Bond movie of the same name, blared on the loudspeaker.

Biden is ahead of Trump by seven percentage points in Arizona in one poll.

A week later, at a protective-equipment warehouse in Pennsylvania, Trump - again, unmasked - said that testing, a tactic to fight the virus that theoretically could reduce the need for masks, is "overrated."

Biden is ahead of Trump by nine percentage points in Pennsylvania in one poll.

Last week, in Michigan - you already know about this - Trump praised Henry Ford's bloodlines, ignoring the anti-Semitic history of the founder of the car company now run by his great-grandson, the same company now getting rid of fuel-efficient cars in America to push more pickup trucks an monster wagons - after getting into a fight with the state's governor and secretary of state, both women, over mail-in voting.

Biden is ahead of Trump by six percentage points in Michigan in one poll.

This past Wednesday, Trump traveled to Florida to witness the historic launch of the SpaceX rocket ship to send astronauts to the International Space Station.  The launch was called off due to bad weather.  The SpaceX launch was achieved successfully yesterday, and Trump did attend, but getting it right the second time isn't the same thing as getting it right the first time.  Also, Trump used the occasion of the launch to lash out at "anarchists" in the civil-rights protests of the past week.

Biden is ahead of Trump by five percentage points in Florida in one poll.

Oh, this ever-changing world in which we live in . . .. :-D

Out Like a Lamb

It took awhile, but the vote in the special election in Pennsylvania's Eighteenth U.S. House District is officially in, and Democrat Conor Lamb (below) has won.  His victory, however narrow, is an embarrassment to Trump, who carried the district by 20 points.

Lamb ran on local concerns and economic issues, meaning that he distanced himself from the national party and its establishment leaders.  In other words, he ran talking about the real concerns of the voters.  No identity politics, no "cultural" issues, none of that stuff, just the basic worries about jobs, the economy, education, infrastructure, and health care.  Martin O'Malley's Win Back Your State PAC, which discourages Democratic candidates for office from talking about Trump, backed him, and Democratic strategist Lis Smith said that Lamb's victory shows that Democrats can win Republican areas by running on local issues and not on the issues of the coastal elites.  Lis Smith, by the way, is a veteran of Martin O'Malley's presidential campaign.

I wonder how much Democrats will learn from this win.  They'll probably keep pushing Trump as an issue to get out the vote for the midterms but miss the point of Lamb's victory - responding to voters.  Even if Democrats don't nationalize the midterms, the Republicans might, and Tom Perez at the Democratic National Committee may not be well-equipped to counter such a strategy.  But the victory of Lamb, who will run for a full House this November in a newly redrawn district thanks to a court-ordered redistricting due to gerrymandering, has been a major wake-up call for the Republicans and a sign that the wave waiting to wash them out of power in November is in fact a tsunami.  The Democrats now know how to win. All they have to do is follow through.             

More Politics As Usual

Some quick observations of what passes for political discourse in America these days. . . .

President Obama has started targeting House Republican leader John Boehner in his campaign speeches for the Democrats, now that it's finally become apparent that he can't just ignore Republicans in Washington the way they're ignored in Chicago. Some have criticized Obama for personalizing the midterm elections by trying to make Boehner that bad guy when you have folks in the House like Mike Pence of Indiana and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota who are beyond bad. But Boehner would be Speaker of the House if the Republicans were to take control, and he'd have more power than Pence or Bachmann, so what's Obama supposed to do - bash the underlings in the House Republican caucus and ignore the naysayer at the top? Obama's new strategy may not reverse Democratic losses, but it could stem them.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, Joe Sestak is learning how many voters are turned off by the liberal views he espouses, as polls show him consistently behind Republican Senate nominee Pat Toomey. Although Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a Democrat, likes and respects Toomey, he know s that the "fruit loops" (to borrow one of his own phrases) in the Republican party will control the agenda if they take back the Senate, and as reasonable as Toomey is, a Senator Toomey wouldn't be effective in a Republican caucus guided by loonies. Rendell hopes to make this clear in his efforts to help Sestak, and he believes Sestak can win if a) enough voters realize the threat to their economic interests a Republican Senate would bear and b) turnout in the Philadelphia area is up tremendously. Voters in the central and northern parts of the state just aren't interested in Sestak's agenda.

Meanwhile, Ed Schultz is helping Republican David Vitter in his bid to win a second term as a U.S. Senator from Louisiana. How is the progressive Schultz doing this? Well, you see, every time Schultz announces on his show his intention to bring up the subject of Vitter's disgusting sex scandals, his idea is to address it in the Rapid Fire Response segment of his show, where he asks a liberal pundit and a conservative pundit for their opinions on the subjects. Twice he's meant to ask his panel about Vitter; twice he ran out of time before he had the chance because discussion on his other chosen topics for that segment ran too long. As much as I would like to hear right-wing pundits like Heidi Harris or John Feehery defend David Vitter in that segment, it's obvious that Schultz has to devote a longer, more detailed account of Vitter's crimes elsewhere in the show, even if this means no conservative commentary in Vitter's defense. Because sometimes, as Edward R. Murrow once said, there is no other side of the story. And no one can excuse Vitter for his sins. Note to Ed Schultz: Get Charlie Melancon back on your show immediately.

Keystone Kaper

Joe Sestak, the Pennsylvania congressman who recently upset incumbent U.S. Senator in the Democratic Senate primary this spring, is the poster boy for the progressive movement's insistence that the best way to get liberal policies enacted is to elect truly progressive Democrats, rather than stand by establishment moderates like Specter or Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln. Sestak beat a White House-back incumbent Democrat based on the passion of liberals to get things done on their agenda, not a corporate Washington agenda.

Well, it might not work out so well. Polls have consistently shown Sestak (above) and economic arch-conservative Republican Pat Toomey in a dead heat, but one poll has shown a Toomey surge. Sestak's own internal polling shows Toomey ahead by two points - ahead within the margin of error, perhaps, but still ahead. As Philadelphia talk radio host Michael Smerconish noted, it's pretty embarrassing to be behind in your own internal polling, but the Sestak campaign has made a point to demonstrate how Toomey lead is marginal enough to keep the race competitive. Senator Specter, who despises Toomey, has pledged to help Sestak keep the seat in a Republican column that Specter himself abandoned.

But here's the problem. Consider these Senate races. Sestak is running strong in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, progressive Democrat Elaine Marshall is putting up a spirited fight against Senator Richard Burr in North Carolina. In Iowa, Democrat Roxanne Conlin hopes to put Senator Charles Grassley's political career before a death panel of voters. The most recent polls give the Democrats anything resembling a chance only in Pennsylvania and suggest that picking off incumbent Republican senators elsewhere is a pipe dream. And if present trends continue, Pennsylvania may be lost.

So I have just one question. If progressive candidates are what the Democrats need to hold the Senate, how come so many of them aren't progressing with the voters?

Still, you have to give Sestak credit for his efforts, as this New York Times Magazine article shows.

Primary Election Fallout: May 2010

Many pundits have found an anti-incumbent trend in the voting in yesterday's primaries for U.S. Senate seats. Arlen Specter, who has served five terms as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, was denied the opportunity to seek a sixth term as a Democrat, the former Republican losing to Delaware County congressman Joe Sestak. Meanwhile, the strong showing of Senate candidate D.C. Morrison in Arkansas forced Senator Blanche Lincoln in a runoff with Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter scheduled for June 8. Lincoln got the most votes but was denied a majority. In Kentucky, establishment Republican Senate candidate Trey Grayson was defeated by eye surgeon Rand Paul, son of Texas congressman Ron Paul and a darling of the Tea Party movement. Neither President Obama nor Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell have been able to get any of their chosen candidates elected or re-nominated recently.

The mainstream media are likely to focus on the strength of the Tea Party movement in getting one of their own nominated to run for Senate, and they are already saying that Democrats are in trouble because of the anti-incumbent sentiment, but they're missing a lot if they focus on the Tea Party exclusively. More Democrats voted in Kentucky's Democratic Senate primary than in the Republican primary than Republicans in the Republican primary, which stands to help Jack Conway, the Democratic nominee. Defeated Democratic candidate Dan Mongiardo, who came very close to winning, demanded a recount between himself Conway, but changed his mind and conceded. Though Rand Paul believes he can win in a state where Obama is unpopular, some of his proposals - like repealing civil rights laws and the Americans With Disabilities Act - might make him, uh, hard to relate to. The success of Joe Sestak suggests that people want a candidate far more progressive than the Democratic establishment has offered. Meanwhile, in Arkansas, Lincoln is running scared against a populist upstart who has support from unions, and this is in a right-to-work state.

The anti-incumbent trend is likely to snag at least as many Republicans as Democrats. Republican senator Richard Burr of North Carolina is vulnerable, for example. and if Democrats are associate with the sluggish economy and bound to fail, how does that explain Democrat Mark Critz's success in a special election, winning the House seat of the late John Murtha in a Pennsylvania congressional district carried by John McCain in the 2008 presidential election?

Ed Schultz believes that liberal Democrats will be energized by the likes of Sestak and possibly Halter on their respective state ballots in November, and this could only help elect more progressives and help Obama pass his agenda. It's hard to argue with that analysis, especially given the unexpected enthusiasm by progressives in yesterday's voting.

A lot happened last night that still needs to be analyzed and explained. Many are arguing what was the biggest surprise from yesterday's results was.

I would say the biggest surprise was that a man named Mongiardo could make such a strong showing in a state like Kentucky. :-D

Primary Concerns

Several primary elections to nominate candidates for public office are being held in several states tomorrow, but the two biggest primaries gaining attention are the Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and Arkansas.

In Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Specter is in a dead heat with Delaware County congressman Joe Sestak for the right to run for Senate against Republican Pat Toomey in November. Specter, who became a Democrat last year, is one of the last two Republican senators elected on Ronald Reagan's coattails in 1980 (Iowa's Charles Grassley is the other) that gave the GOP its first Senate majority since 1954. Now Specter is running with the support of President Obama and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell to preserve the Democratic majority.

Sestak is claiming that Specter changed parties for political expediency and doesn't share the core values of Pennsylvania Democrats, though Specter has union support and also provide a necessary vote for health care reform. But Specter did vote for Clarence Thomas's confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991 - about as popular with rank-and-file Democrats as hot cocoa in Ecuador. Though Specter was the most liberal member of the Senate Republican caucus until he switched parties, he was still a Republican, and he supported other judicial nominees from Presidents named Bush. Though Obama has thrown his support to Specter, he has wisely eschewed the opportunity to campaign for him. Which makes sense, considering what a huge asset he was for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts.

Specter is slipping a bit but he can't be counted out, especially when the polls show a huge groups of undecided voters making the election to close to call. Although progressives are excited by and eager to support Sestak, polls show that Specter would have a better chance of defeating Toomey, a Tea Party darling. I'm not endorsing either candidate. If I were a Pennsylvania resident today, and if I were voting in the primary, I'd toss a coin in the voting booth.

In Arkansas, the case is more clear-cut. Incumbent senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln, a conservative Democrat who has taken campaign money from big business and helped kill the government insurance option in the health care bill, has angered Bill Halter, the state's lieutenant governor, Bill Halter, to run against her in the primary and claim (with considerable justification) that she doesn't speak for and vote in favor of ordinary Arkansans. So I endorse Halter. Halter is running behind, and Lincoln has the support of Obama and former President (and former Arkansan) Bill Clinton, both of whom clearly prefer to stick with the devil they know rather than the devil they don't know. But the undecided share of likely voters could also swing tomorrow's result either way, and it promises to make for as spirited a primary there tomorrow as in Pennsylvania.

But how much enthusiasm on the left will translate to victories tomorrow? And would Sestak or Halter, if nominated, be mainstream enough for general election voters in November? That's my worry.

R.I.P. John Murtha

John Murtha, the Pennsylvania congressman who died at 77 on Sunday, was a true patriot and credible voice in the Democratic party on military and national security issues. The first Vietnam veteran elected to the House of Representatives,. Murtha originally supported the war in Iraq when he was convinced that deposing Saddam Hussein was vital to national security, he changed course in November 2005 when he decided it was time to bring the troops home. A former Marine Corps officer, Murtha had been tested in battle in Vietnam and probably forgot more about war than most people in the Bush administration ever knew. But he didn't forget when it was time to admit a mistake and change course.

Murtha was also a populist on economic issues, receiving strong support from labor unions, and he also supported health care reform. Though a Democrat, he was conservative on social issues, in keeping with the traditional outlook of working class Irish Catholic Pennsylvanians like himself. A true workingman's politician, he was one of the most distinctive and distinguished voices in the House.

I Have Seen the Specter

You know things are bad for the Republicans when one of its brightest and most mature U.S. Senators leaves the party. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched to the Democratic Party effective immediately. His decision was based on two factors. First, he realized that there was no place for him in the Republican party after voting for President Obama's stimulus bill against overwhelming opposition from fellow Republicans. Second of all, he found that a conservative Republican primary electorate, out of step with Pennsylvania's moderate politics, could possibly deny him renomination for a sixth Senate term next year, and felt the general electorate was more qualified to vote on his re-election bid.

Specter was born in Wichita, and grew up in the Jewish community of Russell, Kansas - i.e., his family. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale School, he settled in Philadelphia, where he served as district attorney. As a U.S. Senator since 1981, Specter has supported abortion rights and gun rights, and he was one of only four Republicans to vote against Robert Bork's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987. He has high ratings from both the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action and the AFL-CIO.

So, Specter's a pretty moderate guy. A Democrat once before, he rejoins the party and demonstrates the growing disgust in the American Northeast with the GOP. Once a party of establishment types, it is increasingly becoming the party of right-wing crackpots and bigots, the kind of folks that even James Baker III once called "yahoos." Heck, these are the kind of people even Barry Goldwater thought were kooky.

Because Specter is not a true liberal, except by Republican standards, he won't be any more a reliable vote for the Democrats than he was for the Republicans. Indeed, there's something about him that irks Barbra Streisand; she invited Specter's 1986 Democratic opponent to her private fundraising concert for the Democratic party, and she went right up to Specter at one of President Clinton's inaugural balls in 1993 and snidely asked him how it felt to be on the losing side. (Actually, Specter won his bid for a third term in 1992, despite female opposition in Pennsylvania to his support for confirming Clarence Thomas to a seat on the Supreme Court, which he now regrets.) But he will be clearly be more comfortable in party that is the big tent the Republicans pretend to be. (Pennsylvania's other Democratic senator, Robert Casey, Jr., is pro-life.) And when Al Franken finally gets into the Senate, the Democrats will have a filibuster-proof majority that should intimidate the GOP opposition. Specter is certain to be a formidable candidate for re-election next year.

Streisand may even campaign for him. :-D

This must be the ultimate wet dream for MSNBC host and Philadelphia native Chris Matthews.

(Semi-related useless fact: Arlen Specter's name is an anagram of "learn respect." :-))