Thread: Analysis: Specter’s Defeat, Bad News for Obama

Analysis: Specter’s Defeat, Bad News for Obama

Tuesday, 18 May 2010 08:53 PM

By: David A. Patten

The defeat of Sen. Arlen Specter, the longest serving senator in Pennsylvania history, marks the end of a political era.

It also proves that Washington politicians that lived by the rule of political expediency are finished, as far as American voters are concerned.

The Specter defeat also is blow to Barack Obama’s political power. Specter strongly backed Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package and his massive healthcare overhaul.

Though Obama strongly backed Specter, and put his political muscle behind the turncoat Republican, along with the powerful political machine of Democratic Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Democratic voters sent a jarring message Tuesday night by picking maverick and conservative Joe Sestak as their nominee.

Initially, Specter's April 2009 abandonment of the Republican Party appeared to be a Houdini-like escape.

It enabled him to avoid a primary slugfest against GOP challenger and former Congressman Pat Toomey, a contest that polls showed Specter losing.

Specter believed he had an ace in the hole. He could trade his support in the Senate for Democratic support. In return, he would give President Obama and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid the coveted 60th vote to head off a GOP filibuster over healthcare reform.

The deal was set, but it ignored one crucial player: the voters of Pennsylvania.

Millions flowed into Specter's campaign coffers. Democrats mobilized Organizing for America, the president's campaign group, to help Specter. And Obama, Vice President Biden, and Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell all campaigned for Specter as well.

In a campaign ad, the president credited Specter with helping to "pull us back from the brink" because of his vote for the stimulus package. "I love Arlen Specter," Obama professed.

Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., the retired admiral and congressman who defeated Specter on Tuesday, even claimed during the campaign that the White House had offered him a high-level government position, in return for dropping his challenge to Specter.

Sestak hasn’t been able to offer much in the way of specifics to support that claim, but making it helped establish him as a principled candidate not operating purely out of self-interest.

Democratic voters were faced with a choice, picking the principled Sestak or Specter, who brazenly bragged to reporters that he switched parties simply to win re-election.

On the campaign trail, Sestak suggested at every opportunity that he was the only real Democrat in the race. A conservative on foreign and military policy, he even picked up endorsements from the Democratic left, which broke from the party's establishment to oppose Specter.

Both the strategy and timing of Specter's ad campaigns are being hailed as brilliant. The ads offered subtle suggestions that the 80-year-old Specter was ripe for retirement.

"It’s time for a new generation of leadership,â€

Sestak is not a conservative, he is more to the left than Specter. He needs to lose in November.