Should the White House support a Republican or Democrat for U.S. Senator in Pennsylvania?

Credible reports are surfacing indicating the White House and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are trying to shove Representative Sestak out of running in the primary.

Source?

The only reason why Spector changed party registration was because he had no chance of being re-elected to the Senate as a Republican.

Spector's only concern is his career in the Senate.

His political "principals" change according to which way the wind is blowing and depends upon what his corporate masters demands are at any moment in time.

You have more than a few "Democratic" blue dog Senators who could and would change their registration to Republican just as easily if it became necessary to retain their Senate seats.

So using the term "Democratic" for Spector and so-called "moderate" blue dog Democrats is meaningless and just confuses people.

"For the time being, however, progressive Democrats have ample reason to be wary of Specter. Their problem is that Joe Sestak, the PA-7 Congressman who has refused to rule out a primary challenge, might not be any better from the standpoint of progressive policy.

In fact, it's plausible that he could be a bit worse. ProgressivePunch.org ranks Sestak as the 158th most progressive member out of 221 non-freshman Democrats, and notes that he's an order of magnitude or so more conservative than you'd expect of a Congressman from his Democratic-leaning district. Sestak's DW-NOMINATE score in the 110th Congress was -.287 on a scale that runs from -1 for extremely liberal to 0 for moderate; this is actually slightly more conservative than the score that we'd projected for Specter, which was -.303. The National Journal, moreover, found that Sestak took the liberal position only 63 percent of the time in the votes they tracked in 2007.

Nor would a primary challenge be without its downsides. For one thing, Sestak would have to give up his seat in the House in order to challenge Specter. Although the Democrat would still be favored in an open seat race in PA-7, which is 3 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole, giving up the incumbency advantage might reduce their odds of retaining the seat from, say, 95 percent to 75 percent."

Link: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/is-sestak-right-choice-for-left.html

The actual voting record compiled by the AFL-CIO Government Affairs Department indicates that on issues affecting working people, Senator Spector has voted for labor issues only 61% of the time while Sestak has voted in support of labor's liberal issues 97% of the time.

That's a huge difference.

You can check out their actual lifetime votes on legislation at:

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/votes/vr_all.cfm

Do you also write movie reviews without having seen the movie?

After you've actually done some fact checking I'll look forward to your comments.

Why you didn't even click on the AFL-CIO link and you expect to be taken seriously!!!!

Imbedded links to detailed analysis of Specter's and Sestak's complete (not cherry picked) voting records are in the original article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/is-sestak-right-choice-for-left.html



More at the link above.

That's cherry picking by the labor movement!

I think true progressives would totally disagree with you.

You're hostile to the labor movements issues .... after all .... those issues only impact the overwhelming majority of people who actually work for a living or have retired from honest work.

I've dealt with anti-labor "liberals" who claim to be liberal on issues that don't affect working people. They just don't like unions.

I understand where you're coming from.

My discussion with you is over.

... who's more conservative than Specter when considering his overall voting record as per Nate Silver's excellent analysis. In terms of credibility, Nate Silver has you beat by 1000 light years, so your cherry picked spin is an epic fail.

Since Mr. Silver can turn Senator Spector into some sort of progressive Democratic liberal, can Mr. Silver also turn water into wine and spam into filet mignon?

"In terms of credibility, Nate Silver has you beat by 1000 light years, so your cherry picked spin is an epic fail."

Perhaps you just failed to notice that I didn't "cherry pick" the votes cast by Sestak and Spector. In fact, if you would actually read a post before commenting on it, you would know that the voting record picks were made by the AFL-CIO, not me.

Perhaps your conservative, pro-Spector, anti-labor bias blinded you to that fact.

Spector now opposes the EFCA (that's a pro-worker bill that will enable workers to join labor unions) and his most notable "accomplishment" this year was joining two other Republicans to successfully rip the guts out of the stimulus bill. Do people really need to remind you of how the original bill proposed by the House was weakened by Republican Senator Spector and company or do you prefer to just ignore those little facts?

Your baseless BS hyperbole notwithstanding, the truth is President Obama's stimulus bill would never have passed without Specter's support and his persuading Sens. Snowe and Collins to vote "aye". I also predict Specter will end up voting for EFCA, despite what he says now.

Your wholly fallacious statements aside, I have no problem with Sestak running against Specter in the primary. Neither does Nate Silver. May the best conservaDem win. Yes, both Specter and Sestak are conservaDems, with Sestak slightly to the right of Specter, according to the multiple unbiased sources that Nate Silver notes in his analysis. Nothing you say will change the facts, especially since you have offered no sourced proof of your own to back up your braying rhetoric. Sestak is a DLC New Democrat. He's no liberal/progressive. He just wants to milk the base by sounding like one.

Too bad a true liberal can't run and win in 2010, but unlike you, I am not one to delude myself or others. I like to stick to the pertinent facts, not cherry picked unsourced allegations.

But, we didn't need Republicans to pass a strong stimulus bill!

That would have required a winning strategy and fight against the Republicans, something that some Democrats just hate and have no experience in.

"President Obama's stimulus bill would never have passed without Specter"

The problem was President Obama never presented a stimulus bill to either the House or Senate. I wish he had.

The House wrote their own bill and three Republican Senators wrote the Senate bill which considerably weakened the House version.

You claim the Senate could not pass an effective stimulus bill written by Democrats.

Did the Republicans win the 2008 election and are not Democrats running the Senate?

Oh .... I suppose you might say the Republicans would threaten a filibuster against an effective Democratic written stimulus bill that would jump start the economy.

So what? It seems that a mere threat of a Republican filibuster is enough to send some Democrats to their knees shaking in fear.

And if Republicans really wanted to be labeled obstructionists and further their isolation by engaging in a real Senate floor debate against a plan to prevent an economic depression, let them! All filibusters end.

I think President Obama could have rounded up 50 Democratic votes to pass a strong stimulus bill and surely at some point 60 votes would have been obtained to end any genuine Republican filibuster.

And don't forget, the Democrats always can use the so-called "nuclear option" to immediately kill any Republican filibusters.

However, that might be too bold for some Democratic Senators who love rolling over and playing dead whenever Republicans give them a dirty look or snarl at them.

he prosecuted Democratic party bosses for graft and corruption, then ran for office as a progressive Republican. At the time that he became a Republican it was a much more liberal party in PA than was the machine-controlled Democratic party. I don't doubt that Spector was concerned about his political survival when he returned to the Democratic party this year. But if you examine his voting record over the his Senate career, it is clear that he has challenged "corporate masters" on many occasions. Whether you like it or not he is a Democrat. Out party has a big tent and under that tent there is room for progressive, liberal and moderate.

now what?

Big tent, big tent.

independents in PA. He has actually picked up points in the polls since Sestak announced.

nt

To save his own ass. It's time for Mr. Magic Bullet to go home.

It's anti-democratic.

It is especially nonsensical here, as the Pennsylvania Democratic party is bigger than ever, and represents a wide range of views. This is not going to be a case of a select group of voters picking the nominee.

and will stab us in the back.