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[ProSense]

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts helped Sestak in his bid to defeat GOP incumbent Curt Weldon, as did Steven Grossman, a major Democratic fund-raiser from Massachusetts and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "He has a unique set of credentials, a unique pulpit. If the Democratic Party is looking for credible leadership, who better than Joe Sestak?" said Grossman, during a breakfast with Sestak over the Thanksgiving weekend, while the newly elected congressman was visiting relatives in the Boston area.

In Pennsylvania, Sestak, 54, and two other military veterans -- Chris Carney, a Navy Reserve lieutenant commander, and Patrick Murphy, an Army Reserve captain and lawyer -- join Representative John Murtha, a Vietnam combat veteran and dean of the delegation.

Murtha's call for withdrawal from Iraq last fall led the way for other Democrats, and he is expected to influence the House's Iraq debate. It remains to be seen whether Murtha suffers any political fallout after losing the majority leader's post, 146-86, to Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, despite support from incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. During the showdown with Hoyer, the media resurrected Murtha's role as unindicted coconspirator in the 1980 Abscam bribery scandals.

Sestak, who backed Murtha, said that he initially feared "the mudsplashing" bolstered the perception of "there go the Democrats again." That possibility worried him, he said, because he agrees with others who label the Nov. 7 election results an opportunity, not a mandate.

As he sees it, the voters "threw the other party out," and Democrats still must prove the merits of the alternative: "The message was, 'fix the problems.' It wasn't that the Democratic Party is a better group of people."

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A defense policy director on the Clinton administration's National Security Council, Sestak considers the Iraq invasion a mistake because "Iraq was never a present danger." He now supports setting a definite timetable to "redeploy physically out of Iraq." He also has a harsh view of the Bush-era NSC, saying that when it comes to "the moral courage to stand for your ideas during this administration, it wasn't always welcome. It wasn't always there."

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