Sestak Wins. So Does Obama. - Democratic Underground

babylonsister

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Wed May-19-10 05:04 PM
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Sestak Wins. So Does Obama.

Edited on Wed May-19-10 05:05 PM by babylonsister

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2010/05/sestak-specter-obama.html#ixzz0oPVHCsAZ

Sestak Wins. So Does Obama.
Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg

Referring to the two big upsets of the night—the victories of Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Rand “Namesake of Ayn, Son of Ron” Paul in Kentucky—Jeff Zeleny and Carl Hulse write in today’s Times:

The results were sobering for both parties, amounting to a rejection of candidates selected and backed by leaders in Washington who found themselves out of step with their electorates.

That may be true in Kentucky, where McConnell learned that no amount of subservience to Tea Party/Fox News/talk-radio nihilism can ever be enough, but I don’t see how it applies to Pennsylvania.

Arlen Specter was not “selected by leaders in Washington.” He selected himself. As one of the last of the moderate Republicans, he was headed for defeat in his own party’s primary. He thought (no doubt correctly) that his chances for survival would be better in the other party, so he switched. The White House promised him support because his vote was an absolute sine qua non for overcoming Republican filibusters, most crucially filibusters against the health-care bill, on which the fate of Obama’s Presidency and the Democratic Congress rested. If this was a “backroom deal,” it was one that the White House and the “Democratic establishment” would have been criminally irresponsible not to cut.

With health care safely passed, however, the interests of the White House and the national Democratic Party are better served by Sestak’s winning the primary. Sestak is an actual Democrat, not a Democrat of opportunity. As such he will be a far more reliable and sincere supporter of the President and the President’s policies than Specter would have been if, at eighty years of age, the cranky ex-Republican had been vouchsafed a sixth (and last) six-year term. Moreover, Sestak is more likely to beat the Republican nominee, the fanatical anti-tax ideologue Pat Toomey. If Sestak wins in November, he'll probably be a senator for a long time. Given actuarial realities, a reëlected Specter might have ended up having to be replaced by a gubernatorial appointee, and there is no guarantee that Pennsylvania’s next governor will be a Democrat.

So I don’t see how this is some sort of defeat for the White House or miscalculation on their part. It looks more like a series of rather brilliant chess moves.

Of course, this doesn’t prove that the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania took all this into account and consciously made a rational, strategically thought-out choice. But there’s a better case for that interpretation than for the notion that Sestak’s victory was nothing but a populist spasm—a rejection of “Washington,” even a rebuke to President Obama.