Specter loses Senate seat

I think the Democratic Senate leadership made a mistake not giving him some seniority and making him a junior senator was a slap in the face.

I have had a generally good opinion of him. I hope the new guy is worth a crap.

Washington insiders......do you hear the ANGER yet!

I agree, but that's probably not the reason he lost. One reason he lost is that he is an incumbent, and that the voters' sentiments are currently very anti-incumbent. Senior-Senator status would only have made Specter more of an incumbent.

Arlen Spector, in the last acts of his overlong career in the Congress, demonstrated an unseemly and grasping desire to do anything to prolong his political career in the Senate, sacrificing party loyaly and in some cases long held political positions to stay on the stage long after his moment had passed. We are well rid of him.

One day, George, I hope you will realize that it's the Republican party who turned its back on people like him, or like Peter Ueberroth, or people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or all those other members of its reality-based, pragmatic wing.

I only hope that some day, Republicans will recognize what a grave error they committed for abandoning their tradition -- the tradition of Eisenhower, Ford, and Alan Simpson -- for people like Sarah Palin. America needs an opposition to the Democratic party that's better than the current Republican party.

Get out of here! Joe Sestak is not a tea party candidate. This win was not about anger.

Sestak supports Obama's health care bill and was in favor of Obama's stimulus package. Sestak is a solid progressive who ran on policy.

I, for one, am very happy with the Sestak victory.

Riiight...

I agree that the Republican party party has a dearth of worthy leaders. However, I don't think that Spector remotely resembles what is needed. I know Alam Simpson (casually) from the same place I know Gary Becker. He's an engaging, entertaining, interesting and amiable guy, but he appears to have lacked the committment and staying power necessary to see a difficult process through to a conclusion. Unfortunately reasonable people don't often achieve great things.

Harry Truman didn't have anything good to say about Eisenhower, though I believe history has judged both him and Truman in a more kindly way. Ford was truly a decent and reasonable man, but the fact is he failed as a leader.

In my view the country is presently in the hands of some strongly motivated, but thoroughly wrongheaded and largely inept, idealogues (who are attempting to install the "European Model" here just as it collapses in Europe). We need someone to confront their flawed ideology and restore our sense of ourselves. That will require more than a reasonable pragmatist. Something more like Ronald Reagan or an American Margaret Thatcher.

I agree re Alan Simpson, I think he had far too much integrity to remain a politician.

I think it is more than just integrity. It takes a special combination of qualities to create profound change in any organization. Merely reasonable, pragmatic, well-balanced people usually don't have what it takes. Something beyond that is required, though it isn't necessarily contrary to reason and good sense. Caesar had it: Pompey didn't. Reagan had it: Ford didn't.

He did not just lose, he got his ass kicked....

My congratulations to the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania for electing the Democratic candidate in the Democratic senatorial primary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/18/AR2010051805561.html?hpid=topnews

I am right, you are wrong, time for you to concede the point.

Don't be so quick to assume you are right.

Perhaps the Democratic voters simply saw Specter as essentially a Republican who switched parties, not out of conviction, but out of political expediency and a desire to hold onto his Senate seat. Sestak did remind them of Specter's support of Bush, and implied that Specter could not be trusted to remain a strong and loyal Democrat. That message may have hit home.

Sestak's win was not necessarily a repudiation of Washington's policies or a reflection of anger over those policies. But, since Obama, and much of the state Democratic party hierarchy, had endorsed Specter, it does show that Democratic voters in Pennsylvania are not marching blindly in step with decisions made by either the party machinery or the White House when it comes to selecting candidates.

And Sestak is an appealing candidate with strong attributes. At a time when many people do long for change, he offered a viable alternative to someone who had been entrenched in the Senate for 30 years. In November, he may well prove to be a much more formidable Democratic opponent than Specter would have been.

Can't blame them for that.

The Message since Brown of Mass has been consistent. The establishment can no longer blow a couple of elections off as flukes, or as about local politics or as about poorly run campaigns (which was the excuse for why Brown won). Washington insiders have a huge problem,,,,,,,they have lost the nation.

even though George is correct,Arlan did an excellent accounting on behalf of Pa.

The difference in Pennsylvania is that this was a Democratic primary, and the party-backed candidate, Specter, had only been a Democrat for a year after serving in the Senate for 29 years as a Republican. For that reason, it's hard to draw firm conclusions about whether Specter was primarily rejected for being a Washington insider or for being a life-long Republican.

This election showed that Democratic voters rejected the candidate of the Democratic party establishment, and they are obviously thinking for themselves. I'm not sure that it proves much else, nor can more sweeping generalizations be drawn from this result.

I think the Democratic party may well be better off with Sestak as the candidate in November, and the Democratic voters in Pennsylvania may simply have felt the same way.