On Sestak, I’ll pimp again my older post giving a personal perspective from one of my Crossed Pond co-bloggers who served in Sestak’s fleet. The take-away: underdog or no, don’t count this guy out.

As a centrist with a taste for iconclasm and very little love for partisans of either stripe, I find this appealing. What if the future brought us a constant independent caucus of 2, 3, 5, 10 older name-brand politicians who got elected without wasting time and money on a primary, by spending the entire time appealing to the middle.

This is something that is VERY difficult to do if you are an unknown. But Lieberman proved that a name brand can do it.
The more I think about moderates who were party pariahs “graduating” to a status where they don’t answer to them but are elected because the moderates of their state like them, the more I like this idea.

Jumping ahead, obviously the party apparatchicks will do their best to punish such folks when it comes to committees and so on. But if graduates attained a certain critical mass, the clout they’d carry on close issues could force some useful overhauls.

BTW, look for dem party members to call on Specter to promise that he’ll “abide” by the primary results and not run as an independent should he lose in the primary. Specter should anticipate this and have a good answer ready. If he’s eager to be an obedient poof, hell make the promise, If he’s smart, he’ll use such calls as an opportunity to begin burnishing his “I represent every person in this state” credentials.

IOW, his answer should be “NO, I cannot make that promise. If I am convinced the dem nominee would be bad for Pennsylvania, my conscience might force me to oppose him. {He could even follow this up with something like “Joe Sestak is fine man and he has given me no reason to think that blahblah blah, but I reserve the right to yada-yada-yada.”]

Always make them kick you out the FRONT door.