The Democrats’ enthusiasm deficit

February 26, 2010 at 3:48 pm

This week, pa2010.com reported on a widely-discussed Franklin & Marshall College poll of the Senate race which showed Arlen Specter holding a slightly dwindling, yet still strong 17-point lead over primary challenger Joe Sestak. A second article noted that Republican Pat Toomey holds a significant lead among likely voters in the general election. What it didn’t do is analyze the contrast between the likely voter numbers with those among registered voters—a…

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Thoughts on a frozen government

February 12, 2010 at 1:30 pm

If you follow The In-Specter, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted much lately. It’s been difficult for me to write about anything political for the last couple of weeks because it has been so upsetting to see how selfishness, ignorance and fear have poisoned the ability for our government to deliver the change it was elected to bring to Washington. Instead, what we’ve seen in the United States Senate is a minority party in…

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What a difference a week makes

January 27, 2010 at 9:57 am

The Left is in disarray following a week in which Republicans pulled political stunners in two of the three elected branches of the federal government.

First came the special election of Scott Brown to the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy since 1962, the year he won a special election to fill the seat vacated by his brother when he assumed the presidency. Politicos across the nation were stunned as an insurgent Republican state Senator…

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Specter’s support of Dawn Johnsen is old news

January 12, 2010 at 11:01 pm

Specter’s promise to support Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to the Office of Legal Counsel was making waves all over the blogosphere and mainstream media Tuesday, but the truth is that I reported on this coming change of heart back in October. At a town hall meeting at the University of Pennsylvania, I personally asked Specter about his position on Johnsen, whose nomination has always been near and dear…

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The state of the Senate race

January 11, 2010 at 10:30 am

As we begin a new year, the dynamics of the race for Arlen Specter’s seat have become very clear. Toomey, the presumptive Republican nominee, spends all his time attacking both Sestak and Specter, while Sestak and Specter are focused almost exclusively on attacking each other.

The easiest way to observe this dynamic is through each campaign’s respective e-mails and releases. Toomey’s messages, aside from announcing the occasional event at which he’ll appear, are primarily geared…

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Happy Holidays from the In-Specter!

December 23, 2009 at 1:57 pm

As 2009 comes to a close, I want to thank all of our readers for not just following the news here at pa2010, but also for being engaged in a dynamic discussion about the subtleties of these races.  It has been an exciting year for the In-Specter, in which we saw Pennsylvania’s senior senator switch parties to avoid a loss in the Republican primary and transform into one of President Obama’s most reliable votes.  Covering…

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How far will Specter go for the public option?

December 15, 2009 at 2:12 pm

In the last few days, liberals across the country were apoplectic as they learned of Joe Lieberman’s about-face on the Medicare buy-in proposal floated last week as a way to redeem the public option in the Senate. Though this proposal was specifically designed to get Lieberman’s support—in a widely posted video made just three months ago, he floated the idea as an acceptable way to cover millions of uninsured Americans— on…

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The continuing relevance of Arlen Specter

December 9, 2009 at 5:05 pm

Arlen Specter has been very busy lately, working hard to prove his worth as a legislator. On the health care front, these efforts have been quite commendable. Last Friday, he introduced an amendment to the health care bill, co-sponsored by Republican Senator Susan Collins and Independent Joe Lieberman, which was “intended to further three goals: reduce costs, increase transparency, and improve quality.”

The amendment was lauded in The New York…

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Afghan redux (Updated)

December 4, 2009 at 3:03 pm

Last week, I ended my post about Arlen Specter’s position on the Afghan war by openly wondering what his reaction would be to the president’s speech. I wrote:

“Will Specter be ‘persuaded’ by the president’s rationale, helping ‘move’ public opinion along with his own shifting position? Or will he really play the contrarian, making a public break with what will arguably be the biggest national security decision yet made during the…

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CNN: Specter-Sestak one of many contentious 2010 primaries

December 1, 2009 at 10:07 am

CNN has published an analysis of the contentious primaries in 2010. It had this to say about the Sestak-Specter race:

Sen. Arlen Specter’s decision to leave the Republican Party in April handed President Obama a key vote in the Senate, and Specter was rewarded by quickly being endorsed by the president and Democratic leaders in his bid for re-election next year.

But not every Democrat got in line behind Obama. . .

…

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