A specter is haunting the Democratic Party—the specter called Arlen. All the powers of the grassroots have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: popular blogs like Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and Liberal Oasis, activists from all points of the compass (including libertarians and fiscal conservatives), and populists who favor meaningful change in Washington D.C.
Pennsylvania's senior senator, Arlen Specter, with any party affiliation, is the embodiment of everything wrong with politics. To be fair, the specter also goes by the names Harry, Christopher, Nancy, Orrin, Lindsey, Dianne, Joe and so on down the roll call. When you boil out the end-timers, the Texas and Idaho delegations, and states-righters from the cauldron in the U.S. Capitol, you have one shapeless blob that does the bidding of Wall Street, banks, defense contractors, drug firms, telecoms, etc.—in short, all but the people who actually vote them into office.
This specter is Hydra-headed, but let's start with Arlen, Mr. Single Bullet Theory himself. He just jumped from the Republican to the Democratic Party and hoped nobody would notice. To a disturbing degree, he was right. The media chattered about it a bit, while the political establishment simply moved some chairs around to make room for Specter (though he loses his 30 years of seniority in this session, he's promised it back next session). Specter can still Hoover contributions from the same special interests (maybe even bigger contributions, since he's now on the "winning" team) and be accorded the same respect by the gutless media corps.
Specter, like Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, will do anything to keep his locker in the Old Boys Club of D.C. Yes, his desire to abandon the GOP is understandable. The collective insanity of the party has rendered it irrelevant in America; a recent Pew Center poll showed that only 23 percent of American voters identify themselves as Republicans. It stands to reason that anyone who doesn't feel comfortable in a party led by Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney would want out. But what does it tell you about the two major political parties if you can hop from one to the other like Jiminy Cricket?
The sense of entitlement to Congressional office is pathological. Lieberman proved that in 2006, and Norm Coleman is doing it now in Minnesota, denying his state full representation in the Senate while he endlessly delays the inevitable seating of Al Franken. Specter's entitlement is less understandable. He is 79 (and will be 80 during next year's campaign), and was treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma as recently as 2008, yet still won't give it up.
The political handicappers say Specter can't beat Pat Toomey in the 2010 GOP primary, as he trails him now in polls 51 percent to 30 percent. He's almost a certain loser in the general election, even if he gets the Democratic nomination. To simply give him that nomination is an insult to Pennsylvania's voters. Isn't there anyone in that entire state who would better represent the party's ideals than a lapsed Republican? If they field a fresh face like Rep. Joe Sestak and lose the election, they can still hold their heads up, rather than going down to defeat with a sleazy political operator like Specter. These same voters sent the crackpot Sen. Rick Santorum packing in 2006, so there's a chance here for a paradigm-shifting victory.
In 2004, when Howard Dean turned the Democratic Party around, the idea was not to just get more, but get better Democrats. The Republican Party is a lost cause, but this is not the Democratic Party's problem to solve by absorbing the few sane survivors.
