The Specter of Defeat

There was some seismic activity on the political Richter scale on Tuesday. In Pennsylvania, five-term senator Arlen Specter was defeated in the Democratic Party primary. In Kentucky, Tea Party Republican Rand Paul trounced the establishment candidate. And in Arkansas, incumbent Democrat Blanche Lincoln, challenged from the left, will have to participate in a run-off election to get the nomination. These results have been categorized by the chattering media as anti-incumbency, but as usual, this is oversimplification, and each result has different meaning.

In the case of Specter, who was defeated by Joe Sestak, it was a case of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Last year Specter, correctly sizing up the political landscape in the Republican party, decamped to the Democrats. This made him temporarily popular with the White House, as he was the 60th vote for the Democrats. Over the years he has been the Democrats' favorite Republican, supporting abortion rights and playing a key role in defeating Robert Bork's nomination for the Supreme Court in 1987.

But being the Democrats' favorite Republican is not the same as being a Democrat. Chris Matthews put it best: it was like putting on a dress to get a spot on the lifeboat. Specter has some odious marks on his record. He voted for the war in Iraq and was shameful in his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings. He's literally and figuratively a Philadelphia lawyer, carefully parsing his opinions over the years (he voted "Not Proven" in Clinton's impeachment trial, using an old Scottish legal maneuver). I also learned today that he was on the Warren commission, and came up with the "single-bullet theory" to explain Kennedy and John Connolly being wounded from the same marksman.

In short, I am not sorry to see Specter go. The White House doesn't seem too broke up about it, either. He served his usefulness for Obama, who did not exactly break a sweat campaigning for him. I'm sure the White House figured Specter would have a better chance of winning in November, but I'm not so sure, as I know Republicans in Pennsylvania and they didn't seem to like him any more than Democrats did. Fare well in your retirement, Arlen.

Kentucky is shaping up as a place to watch. Incumbent Jim Bunning is retiring, and the standard-bearer was Trey Grayson, supported by the establishment, including Senator Minority Leader and Kentucky's own, Mitch McConnell. But Rand Paul, son of the fringe presidential candidate Ron Paul, gathered the Tea Part outrage and swamped his rival. This sets up an interesting general election in November against Democrat Jack Conway, because Paul is, well, something of a kook. He's already stepped in it, revealing last night that he disagrees with the Civil Rights Act, which means he's fine with restaurants refusing to serve blacks. Nothing like setting the clock back fifty years to get things in a frenzy.

As for Lincoln, she appears to be fine in holding the nomination, but who knows if she'll hang on the seat itself. She is one of those Democrats who try to live comfortably in the center, which in certain times is a sound strategy but nowadays may be political suicide, as no one is pleased. She faces a challenge from the left, and if she vanquishes that may be done in by the right.

Combining all of this with the defeat of Utah's Robert Bennett a few weeks ago, this is all being painted as anti-incumbency. I see and hear about the "throw the bums out" attitude, and it's easy to sympathize with that kind of thinking. But I would ask those who cast their ballots in a knee-jerk response to rid Congress of incumbents--do you really think their replacements will be any better?