We know OK's loony Jim Inhofe will still be in the Senate come the 112th Congress, but how about PA's Arlen Specter and NY's Kirsten Gillibrand?

“I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I don’t know the guy, but … for a living he is a clown.’

-- Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe

by Ken

(1) WHEN SEN. JIM INHOFE OPENS HIS MOUTH, STAND BACK!

Under closer questioning, the Tulsa World's Jim Myers reports, Senator Inhofe acknowledged that he was referring to Minnesota's then-not-yet senator-elect, Al Franken when he said, in connection with the likely outcome of the Minnesota Senate race, "I’ll tell you what a lot of people are thinking, and that is it looks like things are going to be over and we are going to get the clown from Minnesota."

Periodically -- in periods that are far too frequent for the country's mental as well as political health -- the senator, who is Congress's leading Christian-crazy climate-change denier and, in general, sworn foe of rational scientific inquiry, opens his mouth and we are treated to the effluvia thrown off by the vortex of his dementia.

Since Oklahoma has the distinction of being represented by two U.S. senators who are certifiably insane, let's make it clear here that we're not talking about Doctortom Coburn, the wingnut loon who specializes in unilaterally stopping the Senate from advancing on any issue that catches in his vestigial brain, and delights in being called "Dr. No." Senator Inhofe is the raving wingnut loon -- OK, no difference so far -- who believes that protection of the environment is not only a scam but is actually anti-Christian because real Christians understand that we only need the earth until the imminent Rapture. This is, by the way, the man who, in one of life's most savage ironies, was until the Democrats regained control of the Senate chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Now he's merely the ranking minority member.

Senator Inhofe made his original crack about his soon-to-be Senate colleague in connection with his forecast that, despite the imminent seating of the clown, the climate-change bill just passed by the House is "dead in the water" on arrival in the Senate. But he also had to deal with the blowback from some of his other recent pronouncements. (This is itself a climate change of sorts. It used to be that he was never asked to answer for the imbecilities he spews.)

Specifically, he has had to back down from his much-publicized accusation that the EPA had suppressed a global-warming-debunking report, by one of his GW-denier cronies. Pumped up by his friends the Fox Noise liars, he was insisting that the matter warranted criminal investigation. In his Tuesday Tulsa World interview, " he said he has "no way of knowing" whether any wrongdoing was committed, and "also conceded that his own investigation into the matter has not uncovered anything that would warrant a criminal investigation."

(2) LOOKS LIKE SPECTER AND GILLIBRAND WILL
DEFINITELY (?) FACE PRIMARY CHALLENGES

As we all know, White House political operatives have been in cahoots with political heavyweights in both Pennsylvania, notably Gov. Ed Rendell, and New York, notably senior Sen. Chuck Schumer, to prevent forestall divisive and expensive primary challenges to freshly minted "Democratic" Sen. Arlen Specter and merely appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.  As Howie has been reporting, in both states this political "fix" has aroused a good deal of anger, both for the anti-democratic ("small d") high-handedness of the maneuvering and for the distinctly conservative cast of the beneficiaries, and there have been serious rumblings of "nevertheless" challenges.

In PENNSYLVANIA, where admiral-turned-congressman Joe Sestak has been sending fairly consistent signals that he's gearing up for such a race, Steve McConnell reported yesterday on the Wayne Independent's website:

In an interview with The Wayne Independent Wednesday morning, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa.,confirmed his intention to run against Specter, a long-time Republican who switched to the Democratic party earlier this year.
“I am going to get into the race against Arlen Specter ... for senator,” said Sestak in his first media interview as part of a three-week tour through all of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties.

Wayne County was his first stop where he met with local Democrats prior to his interview with The Wayne Independent.

Meanwhile in NEW YORK, despite the virtual lockdown on normally available political resources engineered by Senator Schumer and his White House coconspirators, Rep. Carolyn Maloney is reportedly mere days away from announcing formally that she will mount a Democratic primary challenge to Kirsten Gillibrand, appointed by Gov. David Paterson to replace now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Senate until next year's special election.

The current hubbub concerns what was being described as an apparent endorsement of Maloney by former President Bill Clinton, who is scheduled to appear at a July 20 fund-raiser for the congresswoman. However, this doesn't appear to be the case. Rather, it appears that the former president is doing a Clinton-family "thank you" tour, repaying pols who supported Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, which the former candidate herself is prevented from doing by her current position.

Both challenges appear doomed, but the more important seems to me the Pennsylvania one. There is also a case to be made, and I've seen it made by one of the smartest people I know, that the New York challenge is going to cut seriously into the money and attention available for the Sestak challenge in Pennsylvania, even as the politics of a challenger to her left (though not very far to her left) drive Senator Gillibrand back toward the right (she has been seriously more liberal in her time in the Senate than she was in the House), both in the campaign and in the Senate.

This prognosticator predicts that people "on all sides" will live to regret this extremely expensive race. I would only disagree that people on all sides will be deeply unhappy but won't know what hit them, and will instead resort to the usual mutual finger-pointing.

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