What do you have to do to get a slug like Arlen Specter out of the Senate?

Rick Santorum knows: Arlen's no liberal.

"The voters didn't send us to Washington to duck the tough issues -- they sent us here to take them head-on. We must enact the right policies for America's working families and let the politics take care of itself. This is the right thing to do. I'm proud of our work, and I look forward to standing accountable for it before the American people."

-- PA Rep. Joe Sestak, from a March 16 statement urging

House Democrats to support health care reform

by Ken

The last time I wrote about the Sestak campaign, it was to indulge the fantasy of a Senate that had places for both Delaware's temporary senator, Ted Kaufman (who had just made a defiantly tough floor speech on real financial-regulation reform), and the man who should be sending Arlen Specter into retirement, Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak. And in the process of stitching the two parts of the post together, I managed to misattribute the above quote to Senator Kaufman rather than Representative Sestak -- a silly mistake, because Senator Kaufman hadn't been sent to Washington by voters at all, but was appointed to fill Vice President Biden's former seat until a special election can be held.

I've written a number of times now about what seems to me a remarkable campaign on the issues which Joe Sestak has been waging for the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nomination. What I don't believe I've stressed enough is how extraordinary it is that I of all people should be paying attention to campaign position papers. Usually I'm the one who pays as little attention as possible to campaign rhetoric, on the ground that it's just consultant or handler hooey designed to tell people what they want to hear.

But the Sestak campaign has seemed to me something else. It hasn't been the usual cynically poll-tested statements on a handful of hot-button issues. Instead there has been this incredible abundance of thoughtfully reasoned and forcefully argued positions on a whole array of issues, most of which no one is talking about, least of all incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter. Now I don't doubt that the issues the Sestak campaign has chosen to take stands on are hoped to be popular ones -- they're all issues that affect citizens directly and ought to be of considerable concern -- for example, the plight of homeless kids zapped by the economic meltdown.

I'm sure the campaign thought there was the possibility that such an obviously sensible concern about the welfare of our children might attract media attention. And of course it should have. But regardless, it was a position worth taking, and from this and a host of other positions that we hardly ever hear from politicians about, I've had the feeling that we're getting the real voice of exactly the kind of person we need more of in government -- and, to put it bluntly, the U.S. Senate desperately needs more of. From what I know about the congressman, he's not big on being told by political professionals what to think or say -- or do.

Which is why it's so frustrating that the campaign seems to have made so little headway among Pennsylvania Democratic primary voters. I mean, it looks to me like the campaign you would dream of based on your Civics 101 curriculum -- a man of demonstrated character and principle bringing to the attention of voters a vast array of issues that need attention, for which there are legislative fixes, or at least ameliorations, at hand.

Clearly a lot of the blame lies with President Obama and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who allowed the wretched Arlen, that cynically self-promoting opportunist, to con them into taking him unconditionally into the Democratic fold when he had virtually no bargaining power -- he was facing up to the grim fact that the rising tide of Republican know-nothingism had made him unrenominatable in a Republican primary. And it's understandable that establishment Dems would have coveted his Senate vote. Why, that brought them one vote closer to being able to do, well, nothing much, but maybe someday . . .

I suppose it would have been unthinkable for the president and the governor to say, "Sure, you can come aboard the Democratic ship, but we're not making any commitments, or any promises, about the 2010 nomination." And when you get right down to it, why would they have said such a thing? Arlen is, after all, one of them: a man who is wholly owned by a cynical, corrupt system in which the first question is always, "What's in it for me?" Ironically, what's in it for Arlen the Democrat has often been as inconvenient for the establishment Dems as was Arlen the Republican, because Arlen is always for Arlen. Still, I'll bet the president and the governor are prepared to forgive even that, since again, they understand and identify with what makes him tick politically: the big-money system. When the chips are down, they all know who'll buy them more chips.

Nor is there any reason to go soft on the Infotainment News Media. They all know what Arlen is, and don't seem to see any reason to make sure Pennsylvania Democratic primary voters know. Is he more like a Democrat than, say, Miss Mitch McConnell or Tiny Jim DeMint? Sure, but is that the standard Pennsylvania Democrats really want to enforce? But to the media sluggards too, Arlen is one of them. A hack and an opportunist? Sure, but aren't they all hacks and opportunists? They don't think of it as a bad thing.

There are lots of reasons why the Senate has become unworkable. But one, clearly, is that it contains way too many people, in both parties, who think like Arlen. The reality is that the Senate needs Joe Sestak a lot more than Joe Sestak needs the Senate. What a waste of an opportunity, though, to upgrade the club membership.

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