Another day, another dozen or so outraged emails from the Sestak campaign!
Look, Sestak staffers, if your main beef with Specter is what he did when he pitched for the other team, you need newer, more interesting material.
He screwed us because he was working for the team that screws us, and now he’s working for ours. You’re calling him a mercenary, and my response is, “So?” Show me a member of the Senate who isn’t. (All right, Feingold. But still. UPDATE: Yeah, and Bernie Sanders.)
The Sestak team has churned out so many emails in which Joe Sestak proposes so many solutions to so many problems, how can I take any of them seriously? I look at all this and can’t help thinking about mud, and throwing it at walls to see what sticks. No one can get that much legislation passed. This is a really amateurish campaign tactic.
But then again, Joe seems to have trouble hanging on to good campaign staffers, probably because he’s so cheap. It might be easier to believe he’s an actual progressive if he paid his people a living wage.
I think monkeys and feces would be the better analogy!
I dunno Susie.
I haven’t made up my mind yet, and I’m on both mailing lists. I know you’re a specter supporter and have misgivings about Sestak, and i take that REALLY seriously considering you’re usually right.
But I have also noticed that for all Specter’s moves left, he’s also made some scary right-wing statements too, like saying the underpants bomber shouldn’t have been read his Miranda rights, and his continued support for a regressive flat tax.
so yeah… I don’t know.
i don’t like either of them so will remain neutral but for the record, another senator who isn’t a mercenary is my man bernie.
I’m with you on that, somegirl. Only problem is Bernie’s not in the running in Penn.—but I love him anyway.
How sure can we be that Specter would stay on the Dem team if Dems lose the Senate? Just askin’.
We can’t. How sure can we be that Sestak isn’t a Blue Dog in wait?
Brendan, anyone who runs against Toomey is going to throw a few scary right wing statements into the general election. Sestak isn’t doing it because he’s still running behind Specter and he won’t do it until he has to.
Honestly, I’m not thrilled with either of them. But at least Arlen comes with a built-in expiration date. I don’t think I trust Sestak to decades of incumbency – he hasn’t been in Congress all that long, took massive funding from the Netroots and then voted for FISA and war funding. He wasn’t all that liberal until he decided to run for the Senate nomination. I think he’s very ambitious — and that makes him a likely DINO.
And the thing about supporting him because he “bucked the party bosses”? Utter bullshit. Sestak came back to the 7th district after being away for 28 years, and the party bosses forced Bryan Lentz out of the race so Sestak could run.
Joe Sestak didn’t have a problem with backroom politics when it worked in his favor.
OTOH, Sestak did show up at a Philly for Change meeting, which is more than I can say about Specter…
OTOOH, Pat Toomey was pounding drinks with Brendan at DL, so maybe that isn’t a good criteria…
I think you are correct regarding Sestak but his campaign is keeping Arlen closer to a D line and that is a good thing.
Must Sestak give up his House run in order to run in the primary? Will there be an open seat in his district, and what’s the import of that?
Thnx. As a neighbor stater, New Jersey, northern and far away from Philly media, I know little about Sestak. At one point, he made a good impression on me, but I have vague memories of his disappointing supporters.
There are several people who will be running for Sestak’s seat, but so far the favorite is the Republican Pat Meehan, former U.S. Attorney under the Bush administration.
And didn’t work them to death.