Pennsylvania Democrats got dire news in the last few days from their own internal polls about Senator Arlen Specter’s re-election hopes.<\/p>\n
Private Democratic polls suggest Specter, who quit the GOP to run as a Democrat, could lose by as much as 8 percentage points in Tuesday’s primary, to two-term Congressman Joe Sestak, who was recruited by party officials to run against Specter, when Specter was still the Republican incumbent.<\/p>\n
Specter is now counting on the state’s Democratic machine to keep his political future alive. Governor Ed Rendell has promised his organization will get out the vote and Democrats in Washington have been shoveling money Specter’s way.<\/p>\n
But statewide turnout is expected to be low, 35 percent at best. Rain is in the forecast.<\/p>\n
Turnout models for Philadelphia and Allegheny county, where Specter must win big, are abysmal. Philadelphia has the Keystone state’s highest concentration of Democrats…but as few as 110 thousand or 15 percent are expected to turn out Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Sestak ran a strong race and raged against his own party for preferring a former Republican to himself, a lifelong Democrat and retired navy admiral. He surged to a tie, then the lead, with an attack ad that included Specter saying on tape that switching parties would enable him to get re-elected.<\/p>\n
Specter is a feisty and resourceful politician, it ain’t over till it’s over, and his organization is superior to Sestak’s. It will make the difference one way or the other.<\/p>\n
This race has always been mostly about Specter. Yes, there is a pronounced anti-incumbent, anti-Washington, anti-establishment undercurrent but Specter makes it different. He has served longer than any other Pennsylvania senator. He infuriated Republicans for years for what he now admits was being a RINO (Republican in name only). He ran for president in 1996 against his own majority leader, Bob Dole. \u00a0Specter has been a lightning rod of controversy for years, and now he’s a party switcher.<\/p>\n
Sestak’s ads and rhetoric helped, the anti-incumbent mood contributed, but in the end this race is, and always was about Arlen Specter and whether this was his last stand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pennsylvania Democrats got dire news in the last few days from their own internal polls about Senator Arlen Specter’s re-election hopes. Private Democratic polls suggest Specter, who quit the GOP to run as a Democrat, could lose by as much as 8 percentage points in Tuesday’s primary, to two-term Congressman Joe Sestak, who was recruited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5067,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5067"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}