The 60th Seat

Well, I'm sure you've all heard the big news. I'll spare you all the prentension that I have anything new to say about this nonsense; basically, voting patterns aren't going to change, this is not the dream 60th/59th seat the Democrats wanted, and it's probably more a story of optics than it is about substance. Specter will join several other conservative Democrats that are causing the Obama administration more grief than the Republicans ever could, he will be uncontested in the Democratic Primary by anyone of note, and he will be re-elected. The consensus at the moment is that, despite his mavericky tendencies, Specter didn't jump ship for any real ideological reasons: he was facing a very unpleasant primary with a hopelessly extreme candidate (Pat Toomey) who would undoubtedly lose in the general, and so he made a strategic move. He even says himself that, "I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party." He caught a lot of flak from within his party for his vote on the stimulus package, and as a seasoned politician he probably recognized sticking around was hopeless.

The interesting thing for me, though, is that this is another high-profile nail in the Republican coffin, right when congressional Republicans are making efforts to redefine their party as the one with the real, sensible ideas. Structurally, this switch doesn't mean that much, but on the P.R. level it's a disaster: it will suck up all available non-swine flu media oxygen for at least a couple of days, it loudly highlights the leprous decay that is slowly disarming and dislegging the Republican party, and it gives Obama a brief reprieve from the torture debates (which will be reigniting soon enough). More importantly, it adds more weight to the argument that the current state of partisan hostility in Washington is the fault of the Republican party, rather than of an overly assertive super-socialist administration. If the Democrats can keep a narrative like that going well into 2010, there's no way the Republicans will regain either the House or the Senate. And, in my opinion, if they can't make even moderate gains in the midterms, they probably will no longer exist as a major party.