Trio of WSJ pieces
Joe Sestak ends Spector's long career that goes all the way back to the Warren Commission (and please people, stop calling it the "magic bullet" theory, because the latest computer modeling shows that it wasn't magical in the least!), exploiting the current anti-incumbent mood.
I knew Sestak as an admiral and I've testifed in from of him. He is as slick as they come, and I mean that in a good way. Outsider? Definitely fresher than Spector, let's say.
He's definitely a liberal, holding a 100% rating from NARAL on being pro-choice. We also share a bond: both our first-born girls survived cancer in childhood.
Sestak is also incredibly smart, in my opinion, so he'd be one to watch in the Senate, just like he was in the House.
So with all this talk of voter shifts, what does this latest batch of primaries say? We should see a lot of new faces in Congress next January, and this is good. Place is too easy for incumbents as a rule, and we should take pride in moving new brains into the mix.
But you have to remember, midterm primaries are the stuff of the party loyalists.
It's the changing mix of loyalists that bodes well for the GOP.
MSNBC/WSJ poll on party affiliation changes since start of Obama administration:
- Dems stay at 43%
- GOP goes from 30 to 37%
- That comes out of Independents (20-->16%) and others (7-->3%).
So you have to believe that the Tea Party movement is strengthening the GOP and hardly represents the rise of a viable third party.