PENNSYLVANIA.

  God danged if I couldn’t find a single image of the Balls chasing Specter.

Mark Ambinder:  Does the White House believe that the money it spent to help elect Arlen Specter was worth it, even if he loses?  Yes. Joe Biden’s orchestrated party switch helped get health care done. And the DSCC made sure that the money they spent on Specter was raised by Specter for the campaign committee.

This is almost a fair enough political calculation.  But in this guise, I suspect more value would come in the Senatorial process out of an Arlen Specter providing the two Maine Republicans and those bi-partisan Democrats down toward Ben Nelson the bi-partisan cover.  But then the man would have been toast in a Republican Primary — his only possible escape with the Democratic Party.

Given the polling, the trend-lines more than the numbers, his fate will more likely than not be sealed tomorrow.  I almost have to admire the retail politics message of his campaign, though.

But Mr. Specter stayed on message at the pub. As he was departing, an aide called out to the crowd of 70 people: “Senator Specter just bought the next round, so hit the bar.”

Once upon a time, I suggested that Joe Sestak should just re-run Specter’s 2004 Republican Primary ad — “3 For Pennsylvania” where he stands next to Senator Santorum with effusive praise coming out of President Bush’s mouth.  Just replace the “I’m Arlen Specter and I approve this message” with “I’m Joe Sestak and I approve this message”.  Perhaps that is just simply not possible — too clever by half — what we have instead is parts of that ad chopped and set alongside Specter voicing his party switch as “wanting to be re-elected”.  A good contrast with Specter’s campaign ad, the Obama Endorsement ad in the same genre as the 2004 Bush Endorsement ad.

Last night, I briefly turned in the re-cap of Ed Schultz and caught his interview with Specter.  He laid out his case — “Michael J Fox endorses me!”  The most bizarre moment, perhaps telling, came at the end.  Ed Schultz asked, “Do you consider yourself a Liberal?”  Specter answered, “When I hear a Label I think of bikinis.  It conceals more than it reveals.”
Arlen Specter is full of incoherencies such as that.  I don’t know what this metaphor means.  Certainly a bikini reveals — but… it conceals the most important parts?  Is that what the 80 year old 30 year Senate Veteran fighting for the right for a seat in the “Most Exculsive Club” at the age of 86 is telling us?  In the world of an anti-incumbent electorate, I suggest that against the Republican nominee — I think his name is Grover Norquist — Joe Sestak has the upper hand.  Indeed, I will go ahead and state my belief that Sestack will win where Specter will lose in November.

ARKANSAS

The interesting candidate in Arkansas is that third wheel, DC Morrison.  He is largely ignorable — when Blanche Lincoln posits herself as the “Center” who is “Getting it from both sides”, it is against the Republicans to her right and against Bill Halter and his supporters to her left.  But this candidate is supposed to be poised to keep Blanche Lincoln below an all-important 50 percent thresh-hold, forcing an election run-off between Lincoln and Halter.  The New York Times gives us this note.:

It may be a measure of the electorate’s angry mood that the Democratic Senate candidate who got the biggest cheer from the steak lovers assembled amid a charcoal haze to worship charred red meat was D. C. Morrison, a former cotton farmer who wants to repeal the new health care law, seal the southern border and abolish income taxes in favor of a consumption tax. “I think there’s just a general distrust of Washington,” Mr. Morrison explained with a touch of down-home understatement.

I don’t know if this can really be called a “sign of the times”, angry or otherwise.  Arkansas is the last redoubt of the old “Solid South”.  Whenever I hear that some state legislator said something insane, I tend to think it’s a Republican unless I hear it came from Arkansas.  Consult the map for more explanations.  Arkansas is the biggest source for the intersecting point of the PUMA – Birther axis (and yes, the two items are related — incoherent definitions of “left” and “right” notwithstanding).  I guess this is worth a ten point Tea Party Right-Wing Populist dump.  Orval Faubus (the early favorite of the early Godwater for President backers) once mounted a primary campaign against Governor Bill Clinton — picking up 33.5 percent of the vote.

I have no illusions with Arkansas.  John Boozman is the next Senator from Arkansas, this Democratic Primary becomes a strange battle to see who will lose to the Republican.  If you can make the case that either candidate has the better shot — go for it.  In that game, I really don’t know.

KENTUCKY
Like Ron Paul with everything I like about Ron Paul chopped off, we have Rand Paul and the Fifth Circle of Hell.

The political genius of Paul is his ability to cultivate a narrative that speaks to all strains of the Tea Party movement at once. After all, the libertarian purists who loved Ron Paul’s dissident truth-telling are not natural allies of the Limbaugh Dittoheads who dismissed him as an eccentric. He sings his libertarianism in the key of Glenn Beck

It is a testamanet to the star power of Ron Paul and the story this election provides with the stirrings in the Republican Party that I can’t quite give you the probable Democratic nominee.  Jack Conway and Daniel Mongiardo.

The conventional wisdom runs along the lines of: This is Kentucky, it’s an anti-incumbent year, Rand Paul is nothing if not an anti-incumbent, he has a committed activist core, it’s a Republican Year, Rand Paul will win in November.  One need only look at the Nate Silver 538 chart in the top left corner for this argument at work.  I see the sentence peppered in all media write-ups of this election, equivalent ot how I assessed Arkansas.  I have to say — I don’t know.  I suspect this is a wrong calculus.  I can’t claim to have the pulse of Kentucky with me, and we’re all swirling around in the nuts, but read Rand Paul’s prediction of the US going the way of Greece, with its attendant street violence, and I just have to wonder if a swarth of Kentucky voters are going to end up seeing Rand Paul a bridge too far.

HAWAII

Has there ever been a Congressional Special Election whose outcome was more meaningless?  Divided between two main candidates, the Democratic Candidate is poised to lose to a more united Republican candidate.  Who will all but surely go on to lose the general election in Novmeber to whoever emerges as the Democratic favorite.  Nothing is revealed in this election, and “Vote Anyway” — for “clues” and “hints” you have to turn to the Pennsylvania Special Election to replace John Murtha.

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