Kos provides a useful and informative chart:
The information contained in this chart is going to make up the heart of Joe Sestak’s case against Arlen Specter in the 2010 primary. Arlen Specter was born in February, 1930. If he is reelected, he will turn 81 a month after he is sworn in, and he would be 86 years-old when his term was up. It’s very unlikely, especially considering Specter’s experience with cancer, that Specter would seek reelection in 2016. This is important because (as the chart above demonstrates) Specter’s voting patterns are determined by his changing political circumstances. If he wins reelection in the 2010 race, he will finally be free to vote however he wants knowing that he will never again have to face the voters. We would finally find out who the ‘real’ Arlen Specter is, and I don’t think anyone can predict how that will turn out.
The core argument against Specter isn’t really that he voted with Bush x percent of the time, or that he is some kind of radical. The core argument is that he doesn’t stand for anything and he can’t be trusted. He’s voting with the Democrats 97% of the time now, while he was voting with them a mere 16% of the time in the spring. I am a voter in the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania. How I am supposed to know which of those numbers is the closest to the ‘real’ Arlen Specter?
By contrast, if Joe Sestak is elected, he’ll have to match his voting record to his campaign rhetoric. To be sure, he might swing to the right once he is free and clear of a Democratic primary, but he’ll pay a price for broken promises. Specter will not. And Specter’s word is no good. He only switched parties to give himself a better chance of survival.
For Sestak to win the race, he has to make the campaign largely about Specter’s unreliability and lack of core convictions. It has to be about character. Sestak will also have to find a way to keep the vast majority of the black electorate in his corner despite Obama’s campaigning for Specter. He needs to spend a lot of time on black radio and get out into the community in a big way, because he can’t win with the progressive bloc split.
