When Elena Kagan was confirmed as Solicitor General, she only garnered 61 votes. That’s a little misleading, though, because if every Democrat had voted she would have had 65 votes for confirmation. Sens. Coburn (R-OK), Collins (R-ME), Gregg (R-NH), Hatch (R-UT), Kyl (R-AZ), Lugar (R-IN), and Snowe (R-ME) all voted for her, but, interestingly, Arlen Specter did not. That vote will haunt Specter because he is facing a registered Democrat-only electorate on May 18th, and his opponent Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) will be able to hammer Specter for either opposing Kagan’s nomination (unlikely) or for flip-flopping. How can she not be good enough to serve as Solicitor General but just fine for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court? How could she be good enough for extreme right-wingers like Tom Coburn and Jon Kyl and not good enough for Arlen Specter?
Not that Obama considered (or should have considered) Specter’s fate when he chose Kagan, but the result is basically a bayonet in the back at a time when Specter is fading badly in the tracking polls (even the loathsome Rasmussen has Sestak surging ahead). I am going to predict now that Joe Sestak will win the primary in Pennsylvania, and the Kagan nomination is what sealed Arlen’s fate. He will join Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah as a lame-duck senator. Unlike Bennett, however, Specter has the added humiliation of having switched parties to try to stave off defeat and then having gone down in defeat anyway. That’s not the way any senator wants to cap off a long career.
If this happens, the media will not be able to resist the narrative that the extreme wings of both parties are throwing out the moderates. But it will be a bit misleading. Bennett probably would have won a true Republican primary, so while its true that extremists threw him out, it’s not necessarily true that the Republican Party of Utah has lurched to the right. And while Specter is certainly a moderate, he’s spent the last forty years beating Pennsylvania Democrats in elections. It’s hardly a lurch to the left for Keystone Democrats to oppose the author of the Magic Bullet Theory. There are differences and similarities between the ousters of Bennett and Specter.
By most measures, Bob Bennett is a very conservative senator (Progressive Punch ranks him the 20th most conservative member of the upper body). But he has a history of working in a bipartisan manner and of seeking to find compromises to deal with our nation’s most pressing issues. In this, he had a lot in common with both Arlen Specter and Teddy Kennedy. In fact, he had more in common with Kennedy, who also found ways to compromise without compromising his values. Specter has made a career of compromising his values. His record is so bad, in fact, that it’s difficult to assign any values to Specter that he isn’t willing to compromise. If the Democrats of Pennsylvania fail to nominate Specter as their nominee for another six-year senate term, it will be this lack of character that explains the vote, not some sudden burst of purity policing. And, while Sestak has the support of many progressive groups in Pennsylvania, he isn’t seen by most people here as a progressive politician. At best, he’s a conventional Democrat. Because he’s pro-choice, he’s left of center within the state’s party, but not by much. What’s almost certain is that Sestak (and whoever replaces Bennett) will be less inclined to reach across the aisle. That’s good and bad. It’s good to have politicians who stand for something. It’s bad to increase the polarization in the Senate because the rules of the Senate require that the two parties operate with a degree of good faith that is currently absent.