The news that Arlen Specter is switching parties has sparked a lot of attention to the predictable Republican reaction, which ranges from disappointment to blame-storming to "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out".
But that's not the most interesting story here.
Once everybody gets the Republican reaction story out of their system, we'll turn to a much, much more interesting chapter in this story: How will Democrats react to Democratic Senate candidate Arlen Specter?
Early reaction (Daily Kos, Glenn Greenwald, The New Republic, MyDD, Open Left) suggests Senator Arlen Specter has somehow managed to join a political Party that dislikes him even more than Republicans did.
So, by promising to give Specter the institutional support of the Democratic Party, it looks like the Democratic establishment has engineered a switch that advances their political control at the expense of the ideological agenda and ideals of the progressive movement.
I had a Twitter conversation with a guy yesterday who thinks Specter is now a shoe-in to win re-election now that he's a Democrat. I disagreed.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania there is a lifelong Democrat or two who had his hopes set on challenging Specter in the 2010 general election. That all went out the window yesterday, especially with Obama's promises to support Specter in the primary. Why should the Democrat regulars in PA just roll over and make room for a guy who just decided yesterday to rejoin their party (he was a Democrat up until 1965 when he switched to win an election - deja vu all over again, as they say).
Specter got lots of attention yesterday for his move, and my guess is he won't get much attention again until he loses in 2010. This is his last hurrah.
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