Note to the DNC: Your hackery will no longer dictate whom we support

If you needed any further proof about just how removed official Washington is from the people it's supposed to represent, the frantic last-minute rush of phone calls and ads telling Pennsylvania voters how important it is to vote for a guy who switched parties so he could be re-elected was proof of this tone-deafness.

Today all the media hysteria will be about Rand Paul (and about flogging the hapless Richard Blumenthal to death and once he drops out, continuing to flog the political corpse). But it's one thing for a much-hyped teabagger whose father earns his own fair amount of ink and air time to win in Kentucky. It's quite another for a little-known second-term Congressman to come back from a ridiculously-wide multi-double-digit deficit just a few months ago to defeat Arlen Specter, who's been in the Senate pretty much my entire life. And Sestak won handily once you got out of Philadelphia, as E.J. Dionne notes:

To get a sense of Sestak’s sweep, consider that he carried all but three of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. He carried Obama strongholds – he got 63 percent in Lancaster County, for example – but also swept through smaller counties in the central and western parts of the state that had supported Clinton. Sestak put together a kind of left-right coalition.

Philadelphia was the one part of Obama’s old coalition that the president’s endorsement (along with that of Gov. Ed Rendell and Mayor Michael Nutter) helped deliver for Specter. The Republican-turned-Democrat won 64 percent of the vote in Philly, but Sestak was winning 57 percent of the vote in the rest of the state – and that number might rise when all the votes are counted.

This suggests that something quite interesting happened here today: Sestak was clearly the candidate of middle class and upper middle class liberals, and he ran a campaign that sought to convey the activist feel of Obama’s ’08 race. But as Sestak suggested in his victory speech tonight, he also profited from being the anti-establishment candidate, and this helped him in a long list of rural and small town counties that are anything but liberal.

Who knows if he can repeat this in November – especially since many of the smaller counties Sestak carried will no doubt vote Republican this fall. But the surge toward Sestak after he ran his ad questioning Specter’s motives in switching to the Democratic Party was quite comprehensive. And the breadth of his victory suggests he could be the sort of coalition-builder a politician needs to be to carry this complicated state.

It would be foolish to take Sestak's win as any kind of Grand Progressive Victory. Sestak is hardly the Second Coming of Bernie Sanders, after all. God knows that if he defeats the wingnut Pat Toomey in November, he'll be better than Toomey or an Arlen Specter no longer afraid for his seat. But Sestak is a mainstream Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 -- a candidate who would have been almost exactly the same kind of President as Barack Obama has been so far. And Specter ran a terrible campaign that included musings on whether he should have remained a Republican. His campaign was SO much about his own seat instead of the struggles of Pennsylvanians that if John McCain is smart, he'll start looking at golf carts and booking tee times with Specter for after November.

To the extent that the press wants to spin everything as a repudiation of Barack Obama, they ought to spin yesterday's results of the Obama Administration's decision to throw the progressive activists who elected him under the bus on issue after issue and embrace the hackocracy represented by an opportunist like Arlen Specter.

Time to donate to Joe Sestak

It's not unusual for a President to lend his supposed clout to state electoral contests. While political parties may have titular heads, a sitting president usually trumps the "official" head of the party. But while Jeff Zeleny and Adam Nagourney, the New York Times tag-team of journalistic hackery, may be fanning themselves on a chaise longue about how Barack Obama trying to influence state candidates is just SO un-bipartisan, they also point out that Obama is backing some pretty ugly horses out there:

The president’s top strategists have recruited candidates — and nudged others to step aside — in races in Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. They said they intended to continue this practice heading into the 2010 midterm elections, as well as with an eye to the redistricting fights that will go on within states early in the next decade.

The intense involvement reflects the tactics and style of the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who helped Democrats win the House three years ago as chairman of the Congressional campaign committee.

While some party officials applaud the White House for its efforts — there is widespread concern among Democrats that the party could suffer if Mr. Paterson runs — the actions are drawing alarm from some Democrats who believe they cross a line and run contrary to Mr. Obama’s often-stated pledge to rise above partisan battles.

“The Democratic Party under Barack Obama did not come into office because of political calculation; it got there because of audacity,” said Representative Joe Sestak, a Pennsylvania Democrat who ignored White House efforts to urge him to stay out of a primary race against Senator Arlen Specter. “To be seen like you are selecting winners and losers in a party-boss way will breed some resentment, and in a longer term it won’t bode well.”

[snip]

In Pennsylvania, the White House has rallied behind Mr. Specter, a Republican-turned-Democrat, as he faces off in a Democratic primary against Mr. Sestak. The support from the president reflects a promise Democrats made to Mr. Specter earlier this year in persuading him to switch parties.

“An endorsement by the president is a tremendous boost,” Mr. Specter said. “He’s the captain of the team.”

More than anything, though, the interventions reflect a controlling style of this White House and of Mr. Emanuel, who employed similar hard-ball tactics to recruit candidates when he was running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In addition to Mr. Emanuel, the White House political director, Patrick Gaspard, and deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, keep close watch on all political races.

Yes, and Arlen Specter is nothing but a craven political opportunist. Backing him is textbook Rahm Emanuel -- forget about change, forget about anything but perpetuating the entrenched power structure.

We don't have to go along with this crap. If you have some shekels to spare, you could send some to help Joe Sestak break this monster. Choose your sponsoring organization here.