Matt Yglesias

Primary Challenge Pushes Specter to the Left

Nate Silver has a neat post up demonstrating how Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) has responded to the primary challenge from Joe Sestak by becoming a loyal Democrat:

As far as the Specter-Sestak race, I have no idea which way this cuts. But it highlights the importance of robust electoral threats to making a political movement effective. Senators of either party who, like Chuck Grassley or Ben Nelson, perceive a clear electoral threat to their right but no threat to their left will tend to drift right. But put a real from-the-left threat into play, and suddenly voting records change.

Specter Embraces Public Option

Learning to love big government.

Brian Beutler reports that at yesterday’s health care rally, Arlen Specter (D-PA) embraced the public plan that he’d opposed just a few months ago:

Speaking moments ago to a large and animated crowd of union organizers and health reform advocates in a brewing house just North of the Capitol, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) said he supports a public insurance option.

“Schumer has it right about having a public component,” Specter said.

I wrote a little while ago for The Daily Beast about the beneficial impact of primary campaigns on a political movement’s efficacy. And I think you can see that in the Specter-Sestak competition in Pennsylvania. Thus far, Joe Sestak hasn’t picked up much steam. But that’s okay, you just need a situation in which Specter is determined not to give Sestak an opening to set up a positive dynamic.

Sestak Throwing His Hat in the Ring

Hot scoop from Brian Beutler who reports that Rep Joe Sestak (D-PA) is readying a primary challenge against Arlen Specter (D-PA):

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) is privately telling supporters that he intends to run for Senate, TPMDC has confirmed.

“He intends to get in the race,” says Meg Infantino, the Congressman’s sister, who works at Sestak for Congress. “In the not too distant future, he will sit down with his wife and daughter to make the final decision.”

Party leaders, and especially outfits like the DSCC, tend to be highly primary averse. But I think there’s little in the way of solid evidence that primaries are bad for a political party. Of course under certain circumstances primary challenges can be destructive—as when a party’s base demands ideological orthodoxy in a district or state that an orthodox candidate can’t win—but neither Sestak nor Specter is a down-the-line liberal, and Pennsylvania’s a left-of-center state so from a progressive point of view it strikes me as desirable that there be some competition for the nomination.

Arlen Specter Backs Pelosi

I appreciate that there are some basic political truths that are awkward for most politicians to actually utter. But one reason that it’s good to have some politicians around who are worried about their left flank, is that you can get this sort of thing from Arlen Specter (D-PA):

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes … to honesty. It goes back a long time,” Specter said in a speech before the American Law Institute at a Washington hotel.

The Republican-turned-Democrat listed a handful of examples in the past where the CIA has withheld key information from Congress.

“It’s a real problem as to how you get the information,” he said.

Right on. Not that we should be acting like the CIA is just somehow full of dishonest people. But it’s an agency that’s well-equipped to do things in secret. Sometimes presidents like to use it because they want to do something legitimate that requires secrecy. But the secrecy capabilities are also useful if you want to do something that’s illegal or immoral. Like torture people. But when the CIA is being asked to do illegal and immoral things in order to keep them secret, that naturally tends to extend toward keeping congress in the dark. There are many historical instances of this, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the CIA’s briefings on the Bush torture program turn out to have been less-than-thorough.

Good for Specter.

Specter Waffling on Dawn Johnsen Cloture

Greg Sargent reports that Arlen Specter is now indicating he might vote for cloture on Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to head up the Office of Legal Counsel, though he’d still vote “no” on the final confirmation.

This is a very interesting political development, but it still leaves us with an entirely unanswered question: what’s the reason for Specter’s opposition to Johnsen? The objection opponents have raised is that she’s somehow too stridently pro-choice. But Specter’s pro-choice. And always has been, even as a Republican. When Specter initially made his opposition to Johnsen known, the reason was that he was trying to fend off a primary challenge from Pat Toomey by embracing all manner of wingnuttery. What’s the reason now? Why can’t a pro-choice Democratic Senator vote “yes” on a pro-choice Democratic President’s nomination of a pro-choice Democrat to a Justice Department position?

Specter and Souter

The replacement of David Souter counts as a noteworthy issue where Arlen Specter’s decision to switch parties really will make a difference. Over the course of his career, Specter has shown a total lack of principles on judicial nominations. He was an important part of the campaign to spike the nomination of Robert Bork back in the 1980s. But he was the key persecutor of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas nominations. During the Clinton years, he hewed a moderate line, then during the Bush years he gave key moderate cover to hard-right nominees.

If we were talking about Arlen Specter, guy who’s trying to fend off a primary challenge from Pat Toomey, you could be sure that he’d vociferously oppose anyone Barack Obama nominated. But as Arlen Specter, guy who’s hoping to avoid a tough primary challenge from the left, he ought to be easy to count on as a supporter. The overall impact of the Specter flip should be pretty modest but I bet this is one of the times it will flip a vote and that, in turn, will help flip the narrative around the whole thing.

Specter’s Seniority

It seems that Harry Reid and Arlen Specter cut a deal regarded Specter post-switch seniority. The deal is that for now, nothing will change. He’ll keep the committee seats he has, but won’t chair anything. But if Specter gets re-elected in 2010, then he’ll be treated as if he’d been a Democrat all along. In other words, a very senior Democrat who’d likely chair the Judiciary committee. It turns out, of course, that many senior-but-slightly-less-senior-than-Specter Democrats aren’t happy about this deal since it’s their oxes that are getting gored.

From a progressive point of view, I think “constructive ambiguity” on this score is the most useful thing. If Specter casts good votes that help brings progressive governance to the country, then progressives will see the Specter courtship as having been useful and put pressure on Senate Democrats to put their egos aside and make good on the promises that were made to Specter. But if he proves to be an obstacle to the progressive agenda, then Barbara Mikulski and others who don’t want to take a back seat to Specter will have a strong case.

Win By Losing?

Via Ed Kilgore, Ed Rogers from the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations makes the point that it’s basically never good to lose a Senator:

Notice to Republicans: Arlen Specter changing parties is good for the Democrats and President Obama and bad for us. If you think otherwise, put down the Ann Coulter book and go get some fresh air. There’s always a delusional element within the GOP that thinks if we lose badly enough the Democrats will gain so much power they will implement all their crazy plans, the people will revolt and purest Republicans will then be swept back into power. Even if this were true, it doesn’t take into account the damage done while our opponents are in control.

I do think it’s always worth considering an alternative. I think it’s very possible that Democrats could “gain so much power” that they implement at least some of their “crazy plans” and that the people, rather than revolting, will just turn their attention to other issues. For example, many Americans feels anxiety about their health insurance status. And the majority of these people vote for Democrats. But if Democrats deliver a health care reform plan that assuages those fears, those voters may start voting more on their hatred of abortion or love of torture and bring Republicans back into power.

You can think of Dwight Eisenhower succeeding as a politician not despite the New Deal, but in large part because the New Deal’s successes eventually built a country that no longer had a strong desire for progressive economic policy. Or how today’s tax cut jihad has trouble attracting votes in part because marginal tax rates are much lower than where they were before Reagan cut them—the issue just doesn’t matter as much to people as it used to.

Mods vs Cons in GOP Extends Beyond Culture Wars

Olympia Snowe’s op-ed on how the increasingly narrow and dogmatic conservatism of the Republican Party drove Arlen Specter from the fold is worth a read. But I think it’s noteworthy that she seems more interested in a rote recitation of the plight of socially moderate northeastern Republicans than she is in actually looking at the particulars of Specter’s situation. It’s true that Specter was nominally pro-choice. But for the past 15 years, he’s assembled a voting record that’s pretty orthodox. He led the charge on behalf of Clarence Thomas, he worked mightily for all of Bush’s judicial appointments, and he still says he’s eager to filibuster Dawn Johnson.

Indeed, what’s notable about the Toomey-Specter grudge match is that it’s not primarily about cultural issues, it’s primarily about Specter’s alleged deviations on economic policy.

More broadly in the intellectual arena, the orthodox conservative position has started to include controversial—and, frankly, false—claims about which things are problems. To be a conservative in good standing, for example, you’re supposed to join with Alan Reynolds in denying that inequality is increasing. You’re supposed to join with George Will and David Boaz in denying that climate change is happening. Basically, if you say that there are any problems in the United States other than high taxes, you’re out of the tent. That, much more so than the continued prominence of conservative social issues, constitutes a radical narrowing of the definition of “conservatism” from where it was 25-30 years ago.