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Laura Vecsey's Blog

Laura Vecsey's Blog

Middle Ground

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Dems know Toomey is now the happiest man in Pa.

Got a little email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee today, but the subject matter seems a bit odd. The Democratic operatives aimed directly at Pat Toomey and the issue of his electability in 2010.

But it seems to me that the Dems have bigger fish to fry, which is how do they get through the coming bloodbath between Joe Sestak and Arlen Specter, which should eat up not only millions in campaign funds, but also some fair bit of goodwill from voters across the state.

No wonder that Democratic Party Chairman T.J. Rooney told us that Toomey might be the happiest man in Pennsylvania today.

“I think Pat Toomey wakes up today with a big smile on his face and wind in his sails,” Rooney said.

The DSCC sent a list of quotes from politicos, all trying to emphasize the “impossibility” of Toomey’s election to U.S. Senate. Given the disparity in registered voters between Dems and the GOP, that seems a facile enough argument to make.

But the analysis of Toomey’s un-electability is based on the state of politics in early 2009. That is when Toomey made his move to run against Specter, chasing Specter to the Democratic ticket. But depending on how the economy goes, and depending on how worn out Democrats get fretting over the epic battle between Specter and Sestak, Toomey could be off in his parallel universe, quietly amassing GOP backing.

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August 4, 2009 at 11:21 am

--Laura Vecsey

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  1. Nathaniel

    Aug 4th, 2009

    Won’t the PA Senator race depend a lot also on how PA voters are feeling about the D’s and R’s in general, in November 2010? Last year’s polls showed a generic D beating a generic R, and a lot of D’s, led by Obama, triumphed. The Grand Old No Party, on both national and state levels, now is trying to obstruct any legislation that would help solve problems, under the theory that any improvement is bad (bad for the GONP, that is). That obstructive strategy seems to be working fairly well. “Compromise” and “public interest” are not words in the R vocabulary right now. Rendell and Specter know that for sure, though Obama seems still to be acting as if he didn’t. In the next year, if Obama fights off the naysayers and inspires some of the enthusiasm voters felt in November 2008, in my view either Democrat will beat Toomey in November 2010. As Tom Ferrick points out in his post, Sestak should want Obama to stay out of the race; but I’d add that Sestak and Specter can agree on needing Obama to look really good, in order to defeat the right-wing strategy of saying No to everything and then blaming the President and all D candidates for not getting anything done.

  2. David Diano

    Aug 5th, 2009

    The best thing for Toomey and the GOP is Specter and Sestak spending $$ millions against each other in a divisive primary.
    Specter needs to knock Sestak out of the box quickly.

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