The Research 2000 poll is in and it’s Kos-tastic for Sestak:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/14/866125/-PA-Sen:-Sestak-takes-(statistically-insignificant)-lead

While this polls shows Joe leading Arlen, it, too, falls into the dead-heat margin of error. However, all trends are up for Sestak, down for Specter.

And Kos also shows the trend lines vs. Toomey for each candidate, making it clear that Sestak runs a much better chance of winning the seat in the general than does Specter.

Some vintage quotes in the piece from Markos:

After taking a look at what TJ Rooney said earlier this week about a “cataclysm” if Sestak wins:

“T.J. Rooney, chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

And after considering all of the polls and trendlines, Kos concludes:

“At this point, nominating the real Democrat also gives us the best chance in the general election to hold the seat. There is zero reason to stick with the untrustworthy Specter.”

Hey David…go fight with Kos!

Bruce-
You don’t seem worried that Sestak has slipped by 7 points in your much touted Muhlenberg poll. What happened to the surge?

It’s all within the margin of error.

However, based on my expectations of the difference in ground-game. Specter will win this. I’m not even worried anymore due to an error I discovered last night in Sestak’s approach. (I’ll tell you after the election how incredibly stupid it was, so we can prevent that on future Dem campaigns.) For now, I’ll just have to sit and smile with a genuine smile bigger than Sestak’s fake one in the debate.

No doubt, the ground game on Tuesday will heavily favor Specter. That’s what happens in a top-down election.

I do hope that Team Sestak has wall-to-wall ads readly to go through the weekend, because voters need to arrive at the polls with their minds made up on Tuesday. If 12 percent of the voters on Tuesday are still undecided when they get to the polls, Joe has trouble, for sure.

How anyone, even you Dave, could smile at the prospect of Arlen Specter as the Democratic candidate in November is completely beyond me.

By the way, re: Muhlenberg. You covered it: “it’s all within the margin of error.”

With that 5% MOE, it’s very possible that we reached dead-heat territory and stalemated there a week ago. Go back and read what I’ve written about Muhlenberg – it showed where the momentum was, vis-a-vis a month ago. But you simply cannot track day-to-day movement using their numbers. And I never said you could.

Undecideds in the M-poll have remained stubbornly the same, sticking in the 11-12% range. I’m thinking that these voters will break hugely in favor in Sestak — IF they decide before Tuesday. If they don’t it’s a different story.

Sorry to see the governor climbing out on a limb during his last few months in office for the Republican Specter. Arlen’s loss on Tuesday will make Ed look politically weak during budget season. Very sad way to end his term as governor.

who cares about rendell…he is done anyway…and so is his lackey rooney…this endorsement of specter is the final nail…The Citizens Voice in NEPA has issued a great endorsement of Sestak:
http://citizensvoice.com/news/election/endorsement-joe-sestak-1.786874

The state committee and leadership are putting the screws to every Democratic elected official to work for Specter. The pressure must be enormous to rescue this failing campaign.

I would love to see at least a handful of these guys stand up to the machine and tell TJ and his pals to go pound sand. Or at least not show up at the fake rallies they have planned this weekend. An Arlen Specter defeat is going to taint every elected official who’s associated with it.

And conversely, making a statement today supporting Joe Sestak (versus waiting until after he wins next Tuesday) is going to look awfully good.

The elected officials should grow a set and stand up for those of us in the party that aren’t elected officials. Those officials should realize that Rendell and Rooney are impotent…specter is done…Joe and Casey will be the leaders of the party after Corbett is elected governor.

Maybe Sestak can get Wendell Young IV and Eric Massa to campaign for him this weekend.

Incidentally, Rendell campaigning for Specter is pretty shrewd – Rendell was once the popular mayor of PA’s largest city, and turnout in the urban areas is critical to who wins and who loses.

Rendell still commands huge respect in southeastern PA, and even in Delaware County, despite the Sestak posse’s infiltration of the committee. Let us also not forget that it was Rendell who urged Bryan Lentz to step aside in 2006 so Sestak could make an easier play for the 7th district.

Take Rendell’s move for what it is – an endorsement of a man he’s known all his life, and a disavowal of an unscrupulous upstart.

And yes, unscrupulous is the operative word for a man who doesn’t live in the district he represents, whose wife isn’t registered to vote in the district he represents, who doesn’t send his child to the public schools in the district he represents, and who raised millions of dollars from the people he represents in his last election only to waste it on a needless senate primary.

That, ladies and gents, is the real Joe Sestak. Let’s send him back to his real home in Northern Virginia and move on with our lives.

David:

Last week you said it was all about the moving 4-day averages on the Muhlenberg tracking poll. Today the big news is a one-day drop for Sestak (See quotes below.) You wouldn’t be cherry-picking data to suit your talking points on any given day, would you?

“David Diano

May 14th, 2010

Bruce-
You don’t seem worried that Sestak has slipped by 7 points in your much touted Muhlenberg poll. What happened to the surge?

It’s all within the margin of error.”

“David Diano

May 3rd, 2010

I’m looking forward to seeing such a poll. However, for those getting excited by each 1-point fluctuation with the FIVE point margin of error, I recommend looking at a 3-5 day moving average value to smooth out the jaggedness. (although if the poll has a several day range, that might not be necessary)
The moving average window will help take into account fluctuations due to whether someone was polled before/after the evening news cycle, had a chance to see latest commercials, etc.”

Mario Cimino
D – Morton Borough Council

Rendell may have once been popular in SEPA, but look at him now…playing wiht republicans for his eight years as governor has cost him dearly in legislative agenda and legacy…arlen is just the latest in his poor excuse for politics. let’s see how eddie looks on Wednesday morning kissing Joe’s butt…trying to save all of bhis money machine friends…ha ha ha

George Brendt wrote:

“Take Rendell’s move for what it is – an endorsement of a man he’s known all his life, and a disavowal of an unscrupulous upstart.”

Uhh…Specter would actually be a man that Rendell has campaigned against all his life. And therein lies the rub for the rank and file Democratic electorate. They’ve been told over and over again by Rendell and these same party leaders for 30 years that they need to go out and defeat Arlen Specter. Now they are being told he is their best friend. And it smacks of paternalism, in the context of “We know what’s good for you more than you do” and/or “We think you all just fell off the turnip truck.” In an election season rife with more populist anger than we have seen in decades, that paternalism isn’t sitting well. It’s going to be a big bruise to Rendell’s ego, but he’s entered the period of lame duck irrelevancy, and it’s hard to see how one lame duck is going to save another.

And as for the Virginia nonsense… Has Curt Weldon now been brought in to write Specter’s talking points? Soooooo 2006!

Mario Cimino
D – Morton Borough Council

suburban dem, if through some charity of Beelzebub Sestak actually carries this thing off, he will have to kiss Big Eddie’s butt, not the other way around. Sestak will be broke and will desperately need an infusion of funds and the donor lists from the other campaigns in order to stay viable. He’d better be prepared with all the lipstick and rouge he can afford with what’ll be left in his campaign’s account.

If there’s less money to go around at the end of the month because of what Sestak forced the party to endure, you can bet the strategy in PA will be to help the House and gubernatorial candidates first and Sestak at a distant second, not unlike what happened with Rick Santorum and the RNC in 2006 when they pulled out of the state a month before the election. What goes around comes around.

Mario, it would be a mere 2006 talking point, if it were untrue now. It is, however, still the case that Sestak maintains his primary residence in Virginia and that his wife is not registered to vote here.

One would think Sestak would have corrected it by now, nearly four years later.

Sorry George…not how politics works…Joe beats the machine…machine needs joe to hold seat…machine courts joe…ask eddie…he knows…he had to do it to obama too when eddie threw all of his support and money friends to hillary in a losing battle.

Obama had money, Sestak does not. Obama had a national organization, Sestak does not. THAT’S how politics works.

If by some stroke of the fourth circle Sestak wins, he’ll have to exactly what I said to remain viable. He’ll be broke, which is the worst fate that can befall a politician in 2010, aside from a sex scandal.

Has anyone else noticed that Sestak’s website does not have an endorsements link?

I suppose if you don’t have enough to meaningfully fill up a page, even with cheesy graphics and the same old pictures from the 2006 campaign, it’s better just to keep quiet.

George…we shall agree to disagree…rendell will be calling Joe to kiss up by Friday

Mario-
The Virginia carpetbagger issue was also used by us against Santorum.
Can you explain why Joe’s wife registered in Delco in 2006, but dropped her registration in 2007 when Joe bought the house in Edgmont?

David :Why dont you as her if you think it means something. This is some really craven stuff you are spewing.
The drooling and frothing on the keyboard is gonna give your computer short and set your footies on fire.

Craven?
Sestak puts on his campaign literature that he “lives in Edgmont with his wife and daughter”. That’s not my claim, it’s his.

In 2006 when this issue came up, he claimed that they would be moving here. His wife registered here. He made a big point of their house search. etc.
However, evidence suggests that they did not actually move here, but still live in the house they bought in Virginia about 12 years ago.

Sestak appears to be every bit the carpetbagger that Santorum was. Joe doesn’t even bother with the pretense of having his wife registered her (though he did in 2006).

Specter is ANTI – UNION and is against the Free Choice Act .Labor needs to be represented again .
W destroyed the American dream.

Ed-
Labor is supporting Specter, like they have since 1998. Do you think that “Labor” is anti-union?

Dave, are you a union member?

It’s funny how Sestak can call himself “pro-Labor” when he works his aids to the bone, has the WORST reputation on the Hill and in the county as an employer.

I know it. I’ve SEEN it. If you haven’t, count yourself lucky.

And Bill Bailey/Bill Healey, or Richie Sestak, whoever you are, you know it’s the truth. Get with it. Speak the truth. Don’t sacrifice Pennsylvania to this two-bit carpetbagger.

Make no mistake about it, Rendell’s support of Specter is payback for Specter’s getting Rendell’s wife a lifetime appointment as a Federal judge. Rendell owes Specter big time for that. That is why when Specter was a Republican, Rendell never actively campaigned against him.

Rendell is as big a whore as Specter. Birds of a feather.

If Specter wins, the Democratic party (and the public) loses, and Rendell and Specter could not care less.

Rob, you are so right. Rendell oozes ‘political whore’ from every pore.

The Dems have a chance, literally for a ‘new generation of leadership’ to replace the stench of corruption and ‘power above all’ that the Rendell/Specter cabal has infused the party with. Hopefully the voters will be smart enough to see it and use Election Day to send the corrupt machine boys packing. If they don’t, we lose in November anyway. The people of PA will lose and the Dems will lose a number of liberal activists – at least until the next guy with the chops of a Joe Sestak comes along. From what I’ve seen of the party’s candidate selections, that’s going to be awhile.

David – BIG ‘Labor’ is supporting Specter because they are part of the corrupt machine. (Meanwhile Sestak has many endorsements from small and independent unions.)

And yes, by definition, if Big ‘Labor’ supports the candidate who has vigorously opposed their #1 issue, they are anti-worker and anti-union.

It doesn’t get much more corrupt than that.

As an AFSCME retiree, you folks backing Sestak are smooking “liberal” marijuana.

Did you notice that Obama, our president who Sestak tried to embarass in a cheap political stunt, made 2 very pro-labor recess appointments to the NLRB, after they had been filibustered by the GOP?

Why aren’t all you so-called “progressives” who will be working your asses off on election day (for which you deserve credit) troubled by the fact that, prior to 2006, Sestak did not even show up to vote (either in person or by absentee) in many elections.

How many of you “move-on” acolytes work 70 hours a week for a $19K annual salary? That is what some of Sestak’s regular (not campaign) staff does. Do the math that equates to less than $5.40 an hour, way less than minimum wage. Isn’t it fair to judge a person by how he/she treats those who work for him or her?

Isn’t it reasonable to question the judgment of an office-holder that plays footsie with CAIR (Council for American Islamic Relations) as Sestak did? Links between CAIR and Hamas are no secret.

Sestak is almost 60 years old.

What “new” generation is he representing?

Specter Must Go –

According to the Pa AFL-CIO, Senator Arlen Specter is the strongest advocate and supporter for good jobs, fair trade policies, worker’s rights and quality affordable healthcare for all, Pa AFL-CIO President Bill George said. He is a proven leader who has stood with working families when the chips are down, especially his key role in passing the AMERICAN RECOVERY & INVESTMENT ACT of 2009 which has protected jobs, helped unemployed workers and prevented this nation from sinking into another great depression.

“Throughout his career in the US Senate, he has stood with Pennsylvania’s working families fighting against unfair trade policies that destroy good jobs, fighting for workers rights and equal opportunity and fighting to protect Pennsylvania communities and workers against unfair budget cuts during the Bush Administration. It’s for these reasons that the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Executive Council endorses SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER for election in the May 18th Primary.”

This marks the third time Sen. Arlen Specter has earned the PA AFL-CIO’s endorsement which requires a two-thirds affirmative vote of its Executive Council. Senator Arlen Specter was endorsed in the 1998 and 2004 General Elections.

*For your information, the above is direct from the Pa AFL-CIO website!

Senator Arlen Specter and the AFL-CIO have an agreement on EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) and it is Arlen Specter’s plan that the AFL-CIO is embracing and SENATOR SPECTER IS THE POINT MAN for labor on this all important topic! You could call and ask for yourself… Pa. AFL-CIO: 717-238-9351

On the other hand it was congressman Sestak that has continually moved toward the RIGHT!
Sestak co-sponsored EFCA a few years back, but when the bill came forth again more recently, Sestak was AWOL! He would not co-sponsor EFCA and it was worse than never being involved with it at all, as other prospective co-sponsors would question why he was for it and now he is not!

Well Joe Sestak finally co-sponsored the bill, but less than a week later he introduced HR 1355, his own compromise bill and catch this, he drafted it a few weeks prior to co-sponsoring EFCA in its original form. By doing this Congressman Sestak TORPEDOED EFCA’s original bill, PERIOD!!!!!

SESTAK did not even push the bill through the proper channels as he wanted to push it to the forefront ASAP! = SESTAK’s MOVE TO APPEASE THE FAR RIGHT VOTERS! ME, ME. ME, ME!!!

It is Senator Arlen Specter that the labor movement has an agreement with…end of story!

To those who believe Sestak’s commercial and the fallacy that Specter switched parties only to get re-elected, “He wasn’t thinking about saving his job,” Rendell said of Specter. “He was risking his job,” in voting for the AMERICAN RECOVERY & INVESTMENT ACT of 2009. Rendell said state statistics show there are 20,558 people currently working on jobs created by the stimulus package.

Senator Arlen Specter voted bipartisan to support President Obama, the American worker and YES FOR YOU! He was the crucial vote that prevented another Great Depression!

Big Labor knows quite a bit more about Senator Specter and Congressman Sestak and have made the right choice in choosing Senator Arlen Specter and it appears the smaller independent unions you refer to are just like Joe Sestak…Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me!!!!!!!!!!

To the starry-eyed but painfully misguided Sestak supporters who decry the carpet-bagging allegations, consider the following:

1) Joe’s residence in the 7th district in Newtown Square is a condo, attached on both sides to other residences. It shares a driveway with one of the other adjoining units.

2) Joe’s residence in Alexandria, VA, is a beautiful two-story clapboard home, with two chimneys, and is surrounded by trees.

3) Sestak’s most recent financial disclosure puts his net worth between $1.8MM – $3MM.

You think he would be able to afford more than just a token residence in the district he claims to represent.

Don’t take my word for it, check out the primary sources:

http://fedupusa.wordpress.com/us-congress-senate/representatives-q-z/

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/candlook.php?CID=N00028049

INDEPENDENTS, UNDECIDEDS, and other PATRIOTIC 7th DISTRICT DEMOCRATS: do not vote for this man, he is a carpetbagging fraud second only to Rick Santorum.