*****

There were two unmistakable messages that emerged from Biden’s speech:

1. He can reference Mark Twain, and
2. His Party is completely bereft of ideas, without the slightest clue as to how to right the ship.

Neither one is very helpful come Election Day.
Point Two is not a new revelation, however, as most Democratic incumbents have known this for quite some time.  Since they know it’s childish and ineffective to blame prior administrations for today’s recession, especially in light of mammoth spending and crushing new taxes instituted under total Democratic control, these seasoned pols inherently understand that they can’t run on their records.

Hence, dirty campaigns have hit an all-time high.
Just when you think the wool can be pulled over Americans’ eyes, and that they are easily manipulated, they surprise you.  Next Tuesday will be one of those times.
The Democrats aren’t going to lose control of congress, the state house and the Pennsylvania governorship just on the issues alone (although that will play a huge role), but because of something much more basic: lack of credibility and good judgment.  Kind of how the Republicans operated in 2006 and 2008.
More than ever, folks are looking for honest change and aggressive leadership on the issue that matters most — getting the economic engine started again.  Instead of discussing solutions, however, many Democrats have resorted to the low-blow tactics so despised by voters.
Consider these Democratic campaign doozies playing out all around us:

• Bryan Lentz is giving Pat Meehan a run for his money in the 7th district, but rather than compete on the merits of their man’s vision, Lentz’ supporters actively recruited a conservative tea-party activist to run as a third party candidate. Stacking a primary field where most candidates agree on the issues is one thing, but doing so in a general election is tantamount to admitting your campaign platform is bankrupt of ideas.  Sure, all’s fair in war and politics, but this disingenuous move will likely send Lentz to defeat.

• In northeast Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district, incumbent Chris Carney’s “conservative BlueDog” Democrat veneer has been stripped off by former U.S. Attorney Tom Marino, with several polls showing Marino slightly ahead.  Carney loves to tell the voters of the Republican district that he’s not a liberal, yet refuses to run on his record of voting for the federal stimulus and Obamacare — and his 93% alignment with Ms. San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi.

Instead, he has chosen to run ads attacking Marino’s relationship with a local businessman who was convicted of a crime over three decades ago, and one in which no jail time was given. Marino was unequivocally up front about this friendship —years ago — yet Carney portrays Marino’s friendship as a “breaking news” damaging revelation, wildly taking the situation out of context.  Carney’s smear campaign has rightly backfired, and despite a huge money disadvantage, Marino continues to hold his own.

• In Pennsylvania’s 151st state legislative district in Montgomery County, GOP challenger Todd Stephens, a former Assistant District Attorney, is running neck-and-neck with incumbent Rick Taylor. (Stephens lost to Taylor by only 400 votes in 2008). In a disgraceful —and utterly baseless —attack, the Taylor campaign slammed Stephens for his role in a 2009 high-profile murder case where one of the defendants wasn’t convicted.

A local newspaper editorial wrote that Taylor’s charge was “pure fabrication,” and in an unprecedented move, District Attorney Risa Ferman called the Taylor line-of-attack “a complete, flat-out lie.” Even the son of the murder victim was content with Stephen’s performance.

Taylor’s slanderous attack politicizing a man’s murder was so off-base that Taylor is reeling uncontrollably — as he should be.  Even for politics, this is beyond the pale, and Taylor needs to be sent to the unemployment line.

• Perhaps most bizarre is the attack against former State Representative Jay Moyer, who is attempting to reclaim his seat in this Montgomery County district.  Rather than discuss the state’s imploding financial situation which he helped create, however, incumbent Democrat Matt Bradford has continually slammed Moyer as “Jaguar Jay.”  Why?  Because Moyer owns a ten-year old Jag he reportedly bought used.

The point?  Anyone’s guess, but it looks like class warfare at its worst.  Above all, though, it shows how truly “classless” Matt Bradford is.

• And for the truly clueless, we have Chester County State Representative Paul Drucker and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato.  To their credit, they are talking about issues.  Well, just one each, actually.

Drucker wants to toll Route 422, which is already an immense parking lot every single weekday. The fact that Drucker thinks levying yet more tolls and taxes on Pennsylvanians is the viable path to prosperity just shows how insulated from reality he really is.  Enough said.

For Onorato, his passion is similar — pushing for additional taxes on companies extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, the only industry that can restore Pennsylvania’s lifeblood.

First, Onorato stated that he would deny drilling permits to companies not hiring a certain number of Pennsylvania residents, which, in addition to being simply juvenile, is unconstitutional on every level.

Onorato (as he says in his commercials, it’s O-N-O-R-A-T-O, but could just as well be R-E-N-D-E-L-L) also loves to state that the oil companies need to “pay their fair share.”

Like they’re not already.

Every company unlucky enough to conduct business in Pennsylvania is subject to the second-highest corporate income tax in the nation — a whopping ten percent! So to propose a nine percent extraction tax on top of that just shows how far out of touch Onorato (Rendell) is in this race.

Maybe that’s why he has never led in the campaign, and Rendell’s statewide approval ratings are in the twenties.

*****

It cannot be stressed enough how important these elections are to the future of this state and nation. Candidates advocating the common sense policies of fiscal restraint, energy independence, school choice and public-sector union reform are leading across the board.
More important for voters, however, is choosing those with the political will and core convictions to follow through on their promises.
Only then will we be able to stop blaming past politicians of both Parties for current problems, and focus on the only thing that matters — the long road ahead.

Chris Freind is an independent columnist, television commentator, and investigative reporter who operates his own news bureau, www.FreindlyFireZone.com
Readers of his column, “Freindly Fire,” hail from six continents, thirty countries and all fifty states. His work has been referenced in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, foreign newspapers, and in Dick Morris’ recent bestseller “Catastrophe.”
Freind, whose column appears nationally in Newsmax, also serves as a guest commentator on Philadelphia-area talk radio shows, and makes numerous other television and radio appearances, most notably on FOX.  He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

Biden will be in Scranton Monday to headline a fundraiser for Congressman Chris Carney (D-10). A Carney campaign spokesman told The Times Leader that Biden, who was born in Scranton and lived there until he was 10, will join Carney for a morning event.

Carney faces a tough reelection fight against Republican Tom Marino in the conservative, northeast Pennsylvania district. The race is currently No. 5 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Biden will be in western Pennsylvania on Oct. 11 to headline a joint fundraiser for Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper (D-3) and Congressman Mark Critz (D-12).

Dahlkemper faces Republican Mike Kelly in one of the state’s most competitive House races. Critz faces a rematch against Republican Tim Burns, who he beat in the May special election.

Already under fire for talking up a Department of Justice letter that might not actually exist, it now appears that one his superiors recommended Marino be fired as U.S. Attorney in 2006. The Citizens Voice broke the story Thursday, after reviewing a DOJ report. At the time, the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote that he “perceived that Marino was not leading his office.” Marino’s name was added to a list of prosecutors that DOJ “should consider pushing out.”

Marino’s campaign shot down the report.

“We’re really not going to play in the mud on this stuff,” Marino campaign spokesman Jason Fitzgerald told the newspaper . “Those claims are totally without merit. Tom Marino was a distinguished prosecutor.”

But incumbent Democrat Chris Carney’s campaign quickly pounced on the news as another way to keep the focus on Marino—and off Democratic policies that are no doubt unpopular with many voters in the northeast Pennsylvania district.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Carney spokesman Josh Drobnyk said. “The report from the Justice Department makes it clear that Tom Marino lacks the essential qualities that people on all sides of the political spectrum deserve in an elected official: leadership, integrity and competence.”

Anyway, even the local cartoonists are having fun with this guy.

Meanwhile, it looks like the White House bigwigs just can’t stay away from the Keystone State. Vice President Joe Biden will rally Democrats at Penn State University on Tuesday. President Obama was in Philadelphia just a few days ago, and he’ll be back in the City of Brotherly Love for a rally next month.

Obama will be at the University of Wisconsin the same day Biden is in State College, as Democrats seek to get young voters out to the poll in a tough election year.

And that Karl Rove-conceived group Crossroads GPS is going after Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak again. Having already spent more than half-a-million dollars on a TV ad against Sestak, the group is up with another 30-second spot.

You can check out the ad below. We’ll fact-check it later. But at first glance, it looks to contain some of the same dubious claims that got called out by fact-checkers before.

Biden made the comments, reported by The Inquirer, during a downtown fundraiser for Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak. His appearance capped a busy day of campaigning for the party’s ticket, after former President Bill Clinton stumped in the morning for both Sestak and gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato.

A week before President Obama headlines a fundraiser for the Democratic Senate nominee, Vice President Joe Biden will be in Philadelphia to help Sestak beef up his campaign coffers.

The Inquirer reports that the fundraising event will be held Monday. Biden was one of the Democrats who courted Senator Arlen Specter to switch parties last year, and both Biden and Obama strongly supported Specter until Sestak beat him in the May primary.

The morning started with an e-mail from Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz (D-13) on behalf of Manan Trivedi, the Democratic candidate in the 6th District. Schwartz had backed Trivedi’s opponent Doug Pike in the May primary, but now she was going to bat for Trivedi. “This district has been a challenge over these past several election cycles,” Schwartz wrote in an e-mail to Trivedi’s supporters. “So many times we have come so close to taking this seat and turning it blue. I know that we can do it this year with Manan, but we can’t do it without your help.”

Later we heard from newly-elected Delaware County Democratic chief David Landau, who was writing to pull in some last minute dough for Bryan Lentz in the 7th District. “We are just a few thousand dollars shy of our goal,” Landau said. “Any contribution, no matter how small, helps.” Just a few minutes later we got an e-mail from the campaign of Lentz’s Republican opponent, Pat Meehan. “Nancy Pelosi made it clear this week this is one of her top targets for November so we can expect her to throw everything our way,” Meehan wrote to supporters.

We at pa2010.com Central were looking forward to the e-mail asks continuing all the way until the midnight deadline.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee has moved Mike Fitzpatrick up its list of House challengers. Fitzpatrick trying to win back the 8th District seat he lost to Democrat Patrick Murphy in 2006. Already part of the NRCC’s so-called Young Guns program—and we only say “so-called” because not everyone in the program meets our definition of “young”—Fitzpatrick was bumped from “Contender” status to being a full-fledged Young Gun. The program serves as the NRCC’s hub for tracking and helping top-tier House challengers. “Mike Fitzpatrick has proven that he is ready to put this seat back in the Republican column,” Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX), the NRCC chairman, said in a statement. “Mike’s campaign is a symbol of the growing momentum behind Republican candidacies both in Pennsylvania and across the country.”

And we were treated to some more details about the big Joe Biden-Nancy Pelosi-Bryan Lentz fundraiser, thanks to an invitation that showed up in our inbox Wednesday. The invitation bills the event as “Lunch with the Vice President and Speaker of the House.” Hosted by Schwartz and Democratic fundraiser Dan Berger, it’s going down July 19 at the Sheraton in downtown Philadelphia. The invitation doesn’t list any minimum donation amounts, but the proceeds are going to Pennsylvania Victory Fund 2010—the joint fundraising committee through which Lentz and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are splitting the afternoon’s haul.

Always excited at the chance to tie anyone to Nancy Pelosi, Republicans were already getting into the action on this one, with the state GOP branding Lentz a “Biden-Pelosi Democrat,” and GOP chairman Rob Gleason saying in a statement: “Bryan Lentz’s decision to align himself with two of the architects of the most wasteful liberal agenda in American history tells you all you need to know about what type of Congressman Bryan Lentz will be.”

Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be headlining a fundraiser July 19, according to Democrats familiar with the event. The proceeds will be split between Lentz’s campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, though the exact nature of that split remains unclear. Some logistical details are still being finalized.

But having the two Democratic powerhouses in Philadelphia on his behalf comes at a key time for Lentz, the party’s candidate in the 7th District who has at times struggled to fully tap into the Democratic fundraising apparatus in the state. He faces former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan in the state’s most competitive House race, a contest in which Meehan has a financial edge that many expect him to keep. Still, one Democratic fundraiser said the event would be “huge, a game-changer” for Lentz.

The heavy lifting for the fundraiser is being handled by, among others, Democratic powerhouse David L. Cohen, the Comcast executive, and prominent attorney Dan Berger. The event was originally planned as a fundraiser with just Biden and Lentz. But the DCCC was separately planning a fundraiser for Pelosi to attend the same day, and the two were combined rather than risk having them compete.

“It’s going to be huge,” one Democrat said.

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The president’s backing is, of course, assumed, as the head of the Democratic Party for which Critz is trying to hold the seat left open by the late John Murtha.

Nevertheless, when asked by The Hill whether the campaign had Obama’s endorsement, a campaign spokeswoman said that “we’re proud of all the support we’ve received from Democrats and Republicans. This race is about Western Pennsylvania, and fighting for jobs and economic development is Mark’s focus on the campaign and will be his focus in Congress.”

The campaign wouldn’t say whether Critz has asked for the president’s endorsement.

Vice President Joe Biden has already headlined a fundraiser on behalf of Critz, and a White House aide seemed to tell the Capitol newspaper that any question about Obama’s support was a moot point.

“You probably won’t be surprised to hear this,” the aide said, “but when the [vice president] travels in support of a candidate, he’s articulating the president’s support for that candidate.”

Critz faces Republican Tim Burns in the May 18 special election to finish out Murtha’s term.

Now, Democrat Joe Sestak wants Biden to apply that same logic to Arlen Specter.

Sestak on Thursday wrote a letter to Biden, calling for his help in getting Specter to stop airing an against him, which cites a 2005 Navy Times article in saying Sestak left the Navy because he created a “poor command climate.” Specter is, of course, a close friend of Biden’s, and it was Biden who helped convince Specter to switch parties. Nonetheless, the letter, which Sestak’s campaign said would be hand-delivered to Biden by veterans, amounted to Sestak’s most direct involvement in the confrontation.

“A political attack on the service of a Veteran is a dishonor to every man and woman who has worn the cloth of this Nation,” Sestak wrote in the letter. “Mr. Vice President, you’re a Pennsylvanian. You know how proud we are of our Veterans. We have the second-highest population of Vets in the country. You know our Commonwealth deserves better than this kind of politics.

“I understand that Arlen Specter is your longtime colleague and close personal friend,” Sestak added, “but I call on you to disavow these lies and demand that they be stopped immediately.”

The letter came a day after a group of veterans called for Specter to halt the ad. Specter’s campaign has defended the ad, which focuses primary on votes Sestak missed in Washington.