{"id":192212,"date":"2009-04-28T17:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/28\/specter-switches-parties\/"},"modified":"2009-04-28T17:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T22:17:00","slug":"specter-switches-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/28\/specter-switches-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"Specter Switches Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is obviously the big news of the day, which is that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/04\/28\/AR2009042801523.html\">Arlen Specter is changing parties<\/a>, and becoming a Democrat.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img218.imageshack.us\/img218\/6263\/15qdr938798502.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" \/>The immediate effect is that Coleman-Franken goes on for another year, because now when Franken gets seated,<sup>*<\/sup> the Dems have the votes necessary for cloture.<\/p>\n<p>If you read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/04\/28\/us\/politics\/28caucus.specter.html\">his official statement<\/a>, he does not say that he is <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">becoming<\/span> a Democrat, just that <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">he will be running in the Democratic primary<\/span>, which is a less than sterling endorsement of the party, though his statement that, &#8220;The Republican Party has moved far to the right,&#8221; is no endorsement of them either.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img218.imageshack.us\/img218\/6263\/15qdr938798502.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Personally, it&#8217;s nice having a 60th vote for cloture, whenever the damn Minnesota recount is done,<sup>*<\/sup> but fundamentally, I see this as being all about Arlen Specter.<\/p>\n<p>He squeaked out a primary victory in 2004 against wingnut Pat Toomey, and realized that, with moderates increasingly changing party affiliations to independent or Democrat, he had <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">no<\/span> chance of winning.<\/p>\n<p>As a final thought on him: Quoth the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/2009\/04\/spectered.html\">Atrios<\/a>, who was quoting Harry Reid, &#8220;Arlen Specter&#8217;s with us except when we need him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;ll be a weasel, and will remain so.<\/p>\n<p>I expect this to continue, particularly with regard to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) labor legislation, which he says he will continue to oppose, despite <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">sponsoring<\/span> it a few years back.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Please, just make it stop&#8230;..This recount is going on <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;\" >forever<\/span><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">!!<\/span><sup>\u2020<\/sup><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Why yes, that little self-destructing man will continue to be a part of my Minnesota recount coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is obviously the big news of the day, which is that Arlen Specter is changing parties, and becoming a Democrat. The immediate effect is that Coleman-Franken goes on for another year, because now when Franken gets seated,* the Dems have the votes necessary for cloture. If you read his official statement, he does not &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1000,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-elections","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}