Pennsylvania: Toomey Grabs Defeat Out of the Jaws of Victory

The Pennsylvania US Senate race is one that I have been watching with interest from clear on back to when outgoing Senator Arlen Specter ratted out on his Republican brethren and joined the ranks of the Democrats in the US Senate, giving Democrats, for one brief shining moment, a filibuster proof majority.

Specter wasn’t going to win in a head-to-head primary contest against Teabagger Pat Toomey, whose uber-conservative group, Club For Growth was once tagged by former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee the “Club For Greed.”

Specter only outpolled Toomey once in a Quinnipiac poll taken in February 2010.

So when Specter switched sides, he met with yet another primary challenger in retired Navy Admiral and present Congressman Joe Sestak. And Sestak cleaned his clock. Democrats don’t like voting for Republicans who say they are Democrats just for the convenience of job security.

Sestak, however, faced the same problems that Specter did in polling himself against Toomey. His numbers have always been slightly better than Specter’s ever were, but he has always trailed Toomey in any Pennsylvania poll.

Until the latest Hart Poll conducted between October 8 and October 10, a telephone poll of 604 likely voters. A poll with a 4% margin of error.

The Hart Poll has Joe Sestak leading Pat Toomey by 3%, 47% to 44%.

Now that is still within the margin of error, but the point is that this is the first time that we see Sestak’s numbers higher than Toomey’s. It shows a trend.

The trend is just this: people are starting to realize that the change that the Republicans are promising if they are elected is a change back to status quo ante. That is, Republicans promise to bring back everything that Bush and a Republican majority put in place between 2001 and 2006. Back to a kleptocracy. Back to Wall Street greed.

Back to the bad old days that inspired two successive Democratic victories.

Pat Toomey along with Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O’Donnell, and Mike Buck are way out there on the political spectrum. When moderate Republicans and Independents start to realize that undeniable fact, they will see that they have little choice but to support Democratic candidates who, unlike their Republican opponents, haven’t completely lost their minds.

And when that happens, there goes a Republican majority in the Senate.