Even Without Specter, Republicans Still Overrepresented in the Senate

Arlen Specter, who has been a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania since 1980, today announced that he is switching to the Democratic Party. That means what once former Senator Coleman gets his walking papers from the Minnesota Supreme Court and Senator-Elect Franken is seated, we’ll be at 60. And that of course is a filibuster-proof majority.

Specter’s news conference, at which he announced his party switch, was as much a warning to Democrats as a repudiation of his Republican Party membership. He made clear that this switch was made almost entirely as a political calculation — shocker! — to get away from right-wing freakazoid Pat Toomey, who was well on his way to crushing Specter in the Republican primary. Although he announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for Senate, Specter warned that he shouldn’t be counted on to stand up to Republican filibusters.

As if Specter’s defection weren’t bad enough for the GOP, a new poll shows that only 21% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans. The party and its brain trust — Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and Steve Doocy — is completely adrift.

Specter’s news conference was, to be diplomatic, less than impressive. Although as the President noted, we’re glad to have him, Specter seemed less happy to be here. He spent a great deal of time today admonishing the Democratic Party that he couldn’t really be counted on in upcoming legislative battles, that he made the switch because of the goodies he’d been promised, because, Specter claims, the President promised to support him, and because he knew he was going to lose to Toomey.

Does Specter really share the values of the Democratic Party? A lot of Republicans think so — but a lot of Republicans also think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President, so what do they know? It seems fairly obvious that Specter became a Democrat unhappily.

Second-term Congressman Joe Sestak, on the other hand, is and has been a Democrat.  Sestak is a retired three-star admiral who served in the Navy for 31 years. He represents Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District (Philadelphia’s southeastern suburbs) and was — until today — a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for Senate. Now that moderate Democrat-by-convenience Arlen Specter plans to seek the Democratic nomination for Senate, will Sestak challenge him? We’ll ask Congressman Sestak himself when he joins us on the next Partisan Gridlock, Wednesday from 10:00-11:00PM on KPFT, 90.1FM, Houston.

Update: We were joined by Will Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News political analyst, blogger and author of Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future. We also spoke to Houston Chronicle SciGuy Eric Berger about the swine flu.

Here’s the show.

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