Sestak for Senate

It wasn't a joke, it was a mistake.

I don't claim to know whether it was a mistake of the sort Specter claims (that he can't remember which team he's on) or if he meant it and was then told it was a step too far and had to retract.

But if it had been a joke, he would have said so. That was the easiest path to cleaning up the mess he made by saying it in the first place. And his path to reelection is not easy no matter what happens with a Dem challenger, so he has every reason to want to clean up the mess as quickly and efficiently as possible.

It's worth noting that of all the sites I regularly visit (this one, The Page, Political Wire, Drudge, Politico, 538, HuffPo and, yes, kos and mydd), you are the only person on any of them that thinks it was a joke.

It's not that big of a deal (certainly not as his oppo to O's health care plan); it was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I was ready to support Sestak already -- Why have a fair weather Dem when we can have a solid one, especially when the stakes are so high?

You're more het up on proving it was a joke than I was in being annoyed by it. And yet, there is no indication anywhere that it was indeed a joke apart from your assertion that any interview in the NYT mag is 100% jokes.

 

I'm not sure that follows. If Specter had received seniority he would have leapfrogged every other Democrat in the Senate who had rights to seniority in the party. There were a lot of Dems in the Senate who were pissed off that there was even a suggestion of that happening. I think Specter made it easier for those Dems to win out with his "I never said I would be a loyal Democrat" independence assertion tour of the talk show circuit.

He has been clear that his number one priority is political survival and, as such, he's going to need the Dem party solidly in his corner in PA. As of today, he's losing a general election matchup with Ridge.

That's why he had to act so fast to clear the air on the Coleman thing.

 

I already said I don't pretend to know his mind as to the precise nature of the mistake. I imagine it might have been one or another thing:

1. He actually forgot who was on his side, as he said in his retraction (unlikely), or
2. He actually was advocating for Coleman (they're friends) and was then told that he was finally crossing a bad line and had to retract.

There is, I admit, a third possibility. And that's that you're right and he was joking. Of course, it that was the case, he bobbled the retraction too. If it was a joke, he should have said so. That would have got him off the hook and made haters look silly (like you're trying to do) instead of underlining the meme that this is nothing but team sports for him.

But I think the onus is on you to prove that he was joking, not me, since you're the only person I'm aware of on the entire internet making that assertion. And the only support you've provided for that is that it was in a NYT mag interview. I agree that there's always jokey stuff in those, but you act like they're 100% jokes all the time. That's silly. The NYT mag is lighthearted; it's not The Onion.

So, sure, you might be right even though you're the only one that drew that conclusion. But it's ludicrous for you to act like it's obvious that you're right and anyone who doesn't agree is a humorless idiot.

And comparing kos to Beck is especially stupid. Kos is a hard core ideologue, sure. But he's not insane. And his point is well taken. Why should the party give up a chance to have a pro-labor, pro-health care, truly and reliably progressive senator in a solidly blue state in order to accommodate someone who switched parties only to save his election chances (by his own accounting)?

Sometimes you seem to suggest that if everyone isn't joking in every post they make here they're humorless. I don't suffer from a sense of humor deficit. 99 out of 100 things out of my mouth are jokes. My day job involves telling jokes and getting people to laugh at them. And I'm relatively successful at it.

But while I am not humorless on, say, national health care or responsibly ending the war in Iraq, I am serious about those things too. If that annoys you, I don't really care.

 

Biden makes silly comments almost every day. Can I preemptively "jump all over" him for them here?

Despite your insistence to the contrary, this wasn't a "silly" comment. It might have been a stupid joke as you and only you think it was, but the content wasn't silly.

Every single vote in the Senate counts right now. One vote can be the difference between, for example, passing national health care or not.

It's almost six months now since the MN election and there's still no senator seated.

Democrats in PA and around the country are deciding now whether they want to support Specter or a challenger. As that decision is made, Specter is making a stupid mistake to say "I never said I would be a loyal Democrat" and to support Coleman as a joke or otherwise. For him to say he thinks Coleman should be seated (whether it was a joke as you say or not a joke as everyone else in the world says, including Specter himself), wasn't silly (as Biden's comments are). It was stupid.

You have made it clear that everything is a joke to you and that you look down on anyone who doesn't share that view. We part company there and that's fine.

But for all your arrogant insistence, you haven't proven your case. If it was indisputably a joke as you suggest you need to provide more than your say so.

 

I hadn't noticed in my days of "humorless" back and forth with this site's most stupid trolls, so clear this up for me. Are ALL of your arguments straw men? Or only the ones in this thread?

I was happy to have Specter switch parties. And I'd love to see more Jews in Congress (no Zionists please). I am one and we're underrepresented.

I'm also very much in favor of bipartisanship, in terms of working across the aisle to get things done. I am not in favor of bipartisanship in terms of working across the aisle to get more Republicans elected.

And, as a progressive Dem who largely supports O's agenda, I am also in the "wingnut" position of preferring Democrats who support passing that agenda to ones who largely don't. How ridiculous of me!

 

I started a thread reporting what every news organization reported and now I have to prove that it wasn't a joke? Sam started the "it's a joke thing and you're stupid if you don't see that." So that's on him to prove.

My OP said that I was supporting Sestak because I was pissed that he said he was supporting Coleman. Do you want some links to prove that assertion? Pick a news outlet. It was reported in every single one. Tell me which links you'd like to see.

It was later reported in every single news organization that he said he "misspoke" because it's hard for him to keep straight which party he's with now. I can provide dozens of links proving this as well. Pick your preferred news outlet.

I'm under no obligation to prove or disprove Sam's claim that it was a joke (and his further claim that anyone who doesn't see that is a humorless dope). He said it, he should prove it. I can't provide any evidence one way or the other there since Sam, to my knowledge, is the only person on the internet suggesting that.

 

Also, as I said above, it might well have been a joke even though nobody else thinks so. I don't particularly care. I'd decided to support Sestak either way for far more important reasons than who Specter likes in MN. Franken's already won anyway.

My only argument with Sam here is his unequivocal insistence that it was obviously a joke and anybody who doesn't see that is an idiot.