Specter Likely to Pull it Out

Although I would not be the least surprised if Joe Sestak wins today's primary battle against Arlen Specter for the Democratic nomination in the 2010 US Senate race, I expect the end of the day will see Specter hanging on by as many as four points.

Neither candidate has polled a majority since the race began in earnest (which is a Philadelphia suburb), leaving a swath of undecideds out there right up to yesterday's most recent poll. Generally, undecideds in these kinds of races tend to break for the challenger, and I suspect that will also be the case today.

Offsetting that, however, is the GOTV. Any one of Specter, the Obama machine, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, the Ed Rendell machine, and the Pennsylvania Unions may boast of enjoying one the most effective GOTV forces this side of Mason-Dixon. Together, as they are for Specter, it is an awesome juggernaut that can situate Specter to compensate for the undecideds going to Sestak.

Up against that is the weak Sestak statewide campaign, which didn't even manage to put an office in all of the key regions, much less a GOTV effort. This morning Sestak's campaign distributed a list of party locations for this evening. I think they have half a dozen in the entire state, most within 100 miles of Philadelphia. Nothing in the Northeast beyond the Lehigh Valley -- the Poconos, Wilkes Barre, Scranton, Northern Tier, all but ignored tonight and throughout hte campaign.

But for the snippet of video showing a creepy Specter boasting about switching parties to "enable me to get re-e-lect-ted", Sestak's family-run campaign would have left him where he was a few months ago -- down 20 points to a mean spirited, Iraq-supporting, Anita Hill bashing, Thomas-supporting, Kagan-opposing-now-supporting, half-deaf, party-switching, octogenarian Republican recovering from cancer.

This race should not have been close. Sestak should have had it sown up months ago. The main reason he didn't was his stubborn insistence of using his family to run their first statewide campaign. Ignoring offers of assistance, office space, and personnel tendered by Democratic faithful before he even announced a final decision to run, his campaign has been the poster child for why one needs to switch staff when moving from a local district race to a statewide effort.

Of course, Sestak's anemic debate performance didn't help -- but an experienced staff could have better trained him for the event.

So, when Sestak is suddenly out of a job, it won't be Arlen Specter's fault, or President Obama's, he can just look around the Thanksgiving table for the reasons.

By the same token, if he does manage to hold off Specter and win this, no credit is due to his campaign staff. If they knew how to do their jobs, this would not have been a nail-biter depending on poor turnout in Philadelphia for success.