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Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Hoeffel in Trouble?
Posted by FesterI have long believed that Joe Hoeffel is a pretty decent candidate who needed quite a few things to go right in order to win the Senate seat that is currently held by Arlen Specter. The best and easiest route would have been for reactionary conservative Pat Toomey to have won the GOP primary, but that is not the case.
The next best would have been for a nationwide meltdown of the Republican Party as the grown-ups stepped in to save the party from Bush - how much longer can they hold the coalition of conservatives, isolationists, imperialists, nationalists, Christian fundamentalist and corporate executives together given their internal contradictions? - but that does not look as though it has happened or ever will. So given these two past (non-)events, Hoeffel needed to get his name ID up into the high 70's or 80s and run with a unified party behind him.
Well the AFL-CIO of Pennsylvania has just decided to endorse Specter for the Senate race. An AFL-CIO endorsement does not neccessarily spell doom for the non-endorsed candidate (see Gov. Rendell), but it will deny Hoeffel a significant amount of organizational muscle and foot labor which will be needed for GOTV. Hoeffel's best chance is to pray that ACT and other 527 GOTV organizations combined with the DNC/Kerry Campaign do an extraordinary job of mobilizing the marginally likely Democratic voter as well as some unlikely voters. I would recommend that the DSSC look to funnel resources to other races at this time.
Posted at 09:08 AM in Pennsylvania | Technorati
Comments
I didn't hold out any hope for Hoeffel after Specter won the GOP primary. If Toomey had won the primary, Hoeffel would have likely won the general...but it wasn't meant to be. I would also be curious to see how Hoeffel would perform against Santorum. Perhaps if Hoeffel puts forth a respectable showing in PA, he'll be a leading contender to challenge Santorum in 2006.
One possible takeover I hold out more hope for is next door in Ohio. The situation is Ohio is ripe for revolution, and the weakness displayed by George Voinovich last year in first challenging Bush's ruinous dividend tax cut and promising to hold out his opposition, but then caving in the second Karl Rove compared him to the French, would seem to make him vulnerable. I don't know what kind of candidate Eric Fingerhut is, but if he's smart at all, he'll capitalize on Voinovich's embarrassing lack of willpower in fighting against a policy that produced precious little benefit for Ohioans.
Posted by: Mark at September 1, 2004 10:41 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment