Specter: My Position On Employee Free Choice Will Not Change
So in his statement, Senator Arlen Specter goes out of his way to stress that his switch to the Democratic Party doesn’t mean he’s changing positions on the Employee Free Choice Act:
My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.
This puts labor in a really awkward position. As one labor official put it to me, if the Dem establishment supports Specter, which is certainly possible, that puts pressure on labor to do the same. But labor will make its decision who to support in the Pennsylvania based largely on EFCA.
It’s also possible that this will enable Specter to position himself as the broker of a compromise on EFCA. That’s potentially bad for labor, officials concede, because Specter has articulated positions on EFCA that are virtually unacceptable for the unions.
At the same time, Specter’s party switch, labor officials say, virtually guarantees that EFCA will pass in some form this year. But no one knows what it’ll look like.
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So the question isn’t what Specter got for switching, it’s what he’s willing to give up to be welcomed into the Democratic party.
seems like a good question, Trevor.
We’ll see. He now has to jump through some hoops that folks in favor of the bill will be holding up and (as I mentioned on the earlier discussion) he probably has a prudent interest at this point in keeping as many supporters (electoral and funding) in place on his side – there’ll be certain positions he’ll consider he cannot presently support.
From a broader perspective, this is a very good thing for Dems and a very bad thing for Republicans because it strengthens the conception that the Republicans have moved much to far to the right and are no longer a home for anyone of moderation. The perception of party solidarity, by itself, is an aid for a party or movement (which is a fundamental reason Rove et al worked so diligently to foster such a perception ‘we are together and we agree and there are many of us, therefore, we’re to be trusted in ideology and in policy’. It’s obviously logically fallacious but it has strong propaganda value.
Conversely, where the opposite perception is in place (party in disarray, little internal agreement, etc) the corresponding negatives present themselves (’these guys don’t know what’s up or down, apparently, thus what fool would trust them to get things right’)
What Specter gets for switching is a much more higher probability of winning re-election.
Geraghty over at NRO seems to have accidentally swallowed a sourbug in his breakfast cereal this morning… http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/
There are already nearly 800 comments on this over at HumanEvents. Worth reading a few if only for that odd satisfaction we get in watching a youtube video of things exploding in slow-mo.
Geraghty asks the question I’ve been wondering re: support in the primary. What’s to stop the unions from throwing their weight behind a pro-EFCA Dem challenger? IOW, will the DSCC back Specter in the primary? Will Obama? Will it depend on how Specter plays out the rest of the year? Where’s he at on health care, energy, and education? How D will he be? This is why I ask what he’s bringing to the party other than a R scalp.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31639
Spector can vote for cloture and then vote against card check….60 votes waiting in the wings changes everything at the negotiating table. (gang of what???)
“But no one knows what it’ll look like.”
Same can be said of any piece of legislation that isn’t in final form yet.
I really cannot understand why this news is greeted with so many groans.
If nothing else it signals how very much the country is coming out of the dark ages of the last 8 to 14 years of Repug control over every damn thing.
Sheesh.
Trevor J – they are good questions (and the same ones will arise at digby and elsewhere) but of course he has a reason to push those forward aside from simple analysis.
But I’d argue that there are two perspectives we might adopt here, short and long term.
If we desire a shift in the polity away from the extremism of the last two or three decades, then we are going to have to accept the inevitability of a somewhat slow and awkward path. Part of that (I think necessary) evolution will entail individuals like Specter moving left even if not as quickly or as far as we’d like. This doesn’t make the event of the move a negative but rather a positive. What we might not (or cannot) get, in terms of policy, over the next three or four years become rather easy to get with a broader shift in the whole political picture a few years further on the road.
Tena…are you up for adoption?
Tena, I think because it is obvious Specter is doing this simply to avoid losing in the Republican primary against Toomey. He says his politics won’t change etc – so the ONLY reason he then is doing so is to hold on to his Senate seat.
Trevor has some good questions – will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
Here’s Yglesias…
“Thus, even if Specter were to reposition himself as the most conservative member of the Democratic Party he’d still have to become more left-wing than he’s been. What’s more, in the past there’s been a tendency for party switchers to suffer from ideological drift. Jim Jeffords went from being more conservative than most Democrats to being solidly liberal, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell went from being more liberal than most Republicans to being virulently right-wing.”
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/04/arlen-specter-bringing-the-political-science.php
While this is being played out I can’t help but chuckle at the clunkheads over at NRO and Human Events.
Rendell promised Specter he’d be “unopposed” in Dem primary, making it tougher for labor to field a primary challenger:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/labor/pa-gov-rendell-promised-specter-hed-be-unopposed-in-dem-primary/
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