If you live elsewhere, you may be glad to know that here in Pennsylvania we get to see, several times a day, a well-made political advertisement that in stark and clear terms connects John Kerry with Pennsylvania's long-time U.S. Senator Arlen Specter.
"Fact is, nearly 70% of the time, Specter and Kerry voted the same way," the narrator tells us, listing specific issues on which they agree like tort reform, school choice, and taxes.
This is a great ad, targetting exactly those moderates and independents that have kept Specter in office. Specter has carved out an interesting (although by no means consistent) niche; he voted, as you may remember, the Scottish "not proven" on Clinton's impeachment. He's playing to the conservative base now, and his Democratic opponent Joe Hoeffel has issued a pretty damning indictment of his attempt to cover up for the Baby Bush Iraq policy, but Specter's voting record is pretty middle of the road, as Dr. Keith Poole's studies show.
There are plenty of things wrong with Specter--including his (albeit begrudging) alliance with that evildoer Rick Santorum--but I think that the independents and moderate Republicans who have voted so loyally for Specter throughout his career are exactly the people that Kerry should be targeting, and I am thrilled to see an ad linking them so carefully. Pennsylvania is tied right now, essentially, and is a must-win state. If Kerry gets the independents who usually back Specter, he will cruise to victory here, since he'll pile up big margins in the Democratic strongholds of Philly and Pittsburgh.
So who do we have to thank for such a useful ad, played so prominently during NCAA coverage (to those male voters the Democrats struggle to reel in)? Kerry? MoveOn? Soros?
No, the author of this ad is the crazy Club for Growth, a "free market political advocacy organization" that is endorsing a paleo-conservative congressman whose name I won't mention in the primary campaign against Specter. The Daily News--the only liberal tabloid in the U.S.--called the Republican challenger who shall not be named a "loony conservative" and "a leader of the new scientific McCarthyists."
It is startling to watch John Kerry morph into Arlen Specter; it's even more startling to realize that this is a Republican ad, not a Democratic one, running in a swing state where Specter represents a long tradition of moderate conservatism.
I think it's a small reason for hope. It also reminds us of a couple of important points.
First, there are lurking within the Republican Party deep and profound divisions. Up to this point, Rove and Co. have tapped them down, but it was these divisions, in large part, that doomed Big Bush in 1992--when many Republicans and Republican-leaning independents voted for Perot--and that will, at some point, flare again. The war between Main Street conservatism and Heaven's Gate conservatism is a real one, and it will play again, some time, somewhere. I hope it will be this year. I particularly hope this division will come in the shape of Roy Moore.
Second, it reminds us that we don't really know what will the outcome of our historic shift toward independent political expenditures on advertising. Many groups--like MoveOn--maintain legal independence but steer their ads toward a party stance, to the degree permissible. But there is real potential for ideological groups to turn these independent expenditures into arguments for positions, to the detriment of parties. If the Club for Growth puts Specter's "scalp on the wall," as they have promised, you had better believe they will be going after other moderate Republicans in primary elections in 2006 and 2008.
Third, politics is unpredictable. Would a Specter primary election defeat--and a hard right-wing Republican senatorial candidate--help Kerry in the general election, by scaring moderates? Or would a Specter victory in the primary actually help Kerry, by depressing general election turnout among the Heaven's Gate crowd? I have ideas, but not good ones. I think popular opinion is a mysterious thing, much stranger and more peculiar than we comprehend.
What isn't mysterious to me is this--this ad is the best thing to happen to John Kerry in Pennsylvania this year. Pennsylvania has missed out on the excitement and publicity of the Democratic presidential primaries. I am sure that Kerry will make some appearances before the late April election, but he is at this point somewhat unknown here. People who get their news from local sources have probably only seen him on television a few times, and may not even remember his name. As I pointed out earlier, this, I think, explains some of Nader's support in early Pennsylvania polls--some people who loathe Bush probably couldn't remember who Kerry was.
Therefore, defining Kerry in a positive, moderate way is exactly what Pennsylvania Democrats hope to do. Connecting Kerry to Specter-backing moderates and independents is exactly what we need, and that is exactly what is happening here in Pennsylvania,thanks to loony free-traders and even loonier Heaven's Gate types.
I posted an even more extended version of this at my blog at:
http://downstown.blogspot.com/2004_03_21_downstown_archive.html#107996847296199439
I don't post diaries here very often, and I don't want to break any rules by posting chunks of my blog here, but I thought this was a particularly interesting advertisement, and a topic of interest to readers here.