AND NOW THE PENNSYLVANIA JOKER – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  Arlen Specter, that is.  His recent bizarre behavior – wandering onto a stage he shouldn't have been on, insulting Congresswoman Michelle Bachman – may be a portent of a rough fall campaign for the Republican turned Democrat.  Looks like the GOP has another good shot.  From the New York Post:

"I'm running like I'm 20 points behind and I'll continue to run like I'm 20 points behind," says Pat Toomey, the presumptive GOP nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania -- who in fact now leads Sen. Arlen Specter 45 percent to 31 percent among likely voters in the latest Frank & Marshall College poll.

Hey, I'm starting to like this.  Possible pickup in Illinois, possible pickup in Pennsylvania, possible pickup in Delaware, probable pickup in North Dakota.  And that's just the start.

Specter, who switched parties last year for fear of losing a Republican primary to Toomey, still has to finish off a challenger from the left, Rep. Joe Sestak, in the May 18 Democratic primary. Meanwhile, as the nation turns sour on the Obama agenda that Specter has helped enact, Toomey's been charging up -- six months ago, he was down eight points.

Specter's party switch apparently hasn't done him much good.  But he is likely to defeat Sestak in the Dem primary. 

Pennsylvania, like Illinois, is a blue state, and occasionally the dearly departed have been known to vote in Philadelphia.  But Toomey is torrid this year, after several Senate tries in the past.  And President Obama has lost steam in the state:

In February of last year, the F&M poll showed that 55 percent thought Obama was doing a good or excellent job, while 36 percent said he was doing a fair or poor job. In the latest poll, that job-approval rating had essentially reversed: 38 percent view him positively and 61 percent negatively.

And Toomey has another advantage:

Toomey still has to get his name-recognition numbers up -- but his strength now is the fact that Specter has held the seat for 30 years. The F&M poll reports that six in 10 voters think it's time for a new senator.

We think so too. 

February 3, 2010