Democratic Party Gets Shot in Arm by Magic Bullet

Mr. Specter acknowledged on Tuesday that his decision to change parties was driven by his intense desire to win that sixth term. It came after he and his political advisers concluded over the weekend that he could not turn away a conservative challenger in a Republican primary... - The NY Times

What's the difference between Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter? Absolutely none. Both abandoned their parties as if they were unwanted, deformed babies because of their addiction to incumbency, because they knew their voter base had become so alienated by them, they'd have to appeal to the other side in order to survive even a primary. Specter was just a little more impatient and didn't even wait until the primary.

And Obama and Biden are welcoming him into the warm folds of the Democratic Party's embrace as if he's a long-lost cousin or brother, not a turncoat who doesn't give a rat's ass about one party or the other or the constituency of either as much as he does simply staying in office. Fuck, Specter even admitted it. He simply jumped from one vehicle to another like an aging extra in a Mad Max movie jumping from one car to another.

And the president and vice president are nauseating me.

It was Specter, don't forget, who gave Bush everything he ever asked for, including support for the Military Tribunal bill (colloquially referred to as the "torture bill"). Specter also voted for USA PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War Resolution, the bankruptcy bill and virtually the evilest shit ever punched through Congress by the Bush administration. Sure, he offered token resistance to the Bushies in terms of torture but then backed down and showed his belly like the good lap dog he was.

We need Specter in the party about as much as Bob Marley needed another form of cancer.

Idiots such as Olympia Snowe are already eulogizing Specter as if he died instead of merely doddering across the aisle and passing Lieberman on the way. If you insist on finding one difference between Specter and Lieberman, here it is in a nutshell:

Specter never really abandoned his party's ideologies in any courageous, significant way, an indictment that can't be leveled against Lieberman. Yeah, Traitor Joe is a withered, human colostomy bag but ya gotta give the cocksucker his due: At least Lieberman could say that he never gave a fuck about the Democratic Party or what it thought while sis boom bahing the Iraq war, publicly humping Dick Cheney's and John McCain's leg and essentially making Bush's two terms a lot easier and smoother than it should've been. As Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake said years ago and I'll keep repeating it until I'm Democratic blue in the face, "There's no such thing as a moderate Republican."

I understand that Al Franken's very belated victory and Specter's defection brings us to the brink of having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which only holds water if you have fantasies that the divided Democrats ever had the lock-step discipline of the GOP. But considering all the gains the Democrats have made in the Senate these past two elections, Specter the Defector will in the long term prove as redundant as his Magic Bullet theory.

The crowning irony would be for Specter to get creamed in the primary by a real progressive. I know he's a five term senator and that'll likely never happen. But it's nice to fantasize, right?