This is not by any notion a “Swing District, this is a solidly D seat that they should of won 60-40. That they only got 53% should be ringing alarm bells in Democrat circles not producing this sort of arrogant smug complacency.
I think we can chalk PA-12 up to a failure of the GOP Establishment in PA. How do you let a career political operative from DC run to the right of your candidate in the current political environment?
Go take a look at Critz issue page. He ran as a Republican. He hypes how he is Pro Life, Pro 2nd Amendment, Pro Domestic Energy production and Pro Military. He also stressed his ties to the US Military and his getting some big award from the National Guard.
Burns on the other hand has no solid creditably with the military plus he is easy to caricature as an “Evil big businessman” in a solidly blue collar district. In addition to that the GOP Establishment threw over solidly conservative, ex military man Russel to run the light weight Country Clubber Burns.
On the surface PA-12 voted for the more Conservative candidate. We all know that is nonsense but most voters are not so involved in the process as Freepers
Once again it seems the GOP was more interested in a candidate that could self fund then one who actually had a serious shot at this seat.
The questions for Nov are:
Are there enough of these sorts of newbie Dems running as Republican Lite to hold these districts for the Dems?
Is the GOP Establishment so uniformly incompetent that they cannot find credible candidates who have a serious connection with the voters in these sorts of district?
How would these voters break if they are confronted with a serious Establishment Democrat vrs a serious challenger Conservative rather the being forced to choose between a faux “Republican lite” Democrat and a Establishment Country Club Republican?
PA 12 indicates nothing about Nov.
PA-12 was the Dems seat to lose and they didn’t. Big Whoopie! Kerry carried in in 2004 and McCain won it by like 1% of the vote. It is NOT a “Swing District” it is a solid “Safe D” district.
The take away from PA 12 should be that the Dems had to work this hard to win this safe seat. Those facts should be ringing warning bells in DNC circles not generating the sort of arrogantly smug complacency being expressed by Democrat Propaganda Press
This is an economically distressed district that lives off of pork.
I wish we’d quit devoting time and money to it.
The Democratic candidate won in the PA-12 election because the Democratic turnout was higher than usual due to the high-profile, hotly-contested statewide primary election between Sestak and Specter.
Pat Toomey is already the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate race, so there was no comparable high-profile statewide race to bring GOP voters out.
It's also worth noting that Pennsylvania has a "closed" primary system, so independents weren't involved in the primary election anyway and therefore had less incentive to show up for the PA-12 election.