I don't like Arlen Specter. His name has become associated in my mind with saying the right thing and doing the wrong thing. He's all posture and no substance. He is the emptiest of empty suits, a soulmate to the likes of Joe Lieberman. In that his reputation for moderation lies, for we live in a time when to be a fatuous empty suit is the essence of political moderation. His moving to the Democrats may be a bad day for Republicans, but it's not a good day for Democrats. Specter would have likely lost his primary to a movement conservative, and the movement conservative Republican would have been easily defeated by a real Democrat, not an expedient one like Specter.
Nevertheless, this news points to a trend from which we can draw some solace, which is that the hard right is slowly but surely destroying the GOP and insuring the long-term irrelevancy of both. So that's good news for America, even if the corporate media are slow to recognize it as such. Republican spokespersons will soon, let us hope, have no more relevancy in shaping the public debate as other fringe parties, and we will see more and more sane Republicans, who understand what the GOP has become, follow Specter into the Democratic Party.
That's a realignment that will be good for us as a nation. The far right has too long been taken too seriously, and it is finally moving to a long-deserved de-legitimization. For now the only legitimate debate in this country is between the right and left within the Democratic Party–between the Blue Dogs/DLC on the right and the Progressive caucuses on the Left. Perhaps in time new parties will emerge that will reflect a broader pluralism of political interests–maybe we will even see a place for the Nader/Chomsky left to get into the mainstream conversation.
(That would, of course, require that such a conversation not be controlled by Beltway media types, who have no problem giving the radical right a media megaphone, while making sure the serious hard left critics of the American power arrangements never get even the occasional sound bite. Perhaps new media will emerge as a potent enough alternative to mainstream media to allow this to happen, but for now, I don't see seriouls critics of American power and wealth arrangments getting a mainstream platform.)
So for now, the Dems are where it's at, and we have to hold their feet to the fire. The Republicans in the short run have no agenda except to obstruct themselves into irrelvancy.
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