Democratic disarray in Pennsylvania.

Well, news like this always makes me perk up my ears: “With the exception of two county officials on either side of the state — Montgomery’s Commissioners Chairman Josh Shapiro, Allegheny’s Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald — the Democrats’ statewide bench [in Pennsylvania] is weak, and so is their morale.” Salena Zito finds four factors: the Congressional delegations and state legislature both currently favor Republicans, rather significantly; state Treasurer Rob McCord had to resign in disgrace, and AG Kathleen Kane really should have; the governor and the head of the PA Democratic party both hate each other; and apparently nobody in the party likes Joe Sestak, which is awkward because he’s probably going to be their nominee in next year’s Senate race.  What makes this all very fascinating is that, in all probability, nobody in the Democratic party’s going to really do anything about this until next year.

…OK, that’s a guess. But it’s not entirely a wild one. If this was happening on the Republican side, RNC chair Reince Priebus would already be swooping in to try to figure out how to minimize the damage. Nobody really expects DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to do any swooping.  She’s not really there for that: she’s there to make sure that the Democratic party apparatus stays focused on the needs of the Democratic party’s leader.  Which is, again, awkward, because the current party leader is still Barack Obama, despite the fact that in about eighteen months Obama’s opinion on pretty much everything is going to be irrelevant to the Democratic party’s tactical and strategic goals. One assumes that Hillary Clinton would prefer a happy Pennsylvania Democratic party; but then, that’s apparently just as irrelevant right now.

None of this means that Pennsylvania is slipping out of the Democrats’ hands. But what it does mean is that the Democrats aren’t exactly acting like winners right now.  Which is… interesting.