Tag: joe sestak

Pennsylvania Democrats: finally found an alternative to Sestak in PA-SEN primary.

Man, the Democrats REALLY don’t want Joe Sestak to run for Senate again, huh?

Pennsylvania Democrat Katie McGinty will resign her position as chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday in preparation to run for the United States Senate, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell National Journal.

[snip]

McGinty’s entrance would be a major victory for Democrats in Washington, who have scoured Pennsylvania looking for a top-tier candidate in what should be a politically-crucial Senate battleground in 2016. Party leaders are wary about the only Democrat in the race, former Rep. Joe Sestak, concerned that his unwillingness to listen to strategic advice could cost them a winnable race against the well-entrenched Toomey.

Continue reading Pennsylvania Democrats: finally found an alternative to Sestak in PA-SEN primary.

Cameraman attacked at Sestak rally.

They’re getting scared, and when people get scared, stupid things get done. In this case, a guy filming a Joe Sestak rally got, as NRO’s Battle ’10 put it, “Harassed, Intimidated, Potentially Assaulted:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrCTnqqBTqY&feature=player_embedded

Looks like somebody picked up the camera and tossed it to the ground… and on a tactical note? This is precisely why YOU ALWAYS WORK IN TEAMS OF AT LEAST TWO. One person films – actively – the event; the other person films – passively, and hopefully unnoticed – the person filming the event. That way you remove ambiguity. Still: nice people that Joe Sestak has supporting him, huh?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: TOOMEY.

Bill Clinton denies role in WH/Sestak bribe.

Background: as you may recall, starting last year (and as recently as May 2010) Joe Sestak began to allege that the White House offered him an administration job in exchange for dropping out of Pennsylvania’s Senate Democratic primary.  These allegations were both surprising and unsurprising; unsurprising because such offers are made all the time (something similar was reported in Colorado’s Democratic Senate primary), but surprising in that it’s usually not admitted to so openly, given that such offers are also against the law.  Sestak never recanted and the administration claimed that he had garbled a perfectly-innocent and certainly not felonious invitation by President Clinton to have Sestak serve on a commission.  As Sestak had gone on to win the primary anyway, it seemed obvious that all parties involved on the Democratic side of things wanted to let the matter drop quietly.  As for Clinton… he never said anything at all on the subject, really.

Until now (see also here).  Bill Clinton’s now denying that he tried to get Sestak out of the race. Continue reading Bill Clinton denies role in WH/Sestak bribe.

#rsrh Rasmussen: Toomey back up in PA-SEN.

Well, now we know why the Left decided to start freaking out again about Rasmussen.  In-con-ven-i-ent poll re-sults:

Congressman Joe Sestak’s post-primary bounce appears to over, and he now trails Republican rival Pat Toomey by seven points in the U.S. Senate contest in Pennsylvania.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Pennsylvania shows Toomey with 45% support, while Sestak earns 38%. Five percent (5%) prefer another candidate in the race, and 12% are undecided.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting that anything was leaked, or anything. Just that everybody who pays attention to this sort of thing knows full well that Sestak was scheduled to get a post-nomination bounce; and that the bounce would then dissipate for one reason or another.  Nomination bounces often do because the act of being nominated doesn’t automatically change people’s perceptions of a candidate’s flaws, strengths, or opinions; and while increased scrutiny may increase the number of people who take a second look and end up being impressed, it can also increase the number of people who take a second look and end up not being impressed.  Hence, Sestak’s resetting back to his pre-nomination numbers.

Mind you, it’s a lot easier to scream that Rasmussen is flawed.  Quicker than waiting for November, too.

Moe Lane

PS: Toomey.

Does the White House WANT us to keep talking about Sestak?Does the White House WANT us to keep talking about Sestak?

Is this a cry for help?

Because they keep bringing it to the forefront.  Let me set the scene for this: it turns out that the job offer that Bill Clinton had supposedly offered Joe Sestak was in fact a job offer that Sestak could not take and still keep his House seat.  This is important, because Sestak being able to keep his House seat is kind of critical for somebody in the White House not being possibly on the hook for a federal felony.  But when Robert Gibbs gets asked about this, well, hi-jinks ensue:

“The Intelligence Advisory Board, which most reports said this offer was for, that would be a position a member of the House could not serve on,” a reporter said.

“That’s how I understand the way the PIAB is written,” Gibbs said.

“But the memo, it said that this would be a position to serve in the House and serve on a presidential advisory board.”

“Correct,” Gibbs said.

“Well, how could he sit on the board?”

“He couldn’t,” Gibbs said.

“So that wasn’t the offer, then?”

“I’d refer you to — ”

“What position, what board, was it then?  Do you know?”

“I’d refer you to the memo.”

“But the memo didn’t specify.”

“Right,” Gibbs said.  “Thank you.”

The tightrope that Gibbs is unsteadily walking on right now is that while the PIAB clearly isn’t the job that was offered, as long as he doesn’t actually say which one was actually offered he doesn’t have to explain away more awkward details.  Like, for example, that the only other Presidential board offering (the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, or PERAB) would have also required Sestak to give up his House seat, and that it would have been less relevant to Sestak’s life experiences than the PIAB.  Or that there’s a definite contradiction between Sestak’s answer on how many times that Clinton met with him, and the White House’s answer.  Little things like that.

Congressional Republicans are continuing to push at this issue: you’d think that the White House would be not doing its best to encourage them.  Unless they just don’t like Joe Sestak?  He is a swarmy little sort, after all – and it’s all his fault that they’re dealing with this issue in the first place.  It would certainly explain why Sestak is going to be on the other side of the state for the President’s Philadelphia visit…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Le Affaire Sestak: It’s the he-campaigned-on-it, stupid.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) I refuse to believe that Eric Alterman is dumb enough to not know the answer to the questions:

Why in the world did he go blabbing about it? What did he possibly think he had to gain?

…if only because his essay* rather conspicuously danced around even trying to work out a rationale – which is odd, because said rationale is really fairly simple.  In reverse order: what Joe Sestak thought that he had to gain was the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania Senate.  He was the underdog against the establishment candidate (and turncoat) Arlen Specter: the White House was on the other side; and Sestak was using an anti-establishment gambit.  So he became the Guy Who Wouldn’t Be Bought. Continue reading Le Affaire Sestak: It’s the he-campaigned-on-it, stupid.

The Joe Sestak thing is kind of a big deal, actually.

I have to disagree with Jim Geraghty here that Rep. Joe Sestak’s (D) admitting that the White House tried to bribe him reflects well on Sestak.  Either Sestak is lying about this, in which case he’s, well, a liar who did so for crass political gain; or Sestak’s telling the truth about this, in which case he’s pretty much explicitly participating in a cover-up of a felony.  Either way, talking in general terms is not really acceptable.  Unless there was an active conspiracy permeating the entire Executive Branch to bribe Joe Sestak, somebody in the White House is innocent of this crime – but until we get the full details of what happens, we won’t know who.  And while I may have been heavily critical of the unprofessional behavior of the White House’s staffers, I think it’s hardly fair of Sestak to talk about this scandal in a fashion that implicates all of them.

Put another way: check out this video from the GOP House Oversight committee…

Continue reading The Joe Sestak thing is kind of a big deal, actually.

Joe Sestak admits bribe offer.

Marvel, my friends, at the moral heroism put on display here:

If you define ‘moral heroism’ as ‘reluctantly and inarticulately admitting that one was offered a bribe by the White House, while neglecting to alert the relevant federal authorities of the alleged crime in question,’ of course.  Which apparently Joe Sestak does.  Watch that video to the end to see DNC chair Tim Kaine disassociate himself from this mess – and it is a mess.  I’m not just saying that because I’m a Republican and the President is a Democrat.  I don’t even think that the President or his senior advisers knew that Sestak was offered a job; this incident has all the hallmarks of a Executive branch staffer having an excess of enthusiasm and a deficit of awareness of federal ethics guidelines.  But it doesn’t matter; and it doesn’t matter because President Obama explicitly ran on a platform of his Administration Not Being Like Other Administrations.

Guess that was a lie, then.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Rasmussen: Sestak/Specter 47/42.

Nobody loves a turncoat.

Congressman Joe Sestak has moved ahead of incumbent Arlen Specter in their Senate primary match-up with just over a week left before Pennsylvania Democrats go to the polls to pick their nominee.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Democratic Primary voters in the state shows Sestak earning 47% of the vote while Specter picks up 42%. This marks the first time Sestak has held the advantage in the race.

Do you know what this situation needs? A lot more money spent in the last week on negative primary race advertising by the Democratic candidates, that’s what it needs. Time to pull out the big guns there, Arlen; after all, if you’re gone after next week you won’t be spending it anyway. So feel free to use the really damaging stuff.

Thanks in advance!

Moe Lane

PS: TOOMEY.

Crossposted to RedState.