Looking at an exchange between Arlen “Scrapple that used to be Haggis” Specter and Eric Holder on the recent al-Haramain verdict.

The fate of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) over the course of the past year and a half has been largely determined by the White House. Rahm Emanuel would not let it come up for a vote until after health care was passed, and by that time the Democrats no longer had 60 votes in the Senate. But its evolution is also intimately tied to the electoral prospects of Harry Reid and Arlen Specter, and unless you understand one, you can’t understand the other.

Joe Sestak’s primary campaign against Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter just hasn’t been able to gain traction, and he’s been searching for some angle to get back into the race. You cannot go wrong in a Democratic primary linking your opponent to Rick Santorum, I’d gather, so Sestak has to love this development.

It was not Ben Nelson who killed the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, nor was it Arlen Specter or Senate Republicans. No, the sole reason Dawn Johnsen is not leading the OLC is that Barack Obama and his coterie of advisors did not want Dawn Johnsen leading the OLC.

Just days after the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO endorsed his candidacy, Arlen Specter tried to make good by rolling out something he called the “Workers’ Bill of Rights.” Sounds cool, right? The only problem is his spokeswoman shut that door real quick, saying it’s more “campaign rhetoric” than anything that will be “actual law.”

I was on the premiere of John King USA on CNN last night, talking about the primary problems Michael Bennet now faces as he moves away from his commitment made only a month ago to an up-or-down vote on the public option in the Senate.

Romanoff issued a challenge to Bennet last Friday to honor his commitment, saying “where’s the ‘public option’ champion?” Colorado columnist and radio host David Sirota added fuel to the fire, asserting that “thanks to Romanoff’s demand, [Bennet] will have to put up or shut up. If he refuses to offer the amendment, he shows his past efforts to be kabuki theater — grandstanding for attention while refusing to actually take the steps necessary to do what he publicly claims he wants to do.”

That’s it. Specter is #50; Stabenow is #51; Sanders is #60

California and a number of other states will face continued fiscal pressures, particularly once the stimulus aid to them runs out in 2011; there is no indication that the economy will rebound enough that states can meet their budgets by that time.

Arlen Specter (D-RD-Pa.) is born again. But unlike most converts, he’s not exactly zealous about his new religion.

In the same breath that he announced his switch to the Democratic Party last week, Specter was quick to assert his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. The legislation, which would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions, depends upon 60 votes for cloture in the Senate (that is, we need 60 senators to agree to let the bill come to a vote).