Word: obamas
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...regularly sidestepped doom. Specter's most celebrated swerve came last April, when he switched parties to avoid a Republican primary against a conservative challenger he had barely beaten in 2004. He acknowledged he could never win the GOP nomination for a sixth term after voting for Barack Obama's economic stimulus package - a move that was one heresy too many for the shrinking Pennsylvania Republican Party. (See pictures from the Pennsylvania Senate race...
...time, Specter's switch was hailed as a heady affirmation that Barack Obama had ushered the nation into a new, post-partisan era. With the defection of one of its last Senate moderates, what was left of the GOP appeared to be careering rightward, to a hard-core base that was beginning to resemble a cult as much as a political party. (See 10 elections that changed America...
...year later, those calculations have been tossed upside down. Obama's poll numbers have come back to earth. And the filibuster-proof Senate majority that Specter's defection delivered to the Democrats vanished when Massachusetts voters handed Teddy Kennedy's old seat to Scott Brown. Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy, and the party stands to lose at least a half-dozen seats in the Senate. "Unless something significant changes," political handicapper Charlie Cook wrote last month, Democrats "are headed toward the losses of the magnitude we saw in the midterm elections...
...February with an overwhelming 229-72 vote. "I have been involved in many, many elections but never one quite as thrilling as this one," Specter said as he accepted the party's benediction. "I feel good about being a Democrat and being able to continue supporting those Democratic values." Obama has also come through for him, raising more than $2.1 million at a single event in September for the party and its new champion. (See a one-year evaluation of the White House stimulus...
...pictures of Barack Obama behind the scenes on Inauguration...