Hoeffel to announce Senate run

According to the thehill.com Congressman Joe Hoeffel is going to announce that he is running for the Senate next week against Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. This seems like very good news in our attempt to win back the Senate in 2004.

But....(and I am speaking as a PA resident).... he has little name recognition outside of his own district and his campaign has almost no funds with which to challenge the $6 million warchest of Mr. Specter.

I will vote for Hoeffel, but I am afraid his chances of winning are slim and none.

Hugh Scott,the former Senate Minorrity Leader from Pa.,TODAY would be a Democrat.

He is being challenged by Pat Toomey, a conservative congressman from Allentown. PA's Republican primary voters are a bit to the right of Arlen Specter, and now they will have a well-funded alternative to Arlen. He'll probably win, but only after an expensive and bruising primary.

Specter has barely won in presidential years but has won comfortably in mid term elections. I think that he will have a race if Hoeffel can raise enough money.

I've always like Hoeffel, but he's another mainstream democrat that we all seem to bitch about here in the DU forums. However, I've had an opportunity to meet and read-up about another democrat in Pennsylvania who is also considering a run for PA Senate and that is Charlie Crystle.

I hope the folks in Pennsylvania check out this guy cause I think he would be a great change from the standard-issue democrats we see in office everyday. Plus the Rendell campaign showed us that underdogs in the Dem primaries can still come out as winners.

Learn more about Charlie Crystle at http://www.charliecrystle.com/

he has a lifetime rating of 4 from the American Conservative Union and always has at least a 90 from Americans for Democratic Action. But a liberal who appears to be a centrist is probably the best type of candidate.

There wasn't any in his bio, and I think we will need as strong a candidate as possible against Specter.

Also, Hoeffel is part of the "C-SPAN 4" who give late-night special order speeches on *'s failures on Iraq...if you saw C-SPAN late last night, you'll know what I'm talking about.

---

But there are two questions, really: Is our military mission completed in Iraq? And secondly, are we winning the peace?

Now, I would suggest, just to get the conversation started this evening, that first off, our military mission is not complete, because we have not found the weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons are what motivated me to vote in favor of this military authority, because I believed then and I believe now that it was necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. But if we cannot find those weapons of mass destruction, there are serious questions. And we need a full accounting, first, of where those weapons are so that we know they are secured or dismantled and in safe custody. Secondly, we need a full accounting of how accurate our intelligence was. Were our intelligence agencies accurate in the information they gave to the administration? Was that information properly used by the administration?

And this is not just an academic exercise. The entire Bush doctrine of the preemptive use of force requires as a foundation accurate intelligence regarding the intentions of other countries and potential enemies around the world. If we are going to use force preemptively in the face of imminent threats to this country or to our allies, we have to know that our intelligence is accurate.

more, with Delahunt, Emanuel, and Abercromie...http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r108:H08JY3-0050: