Yes, it happened almost twenty years ago, with the controversial and sharply acrimonious Anita Hill hearings beginning October 11, 1991, but the memories of many Pennsylvania feminists along with other Democratic Party activists are long.

It was one thing for President Obama and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to back Senator Arlon Specter for reelection after he switched parties and became a Democrat.  It was an entirely different matter for the state's progressive activists to accept their recommendation, as evidenced by his defeat and the uphill and ultimately decisive victory of Congressman Joe Sestak.

Specter prior to his career in elective politics was a Philadelphia prosecutor.  He used his adversarial interrogation skills against Anita Hill as she offered testimony into the Senate hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

The tactics used by Specter and Republican pro-Thomas advocate Orrin Hatch were deemed so odious by Senator Ted Kennedy that near their end he charged in a tone laced with bitter emotion that the "treatment of Ms. Hill was disgraceful."  When Hatch chimed in a quick objection, Kennedy repeated, "Yes, the treatment was disgraceful."

During the height of cold war hysteria, when the tandem of Nixon and McCarthy questioned the patriotism of those seeking an alternative to an escalating arms race that could result in global destruction, Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party's voice of progressiveness and reason, made a wise observation:

"I hope it has not reached the point where it is more patriotic to advocate war than to advocate peace."

Stevenson's sagacious advice resurfaced this morning upon reading a New York Times article by Kate Zernike about the closely contested race in the 7th Congressional Distict located in Edgmont, Pennsylvania, an affluent Philadelphia suburb.

Joe Sestak, a former three-star admiral who worked as a national security adviser in the Clinton White House, was provided with advice from national Democrats and media consultants nine months ago when he was preparing to launch his campaign.