There is less than a week to go before the midterm elections, so naturally the campaign… There is less than a week to go before the midterm elections, so naturally the campaign hounds are baying at their loudest. This Friday, I was heading down Fifth Avenue, where at one point I saw a crowd of students on either side, braving the clammy weather to rattle their campaign signs at each other and at passersby, one side for Rick Santorum and the other for Bob Casey Jr. Pennsylvania seems to be a particularly nasty place for politics come every other November, for as we’ve been constantly reminded this election season, this is a “battleground” state. This year the spotlight shines extra-bright on Pennsylvania as the Democrats focus their campaign crosshairs on Santorum, arguably the easiest Republican in the nation to target.

Santorum has established a certain kind of national fame as a caricature of everything nutty about the Republican Party. The Republicans must be keeping him around, because Santorum spews so much ideological tripe that his presence makes the rest of the party look hip. Sen. Arlen Specter, Santorum’s moderate Republican colleague, practically looks like Keith Richards compared to Santorum.

Santorum’s seat is handily the Dems’ easiest and highest-profile quarry, and so to oppose him, we get Bob Casey Jr., a lightweight candidate with a popular name.

The Casey-Santorum battle echoes some of the same vibes from the miserable Bush-Kerry race back in 2004. In both of these, we have a lackluster Democrat whose best ploy for winning is banking on how impatient voters are with the crazy Republican incumbent. Casey’s debates with Santorum are saddening indeed to watch, with both candidates doing little but heap mud on each other’s record. Even when facing Santorum, Casey comes across with the charisma of a wooden plank. So how did this guy get the Democratic nomination?

Besides his connections as the old governor’s son, he’s there because he’s a very safe bet for the Democrats — even though the Democrats could have run a drunken cow as their candidate and gotten the same kind of support that Casey has. Casey will play everything safe, sit back and let Santorum self-destruct. Santorum’s name is such an anathema to both moderate and liberal Pennsylvanians that the Democratic candidate really only needs to brandish the slogan: “I’m Not Santorum.”

That’s exactly what Casey is doing; his campaign ads mostly focus on “Beat Santorum” themes. He knows that alone will attract voters. For many people, it doesn’t matter who Casey is or for what he stands. What matters to most of his voters is simply getting the nutjob incumbent out of office.

But the more I actually learn about Bob Casey, the less I feel like voting for him. Looking at Casey’s stance on the issues (sourced from www.issues2000.org), he’s a rather conservative Democrat who has a number of stances I don’t agree with, such as being pro-death penalty and pro-Patriot Act. I feel that simply being better than Santorum (which is not at all hard to do) shouldn’t be enough to give Casey my vote. If it weren’t a potentially close election, it wouldn’t be enough.

Though polls suggest Casey will win his race (Zogby International’s latest poll has him ahead 52 percent to 44 percent), his demeanor seems to embody the stagnant malaise that has gripped the Democratic Party on a national level. It comes from an issue of identity crisis with which the Democrats have been wrangling ever since the Republican sweep in 2000. They suffer from what you might call a “Clinton complex,” as Clinton’s departure was when the Democrats started wondering where they really stood again. Clinton had an uncanny knack for straddling the middle ground in American politics, and his influence helped drag the Democrats rightward to become more of a centrist party.

While that worked well for Clinton, after he left, the party never did quite duplicate that success as it became too close to the Republicans for comfort. The presidencies of Clinton and Reagan have shifted the mainstream Democrat-Republican spectrum further to the right. Compared to 25 years ago, our two-party system seems to more closely represent the center vs. the right than a real left-right spectrum.

That’s part of what sank Kerry — he wasn’t very good at presenting himself as a dynamic alternative to Bush. And that same predicament is what’s hurting the Democratic Party right now, even as fortune smiles upon it with a rosey rash of Republican scandals.

In his debates with Santorum, Casey likes to say that we need a “truly independent” official instead of the “rubber stamp for Bush” that Santorum represents. I agree with Casey there, but I don’t see a real “independent” coming out of this race, no matter who wins. For that, I really believe we should look outside the two-party system, and America doesn’t yet seem game for that kind of madness.

Voting “Not Santorum” this November? E-mail Konrad at [email protected].