To expand a bit on my comment to Josh’s recent entry:
Josh considered some strategic reasons why Senator Casey is encouraging fellow Pennsylvania Democrats to step aside and not challenge newly-Democratic Senator Spector if he seeks reelection in 2010. The strategic arguments are interesting and make sense to me, but I wonder if something simpler is going on as well. A lot of these politicians are friends or, at least, have many friends in common. And, even if they don’t know each other very well personally, they identify with each other. Senator X doesn’t enjoy a primary challenge, and so he feels empathy for Senator Y: why should he have to go through a primary challenge either? I suspect that if these guys could have their way, they’d all have lifetime appointments.
I don’t know anything at all about the personalities involved here, and I’m sure I’m missing a lot on that account. But I do feel (with no particular evidence) that attitudes are often determined by being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes, and I can well believe that sitting politicians see election challenges as more of an annoyance than a legitimate part of politics. It’s sort of like the way in which I’d like to just get grant money without having to do the tedious work of writing a proposal.
So, my real point here has little to do with whether Casey and Spector personally like each other and more to do with a general feeling of entitlement to an existing political office.