now, what comes next? tonight on "washington week." >> we've come to take our government back. >> a win for the people! over the establishment. over the status quo! even over washington, d.c.! >> three more weeks, two more candidates, one choice for change. gwen: this is what it looks like when american voters get in a bad mood. incumbents endangered and the longer they've been in washington, the harder they're falling. >> it's a -- been a great privilege to serve the people of pennsylvania. gwen: both parties are scrambling to asells what comes next as surprises seem to lurk around every corner. >> on a few occasions i have misspoken about my service -- gwen: covering the week, dan

balz of the "washington post." john dickerson of "slate" magazine and cbs news. susan milligan of the boston globe, and jeff zeleny of "the new york times." >> award winning reporting and analysis. covering history as it happens. live from our nation's capital. this isgton week with gwen ifill & national journal." corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> we know why here. to give our war fighters every advantage. >> to deliver technology that anticipates that future today. >> to help protect americans everywhere from the battle space to cyberspace. >> around the globe, the people of boeing are working together to give our best for america's best. >> that's why we're here.

♪ >> what do you care about? introducing pepsi refresh project. we're giving away millions that move the world forward. >> funding for "washington week" is also provided by exxon mobile, constellation energy, the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by critics to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. gwen: good evening. this week's primary election

provided us with the best chance yet to assess how the political turmoil around the nation is turning into a force that could altiere not only the makeup of congress but also shake up the debates over immigration, wall street reform, health care and even the 1964 civil rights act. we start in pennsylvania, where voters appeared to send contradictory messages, elected an insider democrat from one end of the state to a seat in congress and sending another insider home. the five-term senator, democrat arlen specter was targeted by the closing days of the campaign by perhaps one of the most effective political ads ever. >> my change in party will enable me to be re-elected. >> arlen specter is the right man for the united states senate. i can count on this man.

>> but now -- >> my change in party will enable me to be re-elected. >> arlen specter switched parties to save one job -- his, not yours. gwen: the man who beat him is joe sestak who three years ago won his house seat by taking out another washington fixture, republican curt wheldon. has sestak been riding a wave that even we didn't see? >> i think we saw there was a wave out there but i think it took new force on tuesday. this is a wave that is described in lots of different ways, eanlts incumbent, anti-washington but this was one in which anti-insider took full force in on tuesday. gwen: is arlen specter -- was he in the wrong place at the wrong time? >> arlen specter in some ways didn't on the -- doesn't tell us a whole lot because he spent 45 years training democrats to

not like him and then he switched participants and asked those same democrats to vote for mihm. -- him. what was so push -- punishing about the ad is not just the idea that he'd had switched for his own opportunism -- gwen: which is bad. >> but the voice of george bush in a primary was nails on the blackboard for democratic voters. and he was trampled. gwen: did you think he saw it coming? >> i think he did at the end. one of the things we saw with the scott brown election in massachusetts earlier this year is that voters seem to be seeking some sort of authenticity. running as a republican for five terms and suddenly asking all these democrats to vote for you doesn't catch on the authenticity checkpoint. >> right, unless your

authentically self-interested. gwen: these are politicians, they're all authentically self-interested. so the white house kind of didn't show up after welcoming arlen specter to the party. >> they did and the white house saw this coming. they knew within the last two weeks or so that they had thought he was falling. around the time that ad started showing and they also became more comfortable with joe sestak that he could be perhaps a stronger democratic nominee but i think the white house has programs learned at least one lesson. he went to massachusetts at the end and campaigned for martha copely. she lost. there are two other examples in gubernatorial election last year. he was on the phone. he did a tv ad for him. joe biden went up there five times but he did not go up on the sunday before the election,

put his arm around senator specter and try and turn out the vote and it probably wouldn't haven insider by

definition? >> i think he was able to associate himself enough with the good things that measure that had done for the district and focus very much on economic issues. it's an area of the state that's been very hard hit. but because he was not an

uncouple bent, so to speak -- incumbent, he was able to separate himself a little bit from the worst of washington. he was not against health care, he's pro-life, progun, as was measure that. he was able to make it a local race and focus in on the republican, tim byrnes and make him much more of an issue. they were able to turn the tables on the republicans in that race. gwen: i was surprised to see republicans come out the next day and say, my bad. we really dropped the ball on that one. >> i think the person who was perhaps the smartest strategist in that whole campaign was governor ed rendell. he set that special election purposely so it would be on that primary day so a lot of democrats would be out. we've all done a lot of reading

and talking about this race. a lot of democrats were there because they were voting for sestak, but it does show that the republican ground campaign probably needs a little bit of work so it's a warning sign for them for november. the republicans western trying to nationalize that race and tie the democrats nancy pelosi and barack obama and that clearly didn't work. the message is not clear in every race. we're sensing an anti-establishment, anti--washington model but running against obama didn't work in this district that went

for john mccain in the last election. >> the others were primary races. this is one where you had a republican against democrat testing the national issues. there aren't actually a lot of districts like this where the democrat can run against a beloved guy. democrats will run away from washington as crisp did. they will run locally but this may not be duplicated in every other place because the union spent a lot of money and so did the national democrats. again: in kentucky, rand paul, the son of the famous libertarian congressman won a primary against a person who was actually the secretary of state, considered to be an insider because of the kentucky powers that be endorsed him. this is what he said on election night that kind of captured it. >> washington is horribly

broken. i think we stand on a precipice. we were encountering a day of reckoning and this movement, this tea party movement, is a message to washington that we're unhappy and that we want things done differently. again: where does rand paul small he's an eye doctor, a political neophyte. clearly there's something there. >> i was listening the week before the election and i was expecting to see a young crowd. because his father had a lot of young supporters. there were a lot of older supporters at the rand paul event. i think he's singing the exact song that fits into this campaign year. he sent the turmoil message again and again. it's a perfect one for this year. at least in the final hours he

was not talking about any of the controversial things we've heard since then but he was talking about smaller government in washington, a more common sense approach. of course he was not talking about abolishing the department of agriculture or education but he became sort of a pop cult figure. campaigned a lot, very approachable. talked to every last person. his bio perfectly fit the time before the election. again: people can embrace -- gwen people can embrace outdoor ers but sometimes when you become a nom knee, saying all government is bad can trip you up a little bit. >> it definitely has trimmed him up this week. we saw republicans who had been against him rush to his arms.

mitch mcconnell immediately endorsed him. then paul started to get asked questions on national press, pressed harmed on the rachel mad do you show about his position on certain things. he said although he hated racism, he thought it was a bad idea for federal government to tell private business what to do. so private business could have segregation. every republican senator distanced himself from him and mitch mcconnell said this man to whose arms i running back rushing i am now running away from. he said one of the great moments was watching the civil rights bill pass. democrats, of course, are loving this. they would be so happy for rand paul to be the face of the american republican -- republican party, they might concealed the senate seat.

gwen: even on things like the b.p. oil spill he criticized the president. that begins to expose something very interesting about the tea party. >> it's very popular to say i want smaller government, i don't want government interfering in your life. when you start saying we're going to raise the age of social security or get rid of the department of agriculture then it sounds more threatening to voters. gwen: how did grayson become an insider in kentucky? >> because he had the endorsement of mitch mcconnell and every other significant republican in the state and ran advertisements promoting that. he accepted the mantle of being an inside ere and didn't run a very effective campaign. i think he did fit the moment

will. gwen: here's the someone who was truly an insider, blanche lincoln, the senator from arkansas, who is now engaged in a runoff against someone who's running to her left. let's hear from her election night. >> i believe i'm a part of the solution to what's not working in washington. i have not been a part of the problem and i'm going to continue to fight on your behalf. gwen: the interesting thing about her is the health care vote. she was, i believe, against did public option earlier and then in the end voted for the health care bill, which could be described as a flip flop but it didn't help her either watch. >> at the end of the day she voted against did final, final step of health care in the senate. she has been a little bit all over the map on some of these issues. really trying to navigate this middle sort of stretch of politics, which is a pretty

familiar place for a democrat to be in arkansas. i mean, it is a democratic seat for like 100 years, i believe. but she has had -- i spent time down there about a month ago with her. democrats seemed disgusted with her. she sort of embodied washington. gwen: who's the guy who doesn't who she's running against? bill halt summer >> lieutenant governor halter. now we're seeing this in the democratic side. the lieutenant governor supported by progressive groups and unions. unions worked very hard to accomplish lincoln but send a message to democrats more broad

of an democratic seat in order to make this point that you have to follow along with what we believe. pothole. >> it definitely makes it a race. "the new york times" came out showing on a number of occasions he exaggerated what he did in vietnam. he was in washington and then in the u.s. marine reserves. that didn't go over well with some people. a lot of the vets are really standing behind him. gwen: even though he had five deferments for things like

working at the bhouse -- white house and the "washington post"? >> i think there are two things going on. a lot of us talked about the case of bruce who ran against quomeo in 1982 for governor. he made up a whole military career that didn't exist. richard blumen that will spent a lot of times with -- time with vets up there. for 30 years he's been going to the funerals and to the homes and they saw him as a fellow marine. they said we never thought he misrepresented us. ok so maybe he said this a few times. the republican saw this as a media attack on a fellow marine in the same way they saw it as an attack on george bush when people questioned his service. >> i think it's a reminder of the ambivalence and guilt that a lot of the people of that generation carried for what

happened to them and how they maneuvered around the draft. gwen: i remember watching you talk to bill clinton about this very issue in 1992. >> yes, i had some very lively discussion about then-candidate clinton on -- about it and he was very much the same way. what we saw here was somebody who served honorably in the marine reserves but has been unable to talk about why he actually ended up where he was. the history is that he had a low draft number. he was going to get drafted probably the summer of that year and he was out essentially ahead of the sheriff because he probably didn't want to go on active duty. he wanted to continue his career and he was able to figure out a way to do that through the reserves and he was not able in that press conference to address that in a straight-up way. gwen: let's pull back from the election results and talk about the meaning for policy and what

happens next. there were so many issues which are now kind of -- everyone is waiting to see what you do between now and november, the white house, especially, on health care and on immigration, for instance, which popped back up a couple of weeks ago because of arizona and now we see the president, especially, kind of in a defensive crouch. >> i'm confident that we can get it done and the american peerges including the people of arizona, are going to prefer that the federal government takes responsibility and does what it's supposed to do. gwen: that's the president's view, that people are eventually going do come to their senses and say people will think the federal government ought to fix this. is that what we're seeing? >> we're seeing people in polls support the arizona law. but he said i need 60 vetos, i need republicans on my side. that's very different on what he said for health care and even through financial

regulatory reform. in that case we saw the president getting into the debate, calling out mitch mcconnell, speaking out on specific amendments in the bill. he was forcing it through congress. he's not doing that with immigration and that's because it cuts all kinds of bad ways. immigration reform helps some democrats with a hot of hispanics in their districts but others it does not help and also the white house doesn't want to wade into this battle and there are a lot of other am b.f.i. lefpblet democrats and republicans. it was a mess. gwen: which party is more sobered by these election? >> it's split down the middle. republicans learned their establishment candidates are vulnerable. if you're a rubber stamp for whatever you represent in washington on're party, it's not good. they're looking for the word change, which we heard a lot. i think there were enough lessons to go around, but since

democrats have more seats to lose it is, i think, more of a sobering lesson to them. in the next five months things have to improve economically or they'll have a tough november. gwen: who are these angry voters and is there a single message? >> i don't think there's a single message. some angry voters are very conservative and very unhappy with almost everything that president obama has tried to do and particularly health care, which has become the symbol of government overreaching. but there are a lot of inlts who have defected who voted for candidate obama in 2008 who are wary over what's happened. they're worried about the deficit and the direction of the economy. the democrats need to get them back in some way by november. i would also say, i think in some ways this was an important week for the republicans as a reminder that -- they kind of

have had the house majority in their sights and almost thinking it's almost in their back pocket. i think this week was a reminder maybe not quite. gwen: stpwhaurn we keep declaring it dead but is this fresh received in evidence >> i wonder if we get a congress full of people who hate government and i want to see how they navigate. the filibuster threshold changed the chemistry of things for the better and i think it was easier for them to get financial regulation done when they were down to 59. >> the president is going to meet with the senate republicans on tuesday at their policy bunch. -- lunch. so he's still trying to look bipartisan but on the stump he gets a little sharper going after the republicans. gwen: dan's book "battle for

america 2008" is out in paper back next week. thank you, everyone. we have to go but check us out online where we take you back to 1994 when republicans captured the house for the first time in nearly half a century and we talked about it right here on "washington week." you can find it in the vaults at cbs.org/washington week. write me and tell me what you think about my hair back then. as always, keep up with us on round table and we'll see you next week. every thursday get a preview of our topics and panel with our washington week email alert available at our web assignment. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> harn -- harnsing the power

of clean markets and wind to achieve a more secure energy future. constellation energy. >> additional funding for "washington week" is provided by boeing, exxon mobile, pepsy, the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

i'm alan cumming, and this is masterpiece mystery! foyle: this unit, the british free corps? man: they're disgusting. nothing. hitler said there'd be a thousand of us one day, and in the end he couldn't even manage 30.