Ignore Republicans, like Rep. Darrell Issa, who want you to think there's been some nefarious violation of the law here. After all, there's no indication any actual promises of jobs were made -- which means even former Bush administration officials are saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of any crime. (And Romanoff had already applied online for jobs with the administration when deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina contacted him to discuss options.) What the disclosures about Sestak and Romanoff really show is that the White House political machine isn't doing its job very well.

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So far, the alleged scandal that supposedly threatens the Obama presidency doesn't amount to much: a verbal mention of a nonpaying advisory post to Rep. Joe Sestak in a conversation with Clinton, and an e-mail mentioning three administration jobs to Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic speaker of the Colorado state assembly, dangled in order to dissuade them from entering primaries against incumbents favored by the president.

If clumsiness were an indictable offense, then the White House officials responsible for those overtures might well be in trouble. But when people compare such ham-handed deal-making with the crimes of Watergate, it can only mean that they don't remember what the country and the Constitution endured under Nixon -- or that they cynically assume nobody else does.

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Griffith quit the Democratic Party in December, citing healthcare reform -- and a generalized dislike for, oh, pretty much everything the party stands for -- as his reason. The Republican establishment welcomed him with open arms, trumpeting the leap as another good omen for the GOP's November 2010. (Mostly open arms, that is, except when they accidentally attacked him in party-funded mailings.) At the time, Griffith seemed to be making the right move -- Democrats had stalled in their push for the healthcare bill, President Obama (never particularly popular in Griffith's district) was watching his approval ratings plunge and elections the month before had mostly gone well for the GOP. But on the ground back home, activists weren't so quick to get on board. In Madison County, Alabama, the local party endorsed anyone but Griffith in a three-way race. The Tea Party blasted Griffith, calling him a Republican in name only -- which was hard to refute, since he'd only been a Republican for a few months.

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The White House will release a memo from Rahm Emanuel to former President Clinton. Clinton was instructed to ask Rep. Sestak about his intentions.

And according to the New York Times, Clinton was gauging Sestak's interest in "a prominent, but unpaid, advisory position." Rahm Emanuel didn't want Sestak to leave the House of Representatives, so a real job was never even offered.

The last sentence here is the understatement of the month:

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Take the crucial Pennsylvania Senate contest, where Republican Pat Toomey essentially spent the last year running ahead of Arlen Specter, who had been the presumed Democratic nominee. The Democrats who were propping up Specter insisted he would be the party's best general election bet, even though his 30 years in the Senate seemed to clash with the public's anti-incumbent mood. Specter, of course, lost last week's Democratic primary to Joe Sestak -- and Sestak has, at least in the initial post-primary polling, opened a small lead over Toomey.

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Back in February, Sestak off-handedly mentioned that, last July, he was offered a job by the White House if he would agree not to run against Arlen Specter in the Democratic Senate primary. Darrell Issa would like to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this serious "bribe."

The RNC is making the supposed bribe the subject of press releases, Sestak and Robert Gibbs both fielded questions about it on the Sunday morning shows, and their non-answers made the papers today. In other words, this is going to be an issue for a while. Whether it goes away depends primarily on whether the Republicans think they can get anyone outside of Fox Nation interested in it. Which may be a problem, because the story is pretty thin:

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But don't read Tuesday night's results as a rebuke to the White House. In Arkansas, where Obama won only 38 percent of the vote in the 2008 elections, he never figured into the race. And in Pennsylvania, Specter -- who spent his career as a Republican -- was a flawed vehicle for the White House's message. A primary election in which only the most dedicated Democrats turned out hardly means a rejection of Obama.

All the support the party establishment gave Specter, after all, was mostly just payback. Specter's switch a year ago gave Democrats the 60th vote they needed to overcome Republican filibusters (after Al Franken was finally seated), and his support before that had helped pass the economic stimulus. By now, though, Specter isn't the 60th vote anymore; Obama didn't even care enough about whether he won or lost to risk a late campaign appearance on his behalf. Sestak -- who stubbornly resisted entreaties to quit the race -- hammered Specter constantly for cutting a deal for the White House help. But he also said he wants to be Obama's "closest ally" if he makes it to the Senate. That doesn't exactly sound like an anti-White House message.

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On the GOP side, Mitch McConnell, Dick Cheney and the NRCC lost big, as Kentucky voters rejected Trey Grayson and Jeff Reetz in big Senate and House primaries there, going for Tea Party newcomers Rand Paul and Todd Lally. In Pennsylvania, the NRCC lost again, as Democrat Mark Critz beat Republican Tim Burns for Jack Murtha's old seat, in the only district that voted for John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008. Burns tried to nationalize his race by with a campaign cartoon that depicted Nancy Pelosi as a monster (about the fifth time Republicans have tried, unsuccessfully, to run against Pelosi). He only succeeded in showing he has Mommy issues with his silly Pelosi caricature.

On the Democratic side, President Obama got rocked in the Pennsylvania primary, where Democratic insurgent Joe Sestak beat "incumbent" Sen Arlen Specter (although Specter's longterm GOP history made it hard to see him as a Democratic incumbent). Meanwhile, Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has succeeded in pushing Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a run-off, another defeat for Obama and mainstream or conservative Dems.

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Early returns started to trickle in not long after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Eastern, and they didn't look great for Specter. Turnout was, as everyone had been saying all day, pretty low; Philadelphia was on pace to deliver only about 160,000 total votes -- which doesn't seem like it's anywhere near enough for Specter, who was counting on a big margin here. A DJ spun soul music -- Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder -- as people picked at bacon-wrapped scallops and hit the bar.

Check back here for more updates throughout the night.

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In a race few voters bothered to show up for, Rep. Joe Sestak ended Specter's political career after 30 years in the Senate, defeating him easily -- the AP declared Sestak the victor less than three hours after the polls closed -- to win the Democratic nomination for the seat Specter held. He'll face Republican Pat Toomey, who drove Specter from the GOP primary last year, in the fall.

A few minutes after the news broke, Specter strode into a half-empty ballroom in a Center City hotel and said a quick goodbye. "It's been a great privilege to serve the people of Pennsylvania," he said. "And it's been a great privilege to be in the United States Senate. I'll be working very, very hard for the people of the commonwealth in the coming months. Thank you all." And then he strode off the stage, his eyes rimmed in red, accompanied by his wife, Joan, his son Shanin and his granddaughters. And an already mopey party turned downright pathetic. (The DJ said he'd been told to play upbeat music, but avoided anything too celebratory "in case he don't win.")

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The Democratic Senate primary here poses something of a test of the old urban machine style of politics that's still practiced in Philadelphia. For Sen. Arlen Specter to emerge with his new party's nomination, he needs to rack up a huge margin in Philly, and that means relying on Brady's operation to deliver votes. Rep. Joe Sestak, on the other hand, hardly even has a field operation in place.

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The city's 66 wards, each split further into between 10 and 50 divisions, mean there are far more voting locations than there are public buildings to host them. So Tuesday's primary election -- in which the marquee contest is between Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak for the Democratic nomination -- is happening in some unlikely locales.

Yes, some schools, community centers and other civic locations double as polling places. But in Philadelphia, there are voting booths set up in the Satin Slipper Club, the home of one of the city's Mummers groups. People are voting in beauty salons (like in the 1st division of the 2nd Ward) and barbershops (10th Ward, 8th division). A few garages are polling places; so are several otherwise empty storefronts. In Roxborough, you vote at the Parker Pub. By Juniata Park, you vote in La Gusta Restaurante. Quite a few apartment building lobbies host ballot booths, in Center City and around the neighborhoods. And 29 different private homes turn into voting locations on Election Day. Beyond that, dozens of polling places report they're not wheelchair-accessible.

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"I just voted for you -- good luck!" one woman said. "Thanks for coming through our lobby." Another man stopped him as well. "You just got mine, too, Admiral," he told Sestak. "And it's time to get rid of him. I mean that." "Him," of course, would be Sen. Arlen Specter, and as Sestak visited polling places in Center City Philadelphia on Election Day morning, he seemed pretty confident he'd do the job.

"I feel pretty gratified," he said. "When I went and made that decision back in July -- when I visited those six, seven counties -- what to do, whether to get in when the Democratic establishment said, 'Sit down,' I found people that were hurting... Slowly over time, as people got to know us, they're giving me an opportunity to renew their faith, their trust that maybe we can change Washington, D.C., once again."

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But the actual president? He'll be literally flying over the state around lunchtime, on his way to Youngstown, Ohio (just past Pennsylvania's western border), to talk up signs of an economic recovery.

Which, if you look at the final days of the Senate primary between Specter and his surging rival, Rep. Joe Sestak, is probably apt. Obama has been hovering over the race all along, endorsing Specter in exchange for his switch from Republican to Democrat last year, throwing his former campaign apparatus into the fray on Specter's behalf and -- in the last couple of weeks -- urging supporters to back the incumbent in TV ads, radio spots and automated phone calls. Specter's whole campaign, especially the crucial get-out-the-vote operation in Philadelphia, boils down to his ties to the president. But as the race comes to a close, Sestak has been trying to walk a delicate line, too. Sure, he's the rogue insurgent who isn't afraid to take on the party establishment, but he's also careful to say he wants to be Obama's "closest ally" if he makes it to the Senate. And yet Sestak's camp is expecting most of the "surge" voters who came out two years ago to vote for Obama to stay home.

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As it happens, that's also more or less the game plan that Sen. Arlen Specter will need Tuesday against Rep. Joe Sestak, if he doesn't want to become a lame duck after the Democratic primary. Specter wants a big turnout in Philadelphia, where he's courting black voters. He needs to avoid getting steamrolled in the suburbs, where -- as a Republican -- he used to pick up crossover votes from Democrats, but where Sestak is well known from his four years representing a district based in Delaware County. And he needs to run decently in the rest of the state, which is why Specter's latest ad near Pittsburgh rips Sestak for favoring an assault weapons ban (which is not an issue you hear the incumbent talk about much in Philly).

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What those undecided voters do could make the difference on Tuesday. But it's not entirely clear who they are or whether they'll vote. Both campaigns are hoping for turnout that matches their needs on Election Day. For Specter, that means a lot of votes in Philadelphia, especially in black neighborhoods that helped boost President Obama to a 10-point win over John McCain two years ago. For Sestak, that means a lower turnout, with fewer of the 2008 "surge" voters showing up; Sestak isn't that well known among infrequent voters, and most political operatives here think a good showing by casual voters would help Specter out.

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The surging challenger didn't mention that particular act of Republican loyalty in his stump speech Sunday, but he probably didn't have to. The couple hundred people who showed up were all Sestak loyalists, some of whom shouted, "Retire!" whenever he mentioned his incumbent rival. "He's a man on a mission," Colleen Guiney, a pediatric nurse practitioner from Swarthmore, Pa., who chairs the local Democratic Party committee, told me. The rally was in the heart of the district Sestak has represented in the House since 2006, and his campaign headquarters was only a few blocks away. The theme from "Top Gun" blared from the speakers, alternating with the 1992 Clinton campaign anthem, "Don't Stop," until Sestak arrived (45 minutes after he was scheduled to be there).

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That adds to the sense that Sestak has some momentum, and certainly underscores one of the basic dynamics in the race: Sestak has tried to argue he's the true progressive, and remind voters that Specter was a Republican not that long ago.

What it means in terms of help on the ground for a campaign that could be determined by whose get-out-the-vote operation works better, though, is less clear. MoveOn.org spokeswoman Ilyse Hogue tells me the group has about 150,000 members in Pennsylvania. "They're among the most active members of the Democratic Party," she says. Which is true. But MoveOn is mostly just urging them to vote -- and volunteer -- for Sestak; the group's endorsement doesn't bring any actual logistical support along with it. And while Sestak won the MoveOn vote handily -- with 67 percent of the total -- that still means Specter has some loyalists, even among die-hard activists.

The latest Muhlenberg College/Morning Call tracking poll in Pennsylvania put Specter ahead, 45-43.

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Specter's path to a narrow victory against Rep. Joe Sestak, who's been surging lately, depends on racking up a big margin in Philadelphia and near Pittsburgh, staying about even in the suburbs and not getting beat too badly in the rest of the state. Some Pennsylvania Democrats had passed along a persistent rumor earlier this week that Obama would make one final trip to Philly in the race's final weekend to help drive up turnout in the city for Specter, whom the party establishment agreed to back after he switched parties last year.

But now Democratic officials now say this won't be happening. 

Sending Obama into the state one last time might have actually worked for the White House, in ways that last-minute campaign swings in New Jersey last November and Massachusetts in January didn't -- mainly because a Democratic primary electorate is much different than a general election electorate. For Tuesday's primary, Obama might actually have enough clout to drag Specter over the finish-line. But the risk of going 0-for-3 in last-minute rescue attempts was apparently too much for the White House, which still wants to use the president to help Democrats in November's elections.

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