Want To Win An Election? Don't Raise Taxes.

There are less than five weeks to go before election day, and Republican Pat Toomey's solid 7 point lead over Democrat Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate race has opened up just a little more, with a new 6abc/Franklin and Marshall College Poll showing Toomey ahead by nine points among likely voters. Those voters cited their preference for Toomey's economic policies; Toomey, of course, is in favor of a no-questions-asked extension of the Bush tax cuts, while Sestak favors repeal for higher income levels. Here's Sestak spokesman Jonathan Dworkin speaking to the Delaware Daily Times:

The whole idea that just giving breaks to the wealthy and this idea that its going to trickle down to everybody else, we’ve seen that it does not work...This is a time of crisis, and we need a senator who will stand up for middle class Pennsylvanians, not those who didn’t ask for — and don’t need — bigger and bigger tax breaks.

This is not the political climate where that kind of thinking goes very far.