14 Jewish Senators? Do Jews even make up 4% of the population?
No.
Debbie Stabenow (MI) said these comments were part of the reason Specter was stripped of his seniority the other day. I guess the other senators felt Specter thought he meant what he said.
Nope. 1.7 to 2.2% max (by self-identification - might be different if you went by if the Orthodox would accept them as Jews). Jews are massively overrepresented. But hey, the Presidency is now 100% occupied by an African-American male and only 7% of America fits that demographic - talk about overrepresentation! 
Some would say 50%. 
It’s a Jewish conspiracy!
Now now, I was precise with my word choice for a reason.
Hmph. Writing it off as a joke would have been a lot more plausible than saying he “misspoke.” With the right tone of voice (which would certainly not have been captured by text), it’s actually a pretty good wry joke.
I honestly do think he meant it as a sarcastic joke but realized after the fact that people don’t get sarcasm nor understand why he’d be sarcastic about the “Don’t you want a Jewish GOP Senator?” question, and that saying that it was meant as a joke would run into people accusing him of covering up his true pro-Coleman feelings etc. so the fastest way to be done with the idiocy was to just basically say “Hey, I pulled a Biden.”
Cool.
You know, Specter may be one of the few subjects where I actually agree with you. He’s an opportunist who saw the writing on the wall and thought MY party would be a better way to keep it from coming true. I want him primaried and gone.
People who know him apparently disagree. Consider what it says about the guy that his fellow politicians were that disgusted with his naked opportunism.
Any decent intelligence on how likely Sestak is to do it?
The problem for Sestak (and Torsella, to a much greater degree) is name recognition. Specter is a statewide name. Everyone knows who he is (which, working on a low-information voter level, is HUGE for Specter). Sestak is the representative of a single district, and unless you were paying attention to Weldon’s corruption troubles in 2006, you’re probably not going to know his name outside that district. Torsella hasn’t even held public office, and is a complete unknown except for political junkies.
There’s a lot of room for Sestak (and Torsella) to grow in name recognition, especially if Specter doesn’t start voting like an actual Democrat. Specter has flipped back on EFCA already, though Og only knows how he’ll actually vote. If he does torpedo the bill, the unions in the state are going to drown him in Sestak advertising, rocketing the name recognition for Joe S. into the stratosphere. If Specter does vote to pass EFCA, he’s got the unions on his side and the show’s over before the primary.
Specter holds his political future in his own hands right now. His voting record over the next eight or nine months is going to determine the certainty or uncertainty of his primary win as a Democrat next year.
Needless to say, Torsella’s looking like the primary also-ran right now. He’s unknown, he’s a complete neophyte for any public office, not just national, and he’s got two bigger names against him. If Sestak were to drop out, and Specter to vote against EFCA, the unions will grab onto Torsella as the only choice, but even with union support I’m not sure he can do it. He’s just too much of a blank slate and nobody knows who he is, at all.