Last week, a Franklin & Marshall poll showed Republican Pat Toomey pulling away in the Pennsylvania Senate race, with a large lead over newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter, 45-31 among likely voters. Toomey had a similar lead against Congressman Joe Sestak, 41-19, with a higher amount of undecideds. But Sestak is not fazed by such a result. He is focused on defeating Specter in the Democratic primary, and “taking on the DC establishment” in the process. After winning that election, Sestak told FDL News in an interview, he would pivot to talk about Toomey’s long record of “voting with the GOP establishment,” and his former profession on Wall Street.

Sestak is seemingly positioning himself in between both parties, as an outsider whose principle guides him instead of fealty to political party. “Democrats are going to have to wake up,” Sestak told me. “The question is, do we deserve to lead? We seized the White House out of audacity, out of the promise of change. But that included a change in our politics. And people seeing the dealmaking to get the 60th vote on health care were turned off. The lack of trust in our politics is harming America. If you follow your principles, the politics will follow.”

This is an outsider message. Sestak, who is the highest-ranking military member (a Navy Admiral) ever to get elected to the US House, was warned against taking on Specter by the state political establishment. Undaunted, he has jumped into the race, and has amassed over $5.1 million dollars in cash on hand. Specter’s fundraising was uncharacteristically soft last quarter, and had to return $600,000 in donations because of a Club for Growth-led campaign by conservatives to take back previous contributions. Specter still has $8.6 million in the bank, more than Sestak.

(Sestak and Specter were caught up in an unusual moment this weekend at a Keystone Progress forum, where Specter jumped the gun and took the stage while Sestak was finishing his closing statement.)

Sestak spoke about key issues in a wide-ranging interview with FDL News.

• On health care, he said “we have a duty” to get a bill through in the House. He floated an idea to take the best of all the proposals to get an agreement, package that to get something across the line, and then use the reconciliation process to make the fixes in the Senate. He thinks that a new process of explaining the bill, one that is open and transparent, can alleviate some of the concerns among the public. He did say that “we should not sacrifice good policy on the altar of bipartisanship,” and that he would be willing to lose his job to get health care through.

I found the idea of packaging the “best of the bill” together to be a bit jumbled, but Sestak was focused more on the determination to get something done, rather than the policy specifics. He also is correct that process concerns really harmed the bill.

• On Senate process, Sestak acknowledged that “the Senate rules may have gone beyond utility.” While he stated that the Constitution set up the Congress to allow for the protection of minorities, and that such protection is important, the “deep freeze” whereby legislation just withers in the Senate is “harming our nation,” in Sestak’s words. He thinks we should be careful in unraveling this rules conundrum, and not creating a mirror of the House, where “having the votes is more important than thinking things through.” But he added that James Fallows’ article on America in decline had a profound effect on him, and that he has become convinced that “the Senate needs to reform.” Needless to say, this is probably more than you’d get out of Arlen Specter, a creature of the Senate.

• On jobs, Sestak stressed many of the features that we’ve seen pop up in the Obama budget. He wants to see support for small business and community banks, perhaps in the form of a job creation tax credit. He lamented the fact that Specter took out $100 billion dollars for aid to the states in last year’s stimulus, leaving Pennsylvania with a large budget deficit. “Arlen bragged about that on his website,” he said. Sestak supports a “focused” jobs bill, but also supports fiscal discipline efforts like paygo. On a budget deficit commission, he made the point that “Congress should have the courage to make the cuts themselves” instead of letting an independent panel do the work for them.

This is in line with Sestak’s major complaint about government in the modern age: “The thing lacking most is the courage to articulate a vision. Then go home to your constituents and explain it. The nation is yearning for courage. We have to earn their trust.”

“We have to ask if Congress understands Americans? Do they understand working Americans and what they go through?”