As Much as I think Tom Carper sucks as a Democrat, nobody can dispute that fact that he is a great politician. He has instincts and guts. Two things that John Carney came up short on.
Carper wasn’t a shoe in to beat Bill Roth (prior to Roth falling down on the campaign trail) but he sensed an opening and went for it despite the consternation it caused among practitioners of “The Delaware Way.”
In his year of all years, John Carney stood a greater chance of taking out Castle than Carper taking out Roth, but he lacked Carper’s nerve and sense of timing.
I’ve heard that he let Carper talk him out of it. Maybe so. I guess we’ll never know. I should not think it would be the kind of thing that either man will note in their memoirs.