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Joe Sestak stepped out of a Chevy Suburban on the morning of July 3 and met up with a group of 15 campaign volunteers gathered in the parking lot of a drugstore in Canonsburg, Pa., just southwest of Pittsburgh. The town is the birthplace of Perry Como. It is also said to have the largest Independence Day parade in western Pennsylvania. Sestak and his supporters walked across an intersection and took their assigned place near the back of a procession amid firetrucks, dune buggies, a horse-drawn carriage, a bagpipe band and an S.U.V. ferrying Junior Miss Mid Mon Valley, an 8-year-old beauty queen sitting on top of the vehicle with her legs dangling through the sunroof. Sestak, a Navy admiral turned politician, surveyed the scene, then turned to me and said: “I heard this parade was gigantic and wonderful. But look at this!”

Not yet five years removed from military service, Sestak has shown himself to be a quick study in his new field. Twice already he has been elected to Congress by voters in his suburban Philadelphia district. And in May, he defeated the wily survivor and political contortionist Arlen Specter — while also overcoming the determined opposition of his own party — to become the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. In November, he’ll face the former congressman Pat Toomey, a former president of the Club for Growth, an economically libertarian, anti-tax organization, in what will be a closely watched battle of ideological opposites.

One of the best things Sestak has going for him is the bad thing that happened to him in the spring — being dissed by just about every prominent Democrat in the land, from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on down. (Even Magic Johnson, for whatever reason, felt compelled to stand up for Arlen Specter.) The high-level opposition has allowed Sestak to cast himself as something other than his party’s man, which may prove to be particularly useful this year. Democratic elders did not mean to strengthen Sestak — they wanted to defeat him — but their opposition earlier could end up preserving a Senate seat for the party.

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