First, having lost all his seniority on the Judiciary Committee (and the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee), I wonder whether he'd really be able to get the ball rolling -- introducing a bill is one thing, but it doesn't mean very much if it lingers in committee.

Second, unless his election opponents mysteriously give up, there's a decent chance he won't be in the Senate at all come 2011 (he's running even in the polls against Club for Growther Toomey and is under 50% in primary matchups with Sestak).  This would appear to argue that if Specter values his political survival, he'll have to make his campaign his focus, not a potential overhaul of antitrust laws, as necessary as that might be.  (As noted in yesterday's Floyd Norris column in the NYT, in 1990, the top ten financial institutions had about 10% of assets in the U.S., while last year that figure had increased to beyond 60%.  Yet this would be unlikely to trigger an antitrust inquiry under current laws and even a merger probably wouldn't run afoul of the HHI market concentration guidelines.  The result of this, of course, is the concept of "too big to fail".)