GOP 's Sen. Arlen Specter switches parties

Hot Damn!!!

So if Al Franken gets that Minnesota seat in oh, say June or July--geez, we in California will have voted TWICE by then!!-- the Dems have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

He announced it impromptu to constituents who were there for a totally different meeting, and according to CNN, they broke into spontaneous applause.

Several officials say veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania intends to switch parties, advancing his own hopes of winning a new term next year while pushing Democrats one step closer to a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority.

The sources said an announcement could come later in the day — or Wednesday. The officials who provided the information did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss his plans.

Specter is a 79-year-old veteran of five Senate terms, and one of only a handful of moderate Republicans left in Congress in a party made up largely of conservatives.

UPDATE: Here's Specter's statement--

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.

I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters. I can understand their disappointment. I am also disappointed that so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides. I thank specially Senators McConnell and Cornyn for their forbearance.

I am not making this decision because there are no important and interesting opportunities outside the Senate. I take on this complicated run for re-election because I am deeply concerned about the future of our country and I believe I have a significant contribution to make on many of the key issues of the day, especially medical research. NIH funding has saved or lengthened thousands of lives, including mine, and much more needs to be done. And my seniority is very important to continue to bring important projects vital to Pennsylvania's economy.

I am taking this action now because there are fewer than thirteen months to the 2010 Pennsylvania Primary and there is much to be done in preparation for that election. Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle.

While each member of the Senate caucuses with his Party, what each of us hopes to accomplish is distinct from his party affiliation. The American people do not care which Party solves the problems confronting our nation. And no Senator, no matter how loyal he is to his Party, should or would put party loyalty above his duty to the state and nation.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords' switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy's statement that sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.

Read more The Associated Press.

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Franken Had Most Votes, Court Says

What month is it? April.. Oh yeah... still deciding....If Coleman appeals then there will be even a longer delay before Franken is seated...

A special Minnesota panel of three judges from three separate courts has ruled that Al Franken, a Democrat, won the most votes in his 2008 Senate race against an incumbent Republican, Norm Coleman.

Read more at NYTimes.com.

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Virgil Goode concedes

As ElectoralVote.com points out, Congress is now close to the levels of 1994, before Republican wave and Newt Gingrich and the Contract on America...
TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo | Muslim-Baiting Rep. Virgil Goode Concedes Defeat: "It's official: Rep. Virgil Goode, the Virginia Republican best known for denouncing the election of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) as the first Muslim member of Congress, has conceded defeat against Democratic Rep.-Elect Tom Perriello.

Goode asked for a recount after the certified total gave Perriello a 745-vote lead out of over 300,000 votes cast. The chance of turning around that kind of deficit was nearly non-existent, and now that the recount has finished Goode has conceded via press release."

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Caroline Kennedy for Hillary's Senate seat?

Hmmm...

Caroline Kennedy, the deeply private daughter of America’s most storied political dynasty, will seek the United States Senate seat in New York being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Ms. Kennedy ended weeks of silence with a series of rapid-fire phone calls to the state’s leading political figures, including Gov. David A. Paterson, in which she emphatically and enthusiastically declared herself interested in the seat, according to several people who received the calls.

“She told me she was interested in the position,” Mr. Paterson said at a news conference outside Albany on Monday. He added, “She’d like at some point to sit down and tell me what she thinks her qualifications are.”

The governor, who has sole authority to fill the Senate vacancy, insisted that he had not yet chosen a successor to Mrs. Clinton and said that Monday’s conversation with Ms. Kennedy was the first he had had with her since an initial discussion almost two weeks ago.

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It's so, Joe

Democrats Let Lieberman Keep Senate Chairmanship: It's magnanimous (and I suppose one could argue will at least store up some good karma...)

"Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, was allowed to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday despite his support for Senator John McCain in the presidential campaign."

Democratic senators voted instead to oust Mr. Lieberman from the Environment and Public Works Committee, where he had been chairman of a subcommittee. That penalty was a slap on the wrist compared with the prospect of losing the homeland security leadership post.

“He’s part of this caucus,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said after the Democratic caucus voted behind closed doors in the old Senate chamber off the Capitol Rotunda. “We are not looking back. We are looking forward.”

In addition, Senate Republicans decided to take the "wait and see" approach with Ted "I never wanted that massage chair" Stevens:

On the other side of the aisle, Senate Republicans deferred action on any move to expel Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska because of his recent conviction on felony charges that he failed to report numerous gifts. The Republicans prefer to wait for the result of the election, in which Mr. Stevens currently trails his Democratic opponent, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, with some absentee ballots still to be counted.

The Republicans’ action, or non-action, came on Mr. Stevens’s 85th birthday.

Happy birthday, Ted.

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Alaska , Are you Frackin' kidding me???

The AP reports that as Alaska counts the 90,000 votes they missed LAST week, we conclude today with Mark Begich 3 (three-- THREE) votes ahead of Ted Stevens in the Alaska Senate Race.

Alaska, are you kidding me??

Democrat Mark Begich, the two-term mayor of Anchorage, began Wednesday down more than 3,200 votes but closed the gap as officials resumed counting early and absentee ballots. The tally was 125,019 to 125,016.

Neither side expected to be able to claim victory Wednesday. By late afternoon, officials had counted more than 44,000 of the roughly 90,000 outstanding ballots.

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Alaska "finds" one third of missing votes...

Seriously, Alaska...WTF?

Remember how I was asking what happened in Alaska? How was it that the most watched, most high-octane presidential election, one in which Alaska's OWN GOVERNOR was running, elicited the lowest turnout for a presidential election ever?

As Jon Stewart would say, "Funny story..."

The Anchorage Daily, our new favorite northern newspaper reports that a bunch-a votes were found. Could it possibly change the state of Ted Stevens race? You betcha!

Sen. Ted Stevens leads Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by about 3,000 votes with roughly 30 percent of the ballots remaining to be counted, including:

• 61,000 absentee votes.
• More than 20,000 questioned ballots.
• 9,500 early votes.

For now, more than 90,000 votes remain uncounted. More than 224,000 votes were cast on Election Day.

See, 90,000 votes out of 224,000, that's like what those scientific types call a "non-negligible percentage."

Seriously, Alaska. WTF.

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Senate Race Roundup

With positive numbers for Obama all over the country, Democrats are hoping the love will help candidates for other offices down the ticket, particularly in Senate races. The Dems have a simple majority in the Senate with 51 senators in their column IF Joe Lieberman votes (as he often does) with them. Should the Dems pick up ten or even nine seats, they would have enough votes to be able to block any potential filibustering. Below are 15 key Senate races with polling numbers from the RealClearPolitics agreggator. (States in blue are potential Dem pickups. States in light blue are possible, but unlikely pickups.)

• 

  Virginia: Highly regarded Republican Senator John Warner decided to retire last year leaving the opening for Democrats, who won the other Senate seat with Jim Webb's populist message. The extremely popular former governor, Democrat Mark Warner, leads here by 27 points over the other former governor, Jim Gilmore.
• New Mexico: Tom Udall, the Democratic running for the open U.S Senate seat in New Mexico, leads here by nearly 18 points, and will probably continue to show strongly especially given the release of a powerful new ad featuring Army Sergeant Erik Schei, who was gravely injured by in Iraq and is now forced to communicate through a speaking aid.
• Alaska: We're all wondering if Ted Stevens, the incumbent Republican Senator, can seriously pull it off while under indictment on 7 felony charges. His opponent Mark Begich leads by 1.6 points.
  
• Colorado: If you're Republican, things are kinda bleak here. Democrat Mark Udall, a contender for a vacant Republican seat, leads his Republican opponent by 9.3 points. The National Republican Senatorial Committee just pulled their money out of the race for the Senate here.
• New Hampshire: Republican incumbent and former GHW Bush chief of staff John Sununu is fighting hard in the Granite State against Democratic former Governor Jeanne Shaheen, the first woman elected to that office in NH, who leads by almost 6 points. The conservative and anti-abortion Sununu made a mark co-sponsoring energy and environment legislation and hoped to coast on McCain's coattails, but at the moment Obama leads by 9 points here.
  
• North Carolina: In 2002, Republican incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole (the 72-year old wife of Bob Dole) won handily. But in this year's election against Dem Kay Hagan, Dole has had to fight to gain any ground. Hagan, the niece of Florida Senator Lawton Chiles, is well funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and may be benefitting from Obama's recent rise in the polling here. Or maybe vice versa. Hagan leads in every poll by an average of 3 points.
  
• Oregon: Two-term Republican incumbent Gordon Smith is fighting a serious challenge from Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley which has only intensified following Smith's finessing of positions on the $700 billion bailout. Merkley leads here by nearly 4 points, despite Smith's attempts to link himself to Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama.
  
• Minnesota: Incumbent first-term Republican senator Norm Coleman is the formerly Democratic mayor of St. Paul, who left the Dem. Party in 1996 to join the GOP. He's up against Air America radio host Al Franken in one of this year's more high-profile races, and in a three-way race with the addition of Independent Dean Barkley. Franken leads Coleman by a narrow 2 points, which may increase after Sen. Hillary Clinton comes to Minnesota to campaign today.
• Kentucky: Despite some concenrs about blowback from the ousting of a scandal-ridden Republican governor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to be capably defending his seat against the Democratic candidate Bruce Lunsford with a lead of 4 points.
  
• Georgia: The fabulously named Saxby Chambliss, the Republican incumbent who hopes to gain a second term has battled Obama's Democratic registration drive in what the Dems hoped might be a possible pickup state this year. Chambliss leads here by nearly 3 points, against a nearly unknown opponent although that's slim in a race that Chambliss was expected to dominate.
  
• Mississippi: Roger Wicker was the Republican choice to finish out the remaining four years of Trent Lott's Senate term, a seat he's been keeping warm since MS Governor Haley Barbour appointed him to fill it until the November election. In order to do so, though, Wicker had to vacate his House district seat which subsequently went Democratic in a surprise twist in the May special elections. Still, Wicker leads here by 2.7 points, and the Republican National Committee has said that it will continue to put money into supporting his campaign.
  
• Louisiana: Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu was a top target for the GOP this year, but with limited resources and time running out, Landrieu's 13 point lead caused the NRSC to pull its advertising dollars from the Louisiana Senate race.
• Maine: Moderate Republican incumbent Susan Collins will likely win her bid for a third term in her Senate seat, though it breaks her promise to only serve two terms. She leads here by 13 points.
  
• New Jersey: Democratic incumbent Frank Lautenberg's seat looks safe here, as his lead is well into the double digits with 12 points. The Republicans had hoped to take this seat with a popular moderate Anne Estabrook, but she suffered a minor stroke in March and was replaced by former Rep. Dick Zimmer.
  
• Nebraska: Republican former Governor Mike Johanns leads by a comfortable 14 points in this race to replace retiring Senator Chuck Hagel.
  

By the way, here are a few other non-critical races that the Democrats lead in, just for kicks:

• Joe Biden (Delaware) leads by 37 points
• John Kerry (Massachussetts) by 28 points
• Dick Durbin (Illinois) by 29 points
• Tom Harkin (Iowa) by 18 points
• Carl Levin (Michigan) by 25 points
• Max Baucus (Montana) by 33 points
• Jack Reed (Rhode Island) by 52 points
• Tim Johnson (South Dakota) by 25 points
• Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) by 28 points.

Republicans are feeling a crunch -- this isn't their year, and frankly if were in charge of this party (STOP LAUGHING, everyone) I'd tell them that they need to forget this year, save some money and start working NOW on a serious reassessment of their own labels and priorities. In case you missed it, a couple of weeks ago, Republican Rep. Tom Davis (who's quitting this year after seven terms serving the Virginia 11th District) was profiled in a fascinating NY Times Magazine piece, which detailed his frustrations with the governance system and with his own party. "The way Davis sees it, the system has become dysfunctional. Bush has so destroyed the party's public standing and Congress has become so infected with a win-at-all-costs mentality that there is no point in staying. 'You know, the Cubs fans used to put the bags over their heads,' he told me when we met for eggs at Mickey's Dining Car in St. Paul the first morning of the Republican National Convention. 'That's what I feel when you say you're from Congress, because there are just so many things we're not doing.'"

Sen. Barack Obama holds leads in four key counties that will go a long way toward determining the eventual winner in four important swing states — Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — according to a new Politico/Insider Advantage survey. InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery explained Obama's success in these areas is a result of his strength among independents and voters between the ages of 30 and 44. "That is the most angry group of voters that we have this year, with regard to the Republicans," Towery said. "I see that in almost every poll I look at." Angry? You don't say.

And congratulations COLORADO! McCain is now looking for ways to win the election without winning your state! (Unfortunately, you'll still have to sit though hundreds of his national attack ads and robo-calls, just like the rest of us...)

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