More elections

Ok the good news is that The Oregonian has called that senate race for Jeff Merkley, bringing the Democratic take to 57 with three seats still in play.

Those three seats are:

(D) Al Franken vs. incumbent (R) Norm Coleman in Minnesota, which is in the midst of a recount. Coleman won this by less than 400 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast. I expect the recount to last until at least December, and honestly this might not be solved until after the new senate takes their oaths on January 3.

(D) John Martin vs. incumbent (R) Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, which will have a special election since neither candidate got 50% of the vote. Chambliss actually got about 49.9%, but Georgia law says you've got to win with a majority, so a run-off it is. Traditionally special elections have lower turnout and victory is determined by which party can do a better job of getting its base to show up at the polls. Obviously in Georgia that has favored the Reeps in Georgia, but the advent of the internet and Obama's amazing ground game have tipped the balance of power. Rumors are that all 38 Obama Victory offices in the state have already been rebranded as Martin for Senate, and the cash is already flowing in. This one is 50/50, folks.

(D) Mark Begich vs. incumbent (R) Ted Stevens in Alaska. As you may have heard once or twice, Alaskan politics are pretty corrupt. And there's definitely something fishy about the numbers in play here: Only 210,000 total votes have been counted in this race. That's a 30% drop from 2004, completely out of whack with the nation's numbers as a whole, which saw a 10% jump. There are still something like 45,000 outstanding votes, but even that is a sharp drop-off from the total expected. Right now Begich is down about 3300 total, but it's Alaska. So who the hell knows.

And yeah, I have't mentioned Prop 8 in California because I'm disgusted. And the sad thing is that, on the night that black Americans won one of their greatest victories, they're the voter base that won a victory for discrimination - by an amazingly large margin, 70% to 30%.

Finally, a bit of happy news: Massachusetts voted for single payer healthcare by an even larger, 72%-28%, margin.

There's work yet to be done, folks.