Memnison Journal

Not-Surprise: Democratic leaders (such as Sen. Reid) reportedly pushed Blago not to pick a candidate for Senate (this was before the phone calls came out) that couldn’t win downstate, which included pretty much any of the main black players in Illinois Democratic politics.    Obama suggested others, including two of the same group: Illinois Veterans Affairs [...]

From Dick Meyer at NPR on Blago and Made-off:
As audacious as Blagojevich’s political gluttony is, it is easy to find far worse political corruption, much of it perfectly legal: Distorting intelligence to invade Iraq, torturing prisoners, failure to regulate Wall Street, and systematic pork-barrel boondoggling come quickly to mind. If you’re feeling expansive, how about [...]

Well, if you’d never heard of our Governor before, you have now.    My reflections on this inside.

From the Daily Kos, in regard to who Blago would pick to fill Obama’s now vacant Senate seat:
The list of possible names is a mile long: Reps. Jesse Jackson, Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis and Luis Gutierrez, VA Secretary Tammy Duckworth, Congressional candidate Dan Seals, Comptroller Dan Hynes, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn, [...]

http://images.newsmax.com/misc/2008_Election_Map.jpg
And this one shows the change of color - er, votes in this election versus the last one in the state of Ohio - the bluer the county gets, the more it moved to the Democrats, and the redder, the more that county moved to the Republicans.  The northwest went more Democratic, the area just [...]

Apparently Blago thinks that whoever he would appoint to Obama’s vacant Senate seat should be someone who would be a serious contender in a 2010 election for a new term.  He was interested, it seems, in Luis Gutierrez, but Luis said no, not interested in running in 2010, and that was that.
I honestly think, in [...]

The AP and others are now declaring Mark Begich, the Mayor of Anchorage (D), has beaten Senator Stevens for the Alaska Senate seat.  The margin is too wide for a free recount, and it’s unlikely that the GOP will pay for it or Stevens can - or that it would make any significant difference.
The recount [...]

I’m actively interested in your poisition on this matter.  Feel free to sound off inside *politely*.
My own struggles on this:

Begich (D) is up 814 votes over Senator Stevens (R), with another 38,000 votes to go - in strong Democratic districts in Alaska.

Alaska Senate: 221,173 votes were already counted; a new estimate shows that the uncounted votes there are around 90,600 - about 30% of the total!  (PDF with the details as to what sort of votes and from where)  And this isn’t complete; absentee votes are still trickling in in the mail.  They’ll start counting these [...]

‘Impeach Obama’ t-shirts and accessories.  No, I’m not kidding.

One area of the country was particularly resistant to the idea of an Obama Presidency, and to recent Democratic runs…  Graphics after the cut (from the NYT)

Here (Minnesota) and here (Pennsylvania) with a Keef cartoon about the latter.

…for a few things to be resolved, elections wise.
The Presidential vote in Missouri and the 2d Congressional district of Nebraska. The former leads a very narrowly for McCain and the latter for Obama.  This would be the first time that the kinky division of electoral votes by Congressional district (which only figures in Maine [...]

I had planned long ago to take off yesterday and work as an election judge (Democratic) in my home precinct, and Susan did as well - I think she really enjoyed herself at the polls.  My problem, of course, was that I was crippled up by the operation, and we weren’t sure what I could [...]