Wow, that was a seriously long lunch... :)
As I get back down to some serious writing, I think one interesting thing to note is all the Senatorial developments. The biggest, of course is that Rod Blagojevich, ignoring calls for his own obsolescence, decided he certainly was perfectly capable of nominating a replacement, and settled on Roland Burriss, a former state Attorney General whose name had been floated before, but not especially seriously. Clearly, a considerable amount of the appeal of choosing Burriss is that he's black; in one swoop, Blago nodded to his own need for support in the black community, provided a historic continuation of Obama's seat as the only African American Senate seat in the current body, and set up a perfect storm of problems for the rest of the Democratic Party. Opposing Burriss as a part of "tainted" Blago will put Senate Dems, as well as the incoming Obama Administration, into the position of rejecting a qualified black man in favor of... well, no one has a solution on that score, which may also be Blago's trump card. It could take months to impeach him, and now Pat Fitzgerald has asked to wait until April to flesh out his indictment. No Senator... or the nice black man? Your call, Harry Reid.
Meanwhile, by all indications, Al Franken has pulled it off: after a messy election and recount drama, Franken will have just enough votes (well, 50, out of several million cast) to claim victory. Norm Coleman will probably not go quietly, though, and the whole process - which, even if one approves of the outcome, was problematic - is a perfect setup for the GOP to question Franken's legitimacy for months to come. Do I think Franken won it? Yes, barely, as the results demonstrate. He'll have to be pretty impressive as a Senator to overcome the bad feelings left, though. More to the point, the Franken/Coleman mess is a reminder that we seriously need election reform (something process geeks like Red and I live for), and we haven't done much of anything on that score, even with claims that we "learned a lesson" out of 2000. The lesson, it appears, was, "maybe we can focus on turnout rather than process..." well, that won't work. Now what?
Finally, as Caroline Kennedy's campaign to replace Hilllary Clinton moves into a phase best described as "quixotic," it appears she's seriously messed up her chances: Paterson's let it be known he's pissed with her claims of inevitability, other Dems are howling that she's a Caroline-come-lately in every sense, and her connections to Bloomberg make most New York pol types uncomfortable (you know you're in trouble when Shelly Silver, the savviest and most powerful of operators, feels comfortable calling your candidacy DOA). Add in all the troubles over "dynasty" and she's like, you know, toast. I even find myself agreeing with today's Wall Street Journal that the whole "dynasty" aspect is getting to be a bit much: The Salazar move in Colorado, the Biden seat-warming in Delaware... we can, and should, do better than this, I think (even if, ultimately, Beau Biden makes a great Senator, for instance). At least the likelihood that we will have someone other than Kennedy in New York is heartening... except the alternative, you know, is probably Andrew Cuomo. Oh well.
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