As I noted last night, the Minnesota recount is under way and Al Franken made up some serious ground in the first day. Still, why is he contesting the above ballot? More from StarTribune: The bubble beside Norm Coleman’s name appeared to have both an X and a squiggle in it, but the Al Franken [...]

So says political seer Nate Silver. Apparently, he snapped up 43 net votes today to cut Coleman’s lead from 215 to 172. And in this first day of counting, right around 15% of the ballots have been counted, so Silver speculates that if this trend continues, Franken would gain 278 votes and beat Coleman by [...]

Well, my home state definitely took its sweet damn time announcing this, but now it’s finally official that we picked Mac, which means we’ve picked the loser for only the 2nd time in the past 100 years. Here’s more… The narrow McCain Missouri victory, by just 3,902 votes out of 2,888,000 cast, means that Missouri [...]

Barack Obama beat John McCain in the capitol of very-Republican Utah: Updated election results released Tuesday show that Salt Lake County voters favored Barack Obama over John McCain — but just barely — marking the first time in decades that a Democratic presidential hopeful won the state’s most populous county. With the addition of more [...]

Three weeks after Election Day, Minnesota is finally getting around to figuring out who their next Senator will be: ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – The largest-ever recount in Minnesota history has more than just voters in the state biting their nails. An army of election workers was to begin a statewide recount Wednesday of more [...]

The Democrats picked up a seventh Senate seat last night when final results from Alaska showed Mark Begich defeating long-time Senator Ted Stevens: Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens lost his job to Mark Begich on Tuesday, putting an end to the era of “Uncle Ted” as the dominant force in Alaska politics. Begich, the Democratic mayor [...]

Some think it was back in December ’07. In politics, nearly everything comes full circle.

Do far right conservatives really think that setting the bar so low for an Obama presidency is a wise move? Because let’s go down the list of things that Obama has to prove: that he’s an American, he’s not a terrorist, he won’t take away people’s guns, he’s not like Hitler and that raising taxes [...]

Listen MO, I know you like being the swing state of all swing states, but seriously…it’s time to decide who you’re giving your electoral votes to. Yes, I know you’ve chosen the loser in the election only once in the past 100 years, but nobody’s perfect and it looks like you picked McCain instead of [...]

And what he says may surprise you… I welcome the day when the “liberal media” meme dies once and for all. Because it’s not only inaccurate, it has been used as a clumsy bludgeon by lazy Republican hacks since the early days of Reagan when folks like Limbaugh first went on the air and started [...]

A Hardball panel discusses her future and her recent appears at the Republican Governors Association convention… As usual, Pat Buchanan loves Palin, but the other Republican on the panel isn’t too keen to give her the same praise. And frankly, I think many in the GOP are embarrassed by her performance on the trail. Especially [...]

These days, it seems rather odd to use the word “conservative” and “environmentalist” in the same sentence. But that wasn’t always the case. Recently, I interviewed Jim DiPeso, who is the Policy Director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, a national organization for “Green Republicans.” The group’s mission listed on their website is this: Republicans for [...]

We’ve been having a pretty spirited debate on Donklephant in recent days about whether or not the “Big 3″ should get a chunk of the rescue money the government freed up back in October. Pretty much everybody else has said no, while I’ve been saying yes. Well, looks like the government is going to allow [...]

At least according to a leading GOP pollster in Alaska… “I don’t think Stevens can come back,” [GOP pollster David] Dittman said, noting that he thinks the remaining trove of uncounted ballots will help Begich “increase his lead.” Even if Begich’s advantage grows, however, Dittman believes it’s highly unlikely that Stevens will concede the race [...]

Stevens had a 3,200 vote lead on election night, but that has completely evaporated. Yesterday, Doug posted that Mark Begich led by only 3 votes. Today that total is up to around 800. Begich: 132,196 Stevens: 131,382 And the Dems inch closer and closer to a supermajority…

What was once a 3,200 vote margin has disappeared, and Sen. Ted Stevens (R., Federal Prison) now trails in his re-election bid: The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016. The [...]

This time she goes after the media… One word: wahhhhhhhhhh! And, by the way, she’s not really that well spoken. Sure, it may be seen as folksy, but presidential? Not a chance.

This one’s pretty shocking, and runs contrary to what we’ve heard Republicans saying over the past election cycle. Still, maybe people think that the Dems can’t possible screw it up as badly as the Repubs did? Maybe they’re thinking that Dems will learn from Repubs mistakes? Are expectations too high? In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. [...]

If you need any more proof that our campaign finance laws are a joke, take this story: The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul. [...]

Ron Brownstein details just how badly campaign ’08 hurt her… In the national Election Day exit poll, fully 60% of voters said they did not consider her qualified to serve as president if necessary, while only 38% thought she would be ready to step in. Those figures were daunting enough, but new calculations from the [...]