“Elections Matter” — one last shot at Bob Kelleher

“Elections matter.”

I saw this stated at the end of a dailykos blog post which trumpeted the news that the influential committee chair Senator Max Baucus of Montana has unveiled his plans in forming a Universal Health Care plan.  In saying this, you are required to suffix the name “Max Baucus” with “of all people”, as in “this is being done by Max Baucus, of all people.”

Elections have consequences?  You better believe they do.  Can you imagine what would have happened if Bob Kelleher had won this squeaker of a race?  Where would we be now?

Taking a look at the map, it’s worth mentioning that this is one of those states where one of the parties won every county in the Senate seat — along with Wyoming, Massachusetts, Maine, Arkansas (though the Democrat — 7K year old Earth believer , and — hell!  Alaska (though that seems to be one massive “county”.)  The best performance on a county level that Kelleher did was 41.1 percent in Sweet Grass County and Sanders County and a 40.3 percent in Garfield County.  I don’t know the partisan divide around Montana, and in a race which should be scrambled a bit in how people vote (this is an eccentric Socialist Republican), these results should not be much predictive of partisan make-up.  But, looking around the presidential map for Montana, I see that these three counties are Republican — Obama didn’t was in the 20s or 30s in the three 40 plus counties for Kelleher.

I imagine South Carolina is a bit more scrambled — the Democrat (such as he was) was a supporter of Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul — and ran against the rampant Liberalism represented by Lindsey Graham, throwing his head around in those parts of the state that that might be attractive.  But the map is fairly similar to the presidential race — I suppose a closer look might be interesting to take, but I don’t quite care enough to take that effort.

Incidentally, if you look at Alabama on the County level for the Senate race, I think you can spot in its most concertrated form what is commonly referred to as the “Black Belt“.  Though this also becomes pretty evident on a county-level if you look at the map of the United States as a whole for either the Senate races or the presidential contest.

“Elections matter”.   Mark Begich has overtaken Ted Stevens in the balloting, as early votes and absentee votes are being counted. He lead at the end of yesterday by THREE — count them, one two three — votes. He now has a “comfortable” lead in the three digits. Unless there’s something about the ballot that were just counted that makes them different from those yet to be counted (Anchorage goes first?), this strikes me as an irreversible trend in the direction of Begich. Mark Begich wins. Ted Stevens loses. The other permetation comes with Sarah Palin having started to send out feelers suggesting she might just pursue the Ted Stevens seat after Stevens is kicked out of the Senate (right now it’s the basis of a leadership fight within the Republican Party with Jim DeMint challenging Mitch McConnell to have the vote to kick him out of the Republican Caucus). But, this prospect of “Senator Palin” is moot with the apparenta Stevens loss.  (As an aside in the on-going saga of Sarah Palin, I will note for the record that I never bit on the item about Africa and whether it is a country or continent.  Maybe I should have taken a swipe against it publically just to establish myself some eye-witnesses?  I may as well quibble about some arguments of it as an immediately establishable hoax, though, which had the argument “A third grader knows Africa is a continent.  You expect me to think Palin doesn’t have the knowledge of a third grader?”.  To be fair, I was smarter as a third grader than I am now — so the question’s basis is wrong.  Also, Africa tends to be lumped into one discussion as a whole entity when discussing “the plight of Africa”.)

Lieberman appears to have a posse in the Senate that will protect his Committee on Homeland Security (I don’t see what the problem with stripping Lieberman there is — even in the magnanimous statement that he is “with the Democrats on all but one issue”, that would suggest he shouldn’t be in a leadership position for the Democratic Party on Security matters), so that game leads to its sort of predictable conclusion.  And then there were two.  Franken — Coleman in Minnesota — the full weight of Mitt Romney has come out on behalf of Coleman in his efforts to stop three digits worth of votes from being deciphered where voters squared when they should have circled — and the run-off in Georgia which is December… 2nd?  That, I guess, determines whether the Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate or 59, and the Chambliss ads are running over to that effect with the slogan “It all comes down to this.”  Because if there’s one thing people fear, it is a Democratic majority with 60 seats instead of a Democratic majority with 59 seats.

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