My last post failed to include some thoughts from Walter Lippman, that generation’s David Broder, as the nation ambled through a tedious and pointless election.  Mind you, take as an after-thought the premise that the nation’s pundit class had since the Election of 1946 — Truman was a Dead Man Walking and his Presidency should be written in the past tense.  That’s kind of the least remarkable thing about the premises Lippman was working with:

October 18, 1948.
The concrete issue remaining between Mr. Truman and Mr. Dewey is whether the Democrats or the Republicans are to “organize” the Senate.  What is at stake, or at least what may be at stake, in all this travelling which is so tiresome to the candidates and in all the speechmaking which is so tiresome to the audiences, is not the Presidency, not the House of Representatives, but the Senate.
That is the only substantial reason left why Mr. Truman and Mr. Dewey continue, as the first Marquess of Halifax put it more than two centuries ago, “throwing fireballs to put men into heat.” . . .
There is a very easy way out of this predicament.  A handful of Democratic Senators who are not themselves candidates this year, have only announce that if the control of the Senate depends on a few extra votes, they will abstain from voting and permit the Republicans to organize the Senate.

The reference to the “first Marquess of Halifax” rises Lippman above this political nonsense — why or why can’t Truman and Dewey just pull a Martha Coakley on us and express his disdain for all this “Whistle Stop Tour” nonsense?
The threat that the elections will result in a split Congress — one party holding the Lower Chamber, the other the Higher Chamber, is a “predicament” — I guess a wrinkle in Constitutional Government which threatens its very underpinning somehow or other.  We’re just one stop from a Constitutional Crisis.  To avert it, some Democratic Senators should really selflessly sacrafice their political ambition and give the Republican Party control of the Senate.
 — Really, though, Truman should have resigned two years ago and put Vandenberg in line as his replacement.

Let’s transport Lippman to the year 2010 and have him weigh in on Joe Miller’s struggle to defeat Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.  Some challenged ballots:

Somebody wrote in “USA Murkowski”, right?

Lisa Munkowski?

This is one of those famous protest votes.  The voter was clearly mocking the “Write in Process” by writing the small “w” over the name, which was supposed to be mocking Lisa Murkowski for running in the first place.  As per Joe Miller’s lawsuit, this ballot really should be counted to Joe Miller’s total:
So protest voters were trying to send a message to the candidate. The state has failed to create any guideline or standard that would account for the intent of the voter who intentionally cast a protest vote. To the contrary, the state is indicating that it will now count a protest vote, deliberately cast with a misspelling as a vote for Murkowski. This effectively nullifies the protest and falsely inflates the vote for the write-in candidate. In short, the state has become a super-voter and will override voter intent and recast the votes for the candidate the state chooses.

This is Joe Miller’s last and only chance at elected office, and he’s clinging to it with dear life.  Though:

The lawyers have started leaving, perhaps the surest sign Joe Miller’s chances of becoming the next senator from Alaska are evaporating. With each passing day that election workers in Juneau manually count write-in votes cast for Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, it appears increasingly likely Alaskans spell too well for Miller’s math to work.
Assisted by lawyers sent by the Republican National Senatorial Committee, Miller campaign workers set out to challenge every smudge, stray mark and misspelling they could find on write-in votes that appeared to be for Murkowski.
The plan was to question enough votes to close the 11,000-vote margin by which he trails.
By Saturday, the state had determined that 98 percent of write-in ballots were cast for Murkowski. And although several thousand absentee ballots remain to be counted, it was unlikely Miller could pick up enough votes to win.
Ben Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer brought to Juneau to work for Murkowski, left late Friday. At least three of the seven lawyers the National Republican Senatorial Committee hired to help Miller were gone by Saturday.

Let it be said that there was a way out of the predicament, and it was followed.

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