Today's Political News: December 3rd, 2008

The Humpty Hump Day edition:

1) In yesterday's column, Bob Herbert articulates much better than I can, what I've been concerned about with the formation of Obama's cabinet all this time:

Will this new Obama team, as brilliant as it appears to be, begin addressing on day one the interests of those who are not rich and who have not had the ear of those in power?

2) Outstanding Senate Races Update:

Georgia, Georgia:

• It's over. Saxby Chambliss defeats Jim Martin in a rout, 57.4% to 42.6%.
• Now it makes sense why Obama didn't pay a visit, they probably thought, correctly, that Martin had no shot even with a visit.
  
• African American turnout was down, and that played a large part to Martin losing, but I think the GOP was just in a better position politically from a message standpoint with the "if you elect Jim Martin, you are voting for the Democrats to run rampant in DC" charge.
  
• Will Forte channeling Zell Miller did a great bit on Weekend Update a couple weeks back about how American it is to vote for a guy named Saxby Chambliss instead of the weird sounding name Jim Martin ("next thing you know some guy named Mark Smith gets in there") As always, SNL fails to put up the funnier sketches online, which forces me to find it on youtube where the audio and video don't sync. Just listen to it, the visuals aren't important. Forte's bit is no doubt a riff off of the Eddie Izzard bit about Engelbert Humperdinck.
  

Minnesota:

• Big news. 171 votes were found that had not been counted, yielding a gain of 37 votes for Franken. Taken with the estimates of the Franken campaign, this would mean Franken is close to a dozen votes behind in the race with 8% left to be recounted.
• Nate thinks the Franken estimate is more reasonable that the small 'c' ultra-conservative secretary of state office estimate.
• Obviously this race has lost much of it's importance with 59 senate seats now the ceiling for the Dems. But personally I really want to see Franken pull it out because of all the senate races, this is the one I wanted the Dems to win most. Franken, of course, is not a career politician, and represents something very different and sorely lacking in the Senate: a true progressive. Plus he can freehand draw a pretty spot-on map of the US.
  

3) Obama officially announces Bill Richardson as Secretary of Commerce. This one is a lot like the Napolitano pick for me, in that I don't think it can be perceived as a good matchup of skillset to job description.

4) Thomas Frank in the WSJ op/ed pages (they let a fox in the hen house? Or maybe since Rupert Murdoch owns it now, that'd be more accurately referred to as a hen in the Fox house) writes today about how health care reform would further build on tremendous political gains for the Democratic party. Interesting read.

5) Robert Reich has had a series of 5 or 6 blog posts in a row that I've found to be very informative and thought-provoking. He's quickly joined the ranks of my go-to pantheon of economic minds that I refer to to make sense out of all this financial confusion (and more and more I believe that economic policy is set up to be confusing to keep ordinary people uninformed and out of the club). Anyway check out this post about the bio of Keynes (make sure to pronounce it Cains, not Keens. Yes, I'm talking to you Megnanimous).

6) And finally, check out radical Michael Moore's non-radical-yet-still-kinda-radical proposal for the American auto industry.