What can we expect from the Democrats now that Al Franken is their 60th Senator? Ezra Klein points out that 60 is a big number, one not achieved by either party since 1974. Open Left thinks this is a boost to the public option in health care. Grist looks ahead to climate change and the Senate version of ACES. The Nation talks filibusters.

It falls to Donkeylicious to remind us that there are still a lot of bad Democrats, including two who have thus far disappointed me, Kay Hagan and Claire McCaskill.

Obama on the stimulus (part 2). Give 'em hell, Barry. Via MetaFilter's omnibus post on the stimulus and the random cuts needed to sate "bipartisan" egos. (You really let a lot of people down, Claire.)

Howard Dean is stepping down as chairman of the DNC in triumph. Steve Benen says perennial gerrycanavan.blogspot.com favorite Claire McCaskill likely to take up the job. Sam Stein:

Regardless of who takes over, the next chair will inherit an organization far different from the one that existed four years ago. Under Dean's tenure, the DNC implemented the hotly-debated 50-state-strategy, a program designed to rebuild the party into a continental force, one in which Democrats drained the resources of Republicans while simultaneously building up younger talent. Obama's incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and others were critical, believing that the policy wasted valuable resources on impossible races and needlessly forfeited otherwise winnable seats during the 2006 congressional elections. Successes in 2008, however, have largely quieted those critiques.

Indeed, four years later, it seems, Dean's vision is poised to become party orthodoxy. Dean told a Democratic operative that he is hoping to extract promises from all potential replacement candidates to preserve the 50-state-strategy. Other insiders, meanwhile, say that the next DNC chair, regardless of who it is, will build upon the model because of its tangible success.

The Washington Times get excited about 269-269.

Playing catch-up.

* Al Giordano reports good news out of Virginia, where Obama has taken an unexpected lead. Flipping VA and NM to Obama and flipping IA to McCain (which admittedly looks unlikely at this point) is, incidentally, one of the many combinations resulting in a 269-269 tie, which would throw the election to the House and cause a legal clusterflunk of epic proportions. (As of right now, we'd win, but it would make 2000 look pretty.)

* Also in politics, people are taking notice of what I've been saying since the primaries: Claire McCaskill is a better surrogate for Obama than just about anybody in the business. Oh, and Obama gave McCain a much-needed bloody nose on the "fundamentals" line.

* The long-neglected art of Iron Man fan fiction has finally been perfected.

* Bad news for veggietopia: eating vegetables shrinks the brain.

* They've found the 20-ft. fence that used to keep the rabble away from Stonehenge.

* I don't trust anyone with a real job in the banking industry, but this shocked even me: Citibank was caught flat-out stealing $14 million from its customers.

* Congratulations, George Takei.

* The Church of England apologizes to Charles Darwin.

* The David Foster Wallace memorial thread I posted to MetaFilter went really well, I thought. So did MetaTalk. Here's something else for the collection—a DFW reading from UC-TV, via my editor at the Indy.



* And the Big Picture has stunning photographs of the 2008 Paralympic Games.

I'm hearing that CBS has called Indiana for Clinton. But it looks like the Indiana margin will be significantly closer than the North Carolina margin, and NC was the bigger state to boot; overall, a good night.

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but I really think this may be, at long last, the turning point. Watch the supers for movement in the coming week.

I'm also more and more convinced that one of my dark horse candidates for VP, Claire McCaskill, is really the best choice. An old white man, even one like Wesley Clark or Joe Biden who brings a lot of foreign policy "cred" to the ticket, is just the wrong move for this moment—and even though it would be two Senators, I think she brings enough to the table otherwise that it'd be worth it.

UPDATE: Re: McCaskill, it occurs to me now that my neighbor saw her at the Durham headquarters the other day and that she said precisely that a lot of Obama-leaning supers have been waiting for the opportunity to move en masse...

So that's the missing link in the logic of this post.