Rachel Maddow takes apart the argument that Democrats should play nice with Joe Lieberman to get a sixty seat majority in the senate. Brilliant, but you really need to watch the whole six minutes.

Unfortunately the media plugin I’m using doesn’t seem to work with MSNBC’s embedded video code. Here’s a link instead.

China announced today that it’s going to unleash a $650 billion (yeah, billion with a “b”) economic stimulus plan over the next two years. They’re doing just the reverse of what we’ve done over the last twenty five years. They may be kicking the second foot of our empire into its grave in the process. Now that they’ve built the greatest industrial machine on earth, they plan to create their own mass consumer class. Once they’ve completed that, we become a much, much smaller part of their market. Propping our consumption up by buying our debt won’t have to be a priority for them anymore. We’ll need to undergo some major and painful restructuring to survive it. You can read about it at the Journal

We may get official word later today that there will be a December 2nd run-off election for the Georgia senate seat currently held by Republican Saxby Chambliss. Libertarian Party candidate Allen Buckley appears to have denied Chambliss the 50%+1 vote majority that is needed to carry the seat.

If you make the common assumption that most of the libertarian vote will go to Chambliss, then this is still an uphill battle for Jim Martin, but it is winnable. As the only federal election going on between now and the end of the year, Martin may well have a fund raising advantage in this thing.

I was on the phone with my dad just waiting for the clock to hit 8:00pacific so they could make it official.

I’m still almost afraid to type this, but…they can’t steal this one from us now.

MSNBC just called Ohio for Obama. If that holds and he really has New Mexico, then this thing is over!

Fox calls New Mexico for Obama. yay!

CNN calls Mitch McConnell holding onto his senate seat. Fuck.

I wish I could find the exact numbers that CNN is using in Florida. They’re showing Polk, Osceola, Orange, and Seminole counties all going for Obama. Obama carrying Polk or Seminole counties is a miracle. It’s believable, though, because they’re also showing Tom Feeney getting his ass kicked. Feeney was Speaker of the House in the legislature. He was JEB! Bush’s running mate in his first run for governor. He’s everything you’d hate in a Tom Delay style, gerrymandering, vote suppressing, arrogant, corrupt son of a bitch type of Republican. If he loses tonight, I’ll be ecstatic regardless of what else happens.

Susan Collins held her seat in Maine. Frankly, I’m not surprised by that and never saw it as a likely Democratic pick up.

MSNBC is calling the entire northeastern corner of the country for Obama, including both New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. The exit polling must be pretty damn strong because their calling PA with 0% of precincts reporting.

FoxNews and CNN are not calling Pennsylvania yet.

First significant Florida numbers that I’m seeing look a little weird to me. It’s only 2% of precincts reporting, but Obama has a nearly 200,000 vote lead. I’m suspicious.

The first CNN numbers didn’t add up to 100% or anything close to it either. I’ll need to check that again when we get closer to half the vote.

The first set of results are rolling in and they’re looking good. Indiana and Georgia are too close to call. The CNN “your races” widget updates with actual vote totals fairly quickly.

My first disappointment of the night is CNN projecting Mitch Daniels to keep the governor’s job in Indiana. Daniels is a privatization zealot. If Indiana Democrats were ever going to unseat an incumbent Republican governor, this would have been the year to do it. In the results coming in so far, he’s walking all over former congresswoman and Clinton administration official Jill Long Thompson.