President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met in Philadelphia this past Tuesday with a bipartisan delegation of governors from around the country hosted by the National Governors Association. The Vice-President-elect was to make a few opening remarks.

This is what he was to suppose to say:

And Governor Palin, your being here today sends a powerful message that when campaigns end, we are all partners in progress. Thank you."

But he actually said:

"And Governor Palin, I want to thank you particularly. I might point out, as I told you, we walked in. Since the race is over, no one pays attention to me at all. So I'm -- maybe you will walk outside with me or something later and say hello to me."

Frankly, few paid attention to Senator Biden during the campaign though I did because I actually like Joe Biden apart from a few reservations. Still his comments are the perfect foil for a question that I have been pondering this week. Now that Obama has assembled the A-Team of foreign policy, just what is Joe Biden's role in an Obama Administration?

After entertaining the possibility that the 133 missing ballots from the Minnesota recount were not missing at all but rather were actually just ballots that were mistakenly counted twice on election night, the state canvassing board is now acknowledging that there are indeed missing ballots that need to be found before the statewide recount can conclude.

From CNN:

A missing envelope containing about 130 ballots has stalled the recount in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.

The state canvassing board appeared likely to postpone its unofficial Friday deadline to finish the recount because of the missing ballots from the city of Minneapolis.

Because of the "extraordinary circumstances," said Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann, the city has until December 16 to locate the votes. The canvassing board is set to meet that day and take further action in the recount process.

"We won't meet our goal to have all ballots hand-counted by the end of the day [Friday] unless the envelope returns in the next 24 hours," Gelbmann said.

Minneapolis Elections Director Cindy Reichert said she's "not sure where [the missing envelope] would have gone" but that her staff is "in the process of looking under everything."

Appropriate, isn't it, that Franken's Senate bid should play out like a perfectly plotted movie script. Whoever buys the rights will have to get someone else to play Franken though; he'll be busy.

In the meantime, help Franken have the resources to get through this multi-part movie of the week over at the Road To 60 ActBlue page.

Thirty seven people were killed in the border city of Tijuana this past weekend in the latest spate of drug related violence. Overall, the death toll in Mexico's drug wars have now surpassed 4,000 for the year, up about 50% over 2007.

It's increasingly clear that Mexico's drug violence is reaching epic proportions and President Calderon's efforts seem insufficient to date in dealing with the drug violence that is growing both in scope and in tenor. Mexico now looks like Colombia did back in 1983, aware that there is a problem and yet beyond noting the mounting death toll seemingly unable to stem it. Colombia has made strides in fighting the drug trade but 25 years on, Colombians are still fighting it and not terribly pleased about it. And now Mexico is looming as a foreign policy challenge for the incoming Obama Administration and Latin America seems largely off Obama's radar. Then again, the Bush Administration was hardly engaged in the region either.

To combat the rising tide of drugs, the Bush Administration has proposed the Merida Initiative:

The Initiative's Scope The Merida Initiative is a multi-year program to provide equipment, training, and technical assistance to support law enforcement operations and for long-term reform and oversight of security agencies. This year, Congress approved an initial $400 million for Mexico and $65 million for Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which was passed in the FY08 Supplemental. The President's FY09 budget proposal for the Merida Initiative includes $450 million for Mexico and $100 million for Central America.

Drugs, Violence, and Gangs in the United States The effects of Mexican drug trafficking organizations and Central American criminal gangs are felt in nearly all parts of the United States. Many state and local governments are diverting scarce resources from key areas, including education and housing, to focus countering the effects of Mexican and Central American gangs and trafficking organizations. An estimated 30,000 transnational gang members operating in the United States engage in serious crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, extortion, human smuggling, and prostitution. Mexican drug trafficking organizations operate on both sides of the border, resulting in violent gun battles which have killed or wounded dozens.

$400 million is a start but I suspect it will require hundreds of millions more in assistance. Or we could think outside the box and perhaps starting looking at drug addiction as a medical problem and not just a criminal one. At some point, the United States has to start taking responsibility for the demand side of the equation. It isn't always a supply issue. When it comes to the drug equation, demand seems to be off the table.

Last month, when Karl Rove bent the historical numbers to argue that the Democrats are doomed -- doomed -- in 2010, I noted that he was not actually correct in his assessment, that the Democrats were in significantly less bad a position heading into Barack Obama's first midterm elections than Rove would lead us to believe. But Rove isn't the only one foreseeing a potentially difficult path forward for Democrats. Over at The Next Right, Seth Oxendine writes:

"Save the filibuster" is a useful slogan for 2010 -- Democrats are going to have a harder time in the 2010 Senate midterms than many expect right now.  This isn't to say that they are doomed, or are going to lose seats, or anything like that; just that we have some evidence that the size of their majorities poses a potential problem for them.  One of the theories for why the President's party has lost seats in almost every midterm election going back to the Era of Good Feelings is that voters rationally choose to counterbalance the President by beefing up the opposition party.  If this is the case, then the prospect of truly unlimited power for the President's party should act as a significant brake on that party's ability to advance to sixty seats, absent some good luck (eg if the Senate election rotation was timed such that Republicans had open seats in heavily blue states like Rhode Island and California this time around, such that voters there wanted such power for the President, against the wishes of much of the rest of the country).

Let's look in particular at the assertion that "the President's party has lost seats in almost every midterm election going back to the Era of Good Feelings." A glance a recent Senate elections proves this assertion to be without basis. In nearly one third (five) of the 16 midterm elections since World War II, the party in power in the White House has either gained seats in the Senate (three times; 1962, 1970 and 2002) or lost no seats (twice; 1982 and 1998). When you narrow that down to the first midterm of a newly elected President who had not ascended to the office -- or the situation Obama will face in two years -- only half the time (four of eight elections) did the party in power in the White House lose seats in the Senate.

When you take this decidedly mixed historical record and combine it with the clearly favorable map facing the Democrats, it's difficult to come to the conclusion that the Democrats are necessarily "going to have a harder time in the 2010 Senate midterms than many expect right now." It may or may not be the case that "Save the Filibuster" will save the GOP in 2010 (though I'm skeptical that it will). But I'm not sold on the notion that the size of the Democratic majority in the Senate will pose a substantial problem for the party in the upcoming midterm elections.

Shira Toeplitz reports for Roll Call (subscription required):

Add another name to the list of people who are considering a run against Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in 2010.

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), according to one of his closest advisers, is looking at a statewide bid. Murphy was just elected to a second term representing the northern Philadelphia suburbs.

"Patrick is taking the race and considering the race very strongly," Daren Berringer, a top adviser to Murphy, said Thursday. "He's certainly weighing a lot of his options for the future, and the U.S. Senate race is very attractive, and he's looking at it very strongly right now."

Patrick Murphy does have a good track record of winning in the suburban areas of Philadelphia key to winning statewide in Pennsylvania, and with more than $1.5 million in the bank as of the middle of October, Murphy would have a good basis from which to launch a Senate run if he wanted to jump in. Murphy, of course, isn't the only Democrat looking at the race. As noted earlier today, Chris Matthews has been making quite a bit of noise of late, and Toeplitz reports that Rep. Allyson Schwartz and State House Deputy Speaker Josh Shapiro may also have an eye on the contest. And as I noted before, Specter may be more vulnerable than many think.

What, you thought the 2008 election cycle was over?

This Saturday, Louisiana will go to the polls to vote in two congressional races that were delayed by Hurricane Gustav: LA-02, where William Jefferson (D-Cold Hard Cash) is the incumbent and LA-04 where Republican Rep. Jim McCrery is retiring. Only the latter is considered competitive. The Pollster trend estimate has Democrat Paul Carmouche up over Republican John Fleming by less than 3% (although that may have been seriously skewed by a rogue internal poll that showed Carmouche up 11 points.)

Although this race has a far lower profile than the GA-Sen run-off, it has still attracted the big guns:

Cameos by President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney have brought star power to a hurricane-delayed battle between Democrats and Republicans for an up-for-grabs U.S. House seat.

Obama recorded a radio ad to help Democrat Paul Carmouche, while Cheney helped with fundraising and GOP up-and-comer Gov. Bobby Jindal helped with a television ad for Republican candidate John Fleming.

I'm surprised Sarah Palin hasn't made an appearance, Lord knows she delivered Georgia to Saxby!

Two days out from election day, once again we have an opportunity to paint a little swath of blue in one of the reddest of red states and it would certainly be a bit of consolation for having lost Cazayoux's seat on Nov. 4th. So what can we do?

The DCCC is asking for our help.

The last race of the year -- the hurricane-delayed election in Louisiana's 4th District -- is this Saturday.  The AP calls the race "up-for-grabs" and says it'll be about who can get more of their voters to the polls.

That's where you come in.

Help us win this last race of the year: remind supporters to vote through our virtual phonebank.

It's simple: we'll give you a short list of voters to call and some points to mention as you remind voters about the upcoming election.  These calls will make a huge difference in this neck-and-neck race.

You can access the virtual phone bank tool HERE.

Republicans are already spinning Chambliss's win on Tuesday as evidence that Obama has no mandate. Right. Let's nip that narrative in the bud by delivering President-elect Obama one more seat to his majority in the House.

Help send Paul Carmouche to Congress today.

According to the Star Tribune website, as of this posting, with 99% of precincts recounted and only 2 counties left to finish, Al Franken trails Norm Coleman by 316 votes. The Franken campaign, as they have throughout this process, calls bullshit.

Via e-mail:

I wanted to share the latest news on the recount here in Minnesota: Our latest internal report has Al Franken leading Norm Coleman by 10 votes with some 56,000 ballots left to be included in the hand count.

Now, that number is going to change between now and the end of the recount - but we're confident that when all the votes have been counted, Al Franken will be the next Senator from Minnesota.

But ensuring that every vote is counted will require constant vigilance and a tough stance from our campaign. Already, we've seen ballots going missing, absentee votes improperly rejected, and the Coleman campaign attempting to game the system by challenging hundreds of extra ballots (which, by the way, is the reason some published reports falsely suggest Coleman is leading by several hundred votes).

The Franken campaign has done an excellent job of bringing some perspective to the reported recount numbers, in large part to counter Coleman's desired narrative that he's been ahead the whole time. If Franken is found to be the victor once the canvassing board rules on all the challenged ballots, Coleman wants to be able to call foul, claiming the board reversed the will of the people. This makes that more difficult.

One problem with this lead of 10 votes though: it doesn't take into account a whopping 133 ballots, which have apparently gone missing between the original count on election night and the recount. Those ballots are from Franken-friendly Minneapolis and favor Franken by a net of 46 votes.

From TPM:

The big catch, however, is that the campaign is not including the loss from those missing ballots in their tally for now, while election officials keep the recount in that precinct officially open in order to figure out what is going on. If that apparent loss is not undone, Al would suddenly be down by 36 votes under the campaign's counting method.

As of yesterday, the prevailing theory of the missing ballots was that they had actually been double counted on election night and so weren't actually missing at all. That theory appears to be breaking down. The Uptake counts the ballots:

1,047 voters signed in on the roster.
932 additional voters registered in person on Election Day.
35 absentee ballots were accepted in this precinct by the city.
15 absentee ballots were accepted in this precinct by the county.
TOTAL: 2,029 voters cast legal ballots (2,028 votes are recorded on the machine tape).
TODAY: 1,896 ballots were included in the recount.

The upshot, per Nate:

That is, a total of 2,029 voters either signed in on the registered voter roster in this precinct, registered in person on Election Day (Minnesota is one of the few states that allows you to do this), or sent in absentee ballots. This closely matches the 2,028 votes recorded in the precinct's November 4 count, but does not so closely match the 1,896 ballots that were identified in the recount today.

It looks more likely than not that 133 ballots have in fact gone missing; I have no idea what happens if they cannot be found.

This is a potential disaster in the making for Franken. In a race this close, the loss of 46 votes that those missing ballots represent could be the determining factor, which probably means this is even more likely to be taken to the courts and potentially even to the US Senate. Let's help Al stick through to the end over at the Road To 60 ActBlue page.

With Chris Matthews reportedly moving closer towards a run for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania, the head-to-head polling matching him up against incumbent Republican Arlen Specter has been a bit over the map. But the one unifying feature of all the polls is that Specter isn't cracking 50 percent against Matthews. Here's the latest Rasmussen Reports poll:

Republican Senator Arlen Specter is potentially vulnerable in his 2010 bid for re-election. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Pennsylvania voters finds Specter leading MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews by just three percentage points, 46% to 43%, in a match-up that may foreshadow one of the nation's most closely-watched Senate races.

[...]

While Specter attracts support from 32% of Democrats, only 70% of Republicans say they would vote for him.

[...]

Specter is viewed favorably by 60% of voters statewide while Matthews earns positive reviews from 49%. Just 68% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of their senator, but the GOP incumbent also gets positive reviews from 48% of Democrats.

Matthews elicits a more polarized response: 65% of Democrats like him, but only 27% of Republicans share that view.

Recent polls have showed Matthews' level of support to be lower, 33 percent according to Quinnipiac University and 27 percent according to Public Policy Polling (D) (.pdf). However, the unifying feature across the three polls is Specter's weakness, polling at just 45 percent in the Q poll and 40 percent in the PPP poll.

It's not clear to me that Matthews is the best candidate to exploit Specter's weakness (nor is it clear that he's not a sufficiently strong candidate, either). But if the Democrats can figure out a way to get Democratic voters to vote the party line in the Senate race next fall -- and shining light on Specter's high profile support of conservative jurists John Roberts and especially Samuel Alito should help -- Specter's weakness among Republicans could finally spell his doom in 2010.