The Oregonian has just called the Oregon senate race for Jeff Merkley. So, that makes it a pick up of six seats with three more (Minnesota, Alaska, and Georgia) still in dispute. The three best senate candidates we had this year were Merkley, Begich, and Franken. I am relieved that at least one of them has prevailed. Merkley will be one the Senate’s most progressive senators, and he will be excellent for Labor and on the environment.
Al Franken is going to need some luck but his race is close enough that a win is at least a 45% possibility. It all depends on how the recount goes and how many provisional votes he has. Mark Begich is a little farther from victory. Begich needs to win pretty decisively with the absentee ballots. One good sign is that Begich won quite decisively on Alaska’s three large military bases. A lot of those absentee ballots are from military families living abroad, or in the lower forty-eight. Jim Martin is going to have a second shot at Chambliss during an early December runoff election.
We’d have to be very lucky to run the table on all three, but if we can somehow pull it off we’ll be very glad we did. Begich, Franken, and Martin would be better senators than Warner, Shaheen, and Hagan. Plus, if they all win, we’ll have 58 Democratic senators, plus Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman. It would be very hard to carry out a filibuster in a caucus that is that strongly blue.
In any case, congratulations to Jeff Merkley. I know he’s going to be great.