No News from Minnesota

The weary vote recounters took the weekend off in Minnesota. The current state of the Senate election is that Democrat Al Franken leads Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) by 252 votes, with hundreds of challenges yet to be ruled on. In addition, challenges that were withdrawn are yet to be counted.

On top of that, there are about 1600 absentee ballots that were improperly rejected and are yet to be counted. Last week the supreme court ordered the two candidates to agree on which ones to count. It is unlikely they will be able to agree, so anything could still happen.

Democrats Will Not Be at Full Strength Jan. 20

Although Barack Obama wants to hit the ground running, he may be hampered by the fact that some Senate seats will likely be open on inauguration day. There may be vacancies in New York and Colorado due to the appointments of Sen Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ken Salazar to the cabinet, respectively, although these seats probably will have been filled by then. Obama's own seat in Illinois may still be open, depending on whether Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is impeached and if so, what his successor, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn (D) does. Then there is the seat in Minnesota still hanging in the balance. Finally, there is Joe Biden's seat, but a successor has already been named and is likely to be seated Jan. 5. The most likely scenario is that the Delaware, Colorado, and New York seats will be filled but the Illinois and Minnesota seats are still open. This would leave the Democrats with 57 seats, two short of what would be needed to invoke cloture in a Senate with 98 seats filled. On the other hand, if the Republicans start obstructing Obama on day 1, they may lose a lot of support among independents who are (naively) expecting some sort of bipartisanship to deal with the country's myriad problems.

Scrambling to Fill Solis' Seat Has Begun

The race to fill Hilda Solis' D+17 seat in Southern California has already begun. State senator Gloria Romero, board of equalization chairwoman Judy Chu, assemblyman Ed Hernandez, state senator Gil Cedillo, and others are already looking at the race in this 62% Latino district. The special election will take place 16-18 weeks after the vacancy occurs and that won't happen until Solis resigns, which she won't do until she is confirmed as secretary of labor. It is a foregone conclusion that Democrats will hold the seat.

Full Cabinet Named Quickly

President-elect Barack Obama named his full cabinet the fastest of any President in 32 years. It is a highly educated batch, with 80% having graduate degrees. Here is the list.

During the campaign, some people were saying Obama would turn the country over to black people. He certainly didn't do that with the cabinet. Here is the ethnic/gender breakdown.

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