Lisa and Blanche

I never thought I'd be in this position, and I never thought I'd actually say this, but I'm glad a Republican female senator won her bid for another term and I'm equally glad that a Democratic female senator lost.

The winning Republican would be Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's senior senator, elected to a second full term as a write-in candidate, the first Senate candidate to stage a successful write-in campaign in over fifty years. Murkowski had to overcome the loss of her party's nomination to noted lumberjack impersonator Joe Miller, the power of the Tea Party, and her own mildly unwieldy Polish surname to win, but she did. And I'm extremely grateful for her victory.

In no way am I endorsing Murkowski's views or agenda. After all, this is a woman notable for trying to weaken environmental regulations, for example. Yet Murkowski is a serious, diligent legislator who represents the interests of Alaska and recognizes the importance of federal money for her state that the Tea Party program would obviously cut off. And Miller was prepared to tow the Tea Party line. Murkowski is more of a realist than many of the Senate candidates the Tea Party put forward, and her victory means that, while the next Senate will include meatheads like Ron Johnson and the horrible Pat Toomey, it will not include Joe Miller.

Oh yeah, even if all the write-in ballots Miller is challenging over their legibility and proper spelling are thrown out, he still can't win. He's currently trying to sue his way into the Senate.

Even more pleasing is that this is a blow for Sarah Palin as she prepares for a possible presidential run. Palin has long been at odds with Murkowski and her father, former Alaska governor (and senator) Frank Murkowski, having defeated him in the state Republican primary in 2006 when he ran for a second term as Alaska's governor. Palin's attempt to score another point in a blood feud with the Murkowski family by supporting Miller makes her look all the more foolish, now that he's lost. And Lisa Murkowski, unlike nationwide Republicans and other Republicans in Alaska, has come right out and said that Palin is unqualified to be President and lacks both the desire and the intellectual curiosity to govern. That makes her simpatico with her state's top Democrat, fellow senator Mark Begich.

The other welcome result in the Senate elections is the defeat of Blanche Lambert Lincoln in Arkansas. An opponent of the public health insurance option in the health care law and a supporter of business-friendly domestic policies, Lincoln defeated a more liberal candidate, Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, in the Democratic primary only to lose to Republican John Boozman in the general election. And even though Lincoln's loss means it will be that much harder for the Democrats (who are probably finished as a party anyway) to hold onto the Senate in 2012, no one is shedding any tears for this corporate Democrat. At least with Boozman, progressives will know their enemy. Good riddance.

Northern Lights

When noted lumberjack impersonator Joe Miller won the Republican nomination for Alaska's Class 3 United States Senate seat - the one currently held by Lisa Murkowski - a Miller victory was pretty much expected in November. Then Murkowski announced a write-in campaign when it became apparent to anyone with a brain that Alaska would lose a lot of necessary government subsidies and that support for the man Keith Olbermann calls the Five O'clock Shadow was soft. Now the Democrat in the race - Scott McAdams - is benefiting from the Miller-Murkowski feud. A few polls - including one commissioned by noted financial fascists Club For Growth - show the race tightening between the two Republicans with McAdams gaining at their expense.

As the mayor of Sitka, the 40-year-old McAdams has a good deal of political experience but also plenty of real-life experiences with voters; he's been both a commercial fisherman and a football coach. He is a strong supporter of public education, having served as chairman of the Sitka school board, and he supports more infrastructure projects to connect Alaska communities more efficiently and advocates a modernization of the Alaska Marine Highway, and important water route in the state. A good deal of McAdams's stands on such issues can certainly resonate with voters, and he how has a unique opportunity to promote his views to an electorate whose votes are easily up for grabs in a three-way race with a lower threshold than a traditional two-party contest. (For more on his campaign, go to his Web site.)

It's still too early to tell whether McAdams can pull off a victory, but it's obvious that Miller - who has put himself on record as opposing the minimum wage because it's unconstitutional - has seen his chances for victory diminish faster than glaciers during global warming. Back in August, Miller and his three-day growth shone like the Northern Lights in the Alaska sky. You might say Miller even had that . . . rainbow feel.

But the rainbow has a beard. :-D

Linda and Lisa

Two Republican women whose chances for election to the Senate seemed kaput only a month ago now have plausible hopes for winning their respective bids for office.

First, to Connecticut. Democratic state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal got caught in a web of his own making when he misspoke about his Vietnam-era military service back in May, but he addressed the issue and seemingly put it behind him. And once it was clear that noted violence peddler and steroid pusher Linda McMahon would be his Republican opponent for Chris Dodd's Senate seat, he enjoyed a lead in the polls. Blumenthal still enjoys a lead, but it's beginning to shrink noticeably. The controversy over his Vietnam-era military service, and whether he meant to say that he served in Vietnam when he in fact did not, hasn't gone away. Although his Republican opponent has made a career out of popularizing professional wrestling - which is phony and fraudulent by definition - voters in Connecticut are troubled by Blumenthal's honesty and integrity. Forty-two percent of McMahon supporters, according to one poll, are not voting for her so much as they are voting against Blumenthal, and the fact that steroid abuse in her "sport" led to a Canadian wrestler killing his family and then himself doesn't seem to bother them so much.

Chris Matthews - no stranger to injecting himself in a political story - says that Blumenthal ought to come right out and clear up his military record now. Hmm - I kind of thought he did that already! I remember Blumenthal clearly stating that he misspoke, that he never went to Vietnam, and that he was sorry. Maybe Matthews remembers it differently. Maybe I, like other liberals, heard only want I wanted to hear. But I don't think I did. And I don't know what Blumenthal can do that he hasn't done already to get the story - orginally reported by the New York Times with help from the McMahon campaign's opposition research unit - behind him completely.

As for McMahon, pundits have theorized that she could never win statewide office in Connecticut, a state known for having a well-educated, affluent population. But contrary to popular wisdom, Connecticut is not a giant upscale suburb. It has gritty urban areas and blue-collar residents whose style is more like Ralph Kramden than Ralph Lauren, something you'd see if you got off the Merritt Parkway. Some observers might call these folks the unwashed masses; Linda McMahon calls them her base. (If you could count the number of Connecticut residents who actually have read Nietzsche, dress in tweed, or drive Volvo station wagons, you'd be very surprised on how small the actual number would be.) And, she's moderate enough to appeal to the state's Republican voters. To her credit, she's more socially liberal than someone like Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn (perhaps "not as socially conservative" is a beter choice of words), so at least she's not being hypocritical by promoting "family values" even as her chosen profession does not. But that's about the only charitable thing I can say about her.

Richard Blumenthal's biggest problem may be the fact that McMahon is outspending him, and the idea that he's "known" has evidently been compromised by the Vietnam flap. I still say he has to go on a bus tour of Connecticut and be thankful the state is small enough geographically to make it cost-effective.

Meanwhile, up in Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, denied the opportunity to run as the Republican nominee for a second full term in the Senate by Tea Party insurgent Joe Miller, has thrown her parka in the ring as an independent candidate. Democrats hoping that she'll split the Republican vote and benefit Sitka mayor Scott McAdams, the Democratic Senate nominee, have already been disappointed by the polls; a hypothetical three-way campaign showed a close race between Murkowski and Miller, with McAdams (who's likely to be misidentified as the fellow who draws "Dilbert") as a hopeless and irrelevant also-ran. This information, though, is precisely the momentum Murkowski needs to get into the race. At least 43 percent of Alaska's voters are independent, and they have shown partiality to independent and third-party candidates before, such as when they elected Walter Hinkel (an Alaska Independence Party member) governor in 1990. Also, 32 percent of likely Republican voters 54 percent of independents have an unfavorable impression of Joe Miller, giving Murkowski ample room to campaign from the center. You can read all about it in this blog post from noted electoral number cruncher Nate Silver.

As much as I dislike Lisa Murkowski, whose biggest claim to fame is trying to gut the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory authority, I'd rather see her get re-elected than to see Alaska send a dangerous ideologue like Joe Miller - who supports privatizing Social Security and abolishing the Department of Education - to Washington. Geez, the fact that Miller looks like a runner-up in a Chuck Norris look-alike contest scares the Shinola out of me. And a Murkowski victory would certainly tick off Sarah Palin! (Bad blood runs between Palin and the Murkowski family; she unseated Lisa Murkowski's father, Frank, from the governorship of Alaska.)

Time will tell how this all gets sorted out.