The Tribune has the story here, and there's plenty of other coverage (NY Times, Talking Points Memo, Political Animal, ...).  We have this to add:

Absolutely disgraceful.... For some time it has been clear to Illinois residents that there were serious problems with Governor Rod Blagojevich, so the news of his arrest this morning was not surprising.  The Naperville Township Democratic Organization supported an effort to recall Blagojevich last summer, and we called for his impeachment. We support efforts to end pay-to-play government by making it illegal for public officials - at all levels of government - to accept contributions from people or companies that do business with government - from the Governor's office down to the Naperville City Council. It is time to clean up Illinois government.

Kevin Drum suggests the notion of Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle leading the push to enact Health Care Reform is a good idea:

CZAR THOMAS....Steve Benen passes along the news that Tom Daschle is Obama's pick both for Secretary of Health and Human Services — a cabinet position — and White House health "czar" — a more traditionally West Wing-ish kind of thing. Steve is pleased:

The Daschle announcement reinforces the notion that an Obama administration is going to take the push for healthcare reform very seriously. A senior Democratic official told Mike Allen, "Of all the proposals that Obama wants to enact, health care requires the most input and tough negotiations and shepherding. No one knows the House and Senate like Tom Daschle."

 

Indeed, the Daschle news makes me even more encouraged about the prospect of a healthcare package actually passing. Emanuel is insisting that an incremental approach won't do; Baucus and Kennedy are laying the groundwork on the Hill; and Daschle has been preparing for this fight for quite a while.

 

I'm not really a fan of the whole "czar" thing, but if we're gong to have a healthcare czar it makes sense to give the position to the HHS secretary. What's more, if Hillary Clinton decides to stay in the Senate, this would set up a pretty interesting contrast with 1993: Hillary would be shepherding healthcare reform from the legislative side this time and Daschle would be doing it from the executive branch. It's so crazy it might work!

 

Anyway: I agree with Steve. This is good news. Daschle is plainly dedicated to healthcare reform, he understands the legislative realities as well as anyone, and Obama is sending a pretty clear message that he plans to push full steam ahead on this. Keep your fingers crossed.

Do the results of the last two national elections leave room for the right's claim that we are "still a center-right country"?  The evidence is thin at best.  Ed Kilgore ("Center-Left Country" and "Conservative Truth-Teller") and Eric Alterman ("Center-right, my tuchus") (and many others, I'm sure) argue convincingly that, whatever label people choose to apply to themselves, Americans are firmly comfortable with the policy positions adopted by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.  Here's Alterman (edited and re-formatted for emphasis):

Even before Obama won, the MSM was doing the conservatives' work for them, arguing that he had better not try to do anything he promised to do because America was a "center-right nation."  ...

...[T]he Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington, D.C., in conducting an extensive set of opinion polls over the past few decades, has demonstrated a decided trend toward increasingly "liberal" positions, by almost any definition.

• To offer just a few examples of this liberal-in-all-but-name attitude regarding economic and welfare policy, according to the 2006 [Pew] survey, released in March 2007, ...

  • roughly 70 percent of respondents believe that the government has a responsibility "to take care of people who can't take care of themselves" -- up from 61 percent in 2002.

  • The number saying that the government should guarantee "every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep" has increased by a similar margin over the past five years (from 63 percent to 69 percent).

  • Two-thirds of the public (66 percent) -- including a majority of those who say they would prefer a smaller government (57 percent) -- favor government funded health insurance for all citizens.

  • Most people also believe that the nation's corporations are too powerful and fail to strike a fair balance between profits and the public interest.

  • In addition, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) say corporate profits are too high, about the same number who say that "labor unions are necessary to protect the working person" (68 percent).

• When it comes to the environment,

  • a large majority (83 percent) supports stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment, while

  • 69 percent agree that "we should put more emphasis on fuel conservation than on developing new oil supplies," and

  • fully 60 percent of people questioned say they would "be willing to pay higher prices in order to protect the environment."

Et cetera

I really enjoyed this piece from James Wood in the New Yorker about Obama's Victory Speech last week in Grant Park.  Obama knows that the spoken word can be a thing of beauty, and he showed that again last week, invoking Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr in ways at the same time straightforward and graceful.  The speech stood on its own, of course, but for those of us who are fond of the great Lincoln and King speeches, the echoes rendered it all the more powerful.

VICTORY SPEECH

by James Wood

A theatre critic once memorably complained of a bad play that it had not been a good night out for the English language. Among other triumphs, last Tuesday night was a very good night for the English language. A movement in American politics hostile to the possession and the possibility of words—it had repeatedly disparaged Barack Obama as “just a person of words” —was not only defeated but embarrassed by a victory speech eloquent in echo, allusion, and counterpoint. No doubt many of us would have watched in tears if President-elect Obama had only thanked his campaign staff and shuffled off to bed; but his midnight address was written in a language with roots, and stirred in his audience a correspondingly deep emotion.

On Tuesday night, Obama returned to his cherished theme, the perfection of the Union. Any victorious election speech must turn campaign vinegar into national balm, must move from local conquest to national triumph, and Obama cunningly used this necessity to expand epically through American space and time. Behind his speech were the ghosts of Lincoln’s First Inaugural, which moved anxiously over “every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land,” and his Second, which promised to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” Obama quoted from the end of the First Inaugural—“We are not enemies, but friends”—and the implication was clear: that the past eight years have been a kind of civil war.

...

The outcome of the McGuire-Senger race in the 96th State Representative race may not have ultimately fallen our way, but it shines a light on a new reality in Naperville: There's a new party in town.  Thanks to Dianne's boundless energy as a candidate and not a little help from her army of staff, volunteers and supporters, the ground shifted this year in the 96th District.  Any of several small possible shifts on Election Day would have seen us sending a Democrat to the State Assembly from the 96th for the first time in at least the 20 years I've lived here.  We'll be doing some careful analysis of the precinct-by-precinct results as they become available and will update you again.

Thank you, Dianne!

Here are the overall numbers in the race, courtesy of the Naperville Sun:

	Name	Party	Votes	Vote %
	Senger , Darlene	GOP	24,855	49%
	McGuire , Dianne	Dem	24,209	48%
	Witt , Jennifer	Grn	1,818	4%

The difference was 646 votes out of 50,882 total votes cast, or 1.27%.  I hasten, too, to point out that Dianne actually carried the DuPage County portion of her district, by over 1100 1000 votes.

Total Votes   37264   Dianne A. McGuire D D 18446 49.50% Jennifer Witt GP GP 1427 3.83% Darlene J. Senger R R 17391 46.67%

We fell just a little too short (about 1700 votes) in the Will County portion of the district to claim a victory for the people of the 96th District:

Percent Votes DIANNE A. McGUIRE (DEM) 42.32% 5,763 DARLENE J. SENGER (REP) 54.81% 7,464 JENNIFER WITT (GRN) 2.87% 391       13,618

We're not done here.

One last note: It's a local race and I don't expect front page banner headlines, but I could only find two newspaper articles giving the results of this race (here and here).  Of the 628 words in those two articles, not a single word came from Dianne McGuire or her campaign.  How do you cover the conclusion of this race and not get a quotation from the candidate who earned 48% of the vote?

...from Ezra Klein:

PRIORITIES.

One thing you hear fairly often these days is that Barack Obama hasn't been clear enough on his priorities. I'd take the opposite view: I think he's been surprisingly clear on his priorities, and where he'll put his energy. Last week, he sat down with Wolf Blitzer, and their exchange is worth a straight quote:

BLITZER: Priorities are going to be critical. I'm going to give you five issues. You tell me which one of these five would be your top priority after you're inaugurated on January 20th -- if you're inaugurated. Health care reform, energy independence, a new tax code, including tax cuts for the middle class, education spending or comprehensive immigration reform. Top priority?

OBAMA: The top priorities may not be any of those five. It may be continuing to stabilize the financial system. We don't know yet what's going to happen in January. And none of this can be accomplished if we continue to see a potential meltdown in the banking system or the financial system. So that's priority one, making sure that the plumbing works in our capitalist system.

Priority number two of the list that you have listed -- have put forward, I think has to be energy independence. We have to seize this moment, because it's not just an energy independence issue, it's also a national security issue and it's a jobs issue. And we can create five million new green energy jobs with a serious program.

Priority number three would be health care reform. I think the time is right to do it.

Priority number four is making sure that we have tax cuts for the middle class and it's part of a broader tax reform effort.

Priority number five, I think would be -- would be making sure that we have an education system that works for all children.

One thing I want to make a point of, though. The tax cut that I talked about may be part of my priority number one, because I think that's going to be part of stabilizing the economy as a whole. I think we are going to need a second stimulus. One of my commitments is to make sure that that stimulus includes a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans. That may be the first bill that I introduce.

Immigration, as I think one might expect, gets dropped from the priority list entirely. Tax cuts are third, but first if they qualify as stimulus. Energy independence is atop the list. Then health care. He really hasn't been opaque on any of this.

 ...from Talking Points Memo the other night, in case you missed the Obama acceptance speech:

Obama: My Election Demonstrates That "The Dream Of Our Founders Is Alive"

By Greg Sargent - November 5, 2008, 12:26AM

President-Elect Barack Obama (did I write that?) just spoke in Chicago's Grant Park, and cast his election as the momentous historical event that it is.

But rather than refer directly to his historic triumph over racial barriers, he instead cast his election as proof of the power of American self-renewal and the enduring achievement of the country's Founding Fathers. From the prepared remarks:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

He immediately set about preparing the electorate for the hard road ahead:

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.

Obama is reported to be worried about the powerful emotions and soaring expectations he's unleashed from the electorate. Those expectations, naturally, will be inflated by the scale of his victory, and channeling and managing the electorate's tumultuous passions in the days ahead will be a challenge even for a man who is perhaps the greatest public communicator in decades.

But if anyone is up to it, it's this extraordinary, and thoroughly unlikely, figure. When all the punditry and analysis is said and done, Obama's victory was made possible by no one but Obama himself.

For months and months Obama projected such calm, such steadiness and unflappability, and even such fundamental decency amid all the ugly political combat that he reassured and won over the trust of a nation embroiled in two wars abroad and an anxiety-provoking economic crisis at home -- even though he's black and his middle name is Hussein.

Video at the link.

Kevin Drum gives us this picture of the small, but extraordinarily significant, change we've just witnessed:

Center Right, Center Left

Just in case you're curious, here's the difference between a center right country and a center left country. If you squint, you can see it.

In the end, 90% of Republicans voted for McCain and 90% of Democrats voted for Obama — almost exactly the same as the 2004 election. The difference? Independents got bluer by about eight points compared to four years ago. The Republican Party lost the middle everywhere, and as a result the map got slightly bluer everywhere too.

 

A final word from Barack Obama before Election Day:

We're just one day away from change. 

Election Day is tomorrow -- Tuesday, November 4th. 

We've asked you to do a lot over the course of this campaign, and you've always come through. 

Right now, I'm asking you to do one last thing -- vote tomorrow, and make sure everyone you know votes, too. 

Watch a short video about how far we've come, and how close we are. Then find or confirm your polling location and make sure your friends and family do the same: 

When this campaign began, we weren't given much of a chance by the pollsters or the pundits. 

But tomorrow, we can make history. 

We've made it this far because supporters like you never stopped believing in your power to bring about real change. 

Take the final step now. 

Watch the video, find your polling location, and get everyone you know involved on Election Day: 

http://my.barackobama.com/nov4 

With your vote, and the votes of your friends, family, and neighbors, we won't just win this election -- together, we will change this country and change the world. 

Thank you, 

Barack