Begich Takes Lead in Senate Race

The Anchorage Daily News cautions that Alaska must "count roughly 35,000 more ballots over the next week" — so, presumably, anything could still happen — but Democrat Mark Begich has taken the lead over Republican Ted Stevens by a little more than 800 votes in the Senate race.

The latest tally, which was reported at 7:30 a.m. (Eastern), showed Begich with 132,196 votes and Stevens with 131,382 votes.

That is where things stand after the state Division of Elections added roughly 60,000 "absentee, early and questioned" ballots to the total on Wednesday, the Daily News reports.

It appears that it will be next week — at the earliest — before the final result is known.

The Daily News quoted the state elections chief as saying that "most regional elections headquarters will count their remaining ballots on Friday. But the most populous region, based in Anchorage, won't count its ballots until either Monday or Wednesday."

Even so, a spokesperson for the Alaska Democratic Party told the newspaper that Begich's supporters are "cautiously optimistic" about the lead.

Alaska is one of three states with an as-yet unresolved Senate race. In each state, a Republican incumbent is seeking a new six-year term, and each one was leading after the votes were initially tabulated on Nov. 4.

If Democrats win all three seats, they can put together the three-fifths "filibuster-proof" majority they openly desired during the campaign.

Assuming that Begich is able to hold the lead, then, in order to reach the number Democrats desire, Al Franken must overtake Sen. Norm Coleman in the recount in the Minnesota race, and Jim Martin must win a Dec. 2 runoff with Sen. Saxby Chambliss in Georgia.

If Begich, Franken and Martin all emerge victorious, Democrats will need to keep independent Joe Lieberman and socialist Bernie Sanders in their caucus to achieve the three-fifths majority.

But if they fall short of their goal, Democrats will have to decide what they want to do about Lieberman, a former Democrat who has caucused with Senate Democrats for the last two years (allowing them to maintain a somewhat brittle majority) but supported Republican John McCain in the presidential race.

Politico.com reports that some Democrats in the Senate have been making behind-the-scenes efforts to permit him to keep the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

An ironic angle to the story, write Ryan Grim and Martin Kady in Politico.com, is that Lieberman is backed by his home-state colleague, Chris Dodd. In the 2006 Senate election in Connecticut, Dodd supported Ned Lamont, who won the Democratic primary over Lieberman, forcing Lieberman to run (and eventually win) as an independent.

One Senate Democratic aide told Politico.com that Democrats "don’t want to start off a new era with retribution," but other Democrats apparently aren't as conciliatory.

The 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee reportedly has told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, that he will leave the Democratic caucus if he is stripped of his chairmanship.

Politico.com says "a number of options are being considered that would allow [Lieberman] to keep his chairmanship and remain in the caucus but still suffer some sort of penalty."

On that matter, John Nichols says, in his blog in The Nation, that it would be "smart politics" to keep Lieberman in the Democrats' caucus — for now.

Lieberman remains valuable to the Democrats, Nichols suggests, until such time as the three-fifths majority is no longer possible.

That would be the prudent thing to do. The fate of the "filibuster-proof" majority could be up in the air until nearly Christmas.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the recount in Minnesota could drag on until mid-December.

"Recount junkies will be able to view updates daily on a website the secretary of state's office will construct," the Star Tribune reports, "and all recounts will be conducted in public places."