Stevens Looks Like a Goner

CNN hasn't made a projection yet — perhaps it will sometime this evening — but it's nearly 7:30 p.m. Central time (which means it's about 4:30 p.m. in Alaska), and, based on the latest news from Alaska, it looks like Sen. Ted Stevens' 40-year Senate career is coming to an end.

When the day began, Alaska still had approximately 24,000 ballots to count. As I write this, the Anchorage Daily News reports that election officials have counted roughly two-thirds of those ballots, and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich's lead has grown from 1,022 votes when the day started to 2,374 votes.

If it's true that only about 8,000 votes remain to be counted, that means Stevens would have to receive about 5,200 of them to win the election.

In other words, a candidate who hasn't even received 50% of the nearly 300,000 votes that have been counted now must receive nearly two-thirds of the ballots that are left.

It's far from over, though.

"Today's count should pretty much decide the race," reports the Anchorage Daily News, "although there will be overseas absentees to count over the next couple days and a likely recount in early December."

But don't spend too much time pondering that word "recount." The "filibuster-proof" majority should remain a possibility.

"Since the state moved to mostly machine counting, recent Alaska recounts have resulted in little change in the final tally," writes the Daily News.

Incidentally ...

I know it's fashionable these days to blame anyone else for your loss at the ballot box.

But let's be clear about this. Stevens brought this defeat on himself.

There was nothing anyone — George W. Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, even Ronald Reagan himself — could do to prevent it.