E!!

Malkin has a post.

Blurb from WaPo:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat, according to sources informed on the decision.

Specter’s decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken’s victory in the state Supreme Court.)

“I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary,” said Specter in a statement. “I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.”

“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

Quick note:  The Republican Party has not moved “far to the right.”  The Democratic Party has moved to the left and has very deftly and craftily dragged ”the Center” to the left as well.  And they’ve been helped by people like Arlen Specter who have apparently forgotten what Ronald Reagan actually believed and stood for.

Future piece:  “The New Center:  How Liberals Moved the Middle to the Left in American Politics” (0r something like that)

The Corner is speculating that Chet Edwards (not John) might be the pick.  Not a good idea due to the possible name confusion; don’t think it’s gonna happen. 

I think Obama should pick Hillary if he wants to have any chance of winning, but I’m not sure she would agree to take it or that he would be willing to tolerate her on the ticket – or in the White House on a daily basis. 

Geraldine Ferraro was on Hannity last night and said there is “no way” Hillary will accept the VP spot under Obama.  Others have said they think she would, if it were properly offered.

If I were a Hillary staffer, I would advise her to Just Say No to Obama and stick with the roll call vote at the convention, which even if she loses will remind people that she still has strong support in the Demcoratic base, and then in 2012 she can come back and say (to the Dems), “OK Dummies, your Golden Boy got stomped in ’08, so stop messing around and nominate me.”

As I noted in a post the other day, Republicans have historically tended to be more reliable voters than Democrats, i.e. they show up at the booth with a lot less prompting and prodding.  This is a factor that cannot be left out of the registration equation.  Democrat campaign managers need to figure out how many registered Democratic voters are needed to equal/exceed one Republican vote.  Because it is an issue of quality over quantity, it is not going to be a one-to-one correlation.

On this subject, NV Senator Bob Beers has some comments on all the media attention the voter registration issue is getting.  He notes that while much Ado has been made about the voter registration gains made by Democrats in the past year (here and here and here), some Republicans see it another way:

The hyper-aggressive Democrat voter registration program, funded by Harry Reid’s millions in advance of his 2010 re-election or election of his son in his place, seems to have been focusing on that peculiar brand of ultra-transient new resident, most of whom have probably moved home in the wake of the flattening of Nevada’s once-thriving job market.

Some contend the Democrat voter registration program has become so aggressive that it has taken to registering people who do not actually exist.

The majority of existing voters who are changing their party affiliation to Democrat had been registered Non-Partisan. Those people probably were already voting Democrat, so changing their registrations won’t have much impact on November end-of-season voting, though it will cause an increase in the raw number of Democrats who vote in primaries.

As case-and-point, Beers points to the primary balloting…particularly in the Porter-Titus congressional district, where more Republicans voted than did Democrats.  26,892 Republicans voted compared to 26,241 Democrats despite all the buzz re: the massive registration lead Democrats had supposedly built in that district.

Below Beers shows the trend in some other districts where there was both a Democrat and Republican primary: