All any of us are interested in right now are cold hard results, I know, but I hope you won't mind me jumping in before things really heat up with the view from Pennsylvania. CNN, NPR and others have just called the Pennsylvania seat for Bob Casey over Rick Santorum. Senator Bob Casey. I certainly like the sound of that. (And Governor Rendell has kept his job -- no surprise there.)

I have to say after working for five years on a dysfunctional Capitol Hill, it is amazing for me to think about how dramatically the state of things has changed there in the last several months. For a long while, things felt a bit hopeless. As of this minute:

• There is no more Rep. Tom Delay to corrupt the soul of the U.S. House of Representatives;
• There's no more Rep. Bob Ney to obstruct much needed election reform;
• And thanks to the fine people of Pennsylvania, there's no more Senator Rick Santorum to exploit our worst weaknesses and fears.

And that list is only going to get longer as the night goes on. (Feel free to add 'em in the comments.) Tonight could end in a few different ways. But right now, I feel happy. That's it. Just damn happy.

We're waiting to hear about what will become of Lois Murphy, Jason Altmire, Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy, Chris Carney, and a handful of statehouse races that will tell us a lot about the political future of Pennsylvania. (The PA Secretary of State has unofficial returns here.) I'll be back later with a summary of the PA results and a wrap-up of my time on the ground here, but lemme just say now that it has been a real honor and pleasure to have the opportunity to post at MyDD this Election 2006.

On the flip, some highlights from election day in southeastern Pennsylvania.

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As of this morning, I've embedded myself with Lois Murphy's campaign in Pennsylvania's Sixth District -- a race with a ton of rich aspects. We've got a county smack in the middle and making up about 40% of the district that was long written off as conservative but is now starting to flex Democratic muscle, as I wrote about two nights ago. And marvel at the absurdity of the boundaries of the PA-06, sometimes called the "Pterodactyl District" because of its shape. It was drawn up special for Murphy's opponent, Rep. Jim Gerlach. Man, some districts are so ridiculously gerrymandered that you just have to laugh.

It's also a district where it seems like one can get an education in political messaging. What I'm hearing about robocalls in PA-06 -- what Josh Marshall neatly sums up as "intentionally-harassing calls disguised to appear that they're from the opposite party" -- is really just disgraceful. While I'm strongly anti-death penalty, when it comes to ringing up folks repeatedly in the wee hours I'd need the help of Dick Cheney to think of a punishment severe enough.

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After another day on the ground in Pennsylvania, this occurs to me: the 50 State Strategy should be abandoned in favor of a One Million County strategy. I picked "one million" as a ballpark figure only because Wikipedia won't tell me how many counties and parishes we have in these United States.

Pennsylvania Democrats are working on the county level for a legislative majority in the capital of Harrisburg. At a rally this afternoon in the Chester County town of Downingtown, State Senator Andrew Dinniman told the crowd of the dark days when Chesco (as the locals seem to call it) was once considered so Republican that neither Al Gore in 2000 nor John Kerry in 2004 would show his face there. But in a May 2005 special election, Dinniman trounced his Republican opponent by 13 points.

Then there's Tom Houghton, running for State Representative in Chesco. Tom's hometown of London Grove Township is 3-to-1 Republican but still elected the tree-hugging Houghton to its Board of Supervisors. Tom today credited his success to talking to his neighbors about the building blocks of suburbia: health care, school funding, and preserving public spaces. It''s looking more and more like that Chesco might very possibly make the third time the charm for Lois Murphy in her re-re-match with Jim Gerlach.

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I've come to the conclusion that the minimum wage debate nicely captures the absurdity of American life under Republican rule and what's a stake in this election. Consider this. The annual income at which the federal government says that a family of two is living below poverty is $13,200 -- but a single parent working 40 hours a week at the federal minimum wage of $5.15 makes less than $11,000 a year. If I didn't know us better, I'd swear that all we're doing as a nation is mocking those efforts.

Rep. Pelosi has said that raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour would be a top priority in the first 100 hours of a Democratic Congress. By way of contrast, even Rick Santorum admits that the current House leadership doesn't care a lick about even discussing wages -- even though it's a priority of 68 percent of Americans.

This question of wages came up again and again at a noon-time GOTV rally today in Philadelphia's Love Park. On stage was a great crop of Democrats, with very special guest John Edwards, Mayor Street, Rep. Schwartz, Rep. Fattah, Rep. Brady, Lois Murphy, Patrick Murphy, Bob Casey, and Governor Rendell.

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Pennsylvania Democrats are in a strong position to claim not only a new Senate seat but also five additional congressional seats on Tuesday -- a full third of what's needed to win a majority in the House. In addition to Bob Casey running for the Senate seat, there's Jason Altmire in the 4th District on the Ohio border, Philadelphia-area candidates Joe Sestak (7th), Patrick Murphy (8th), and Lois Murphy (6th), and Chris Carney in the 10 District in the state's northeast corner -- all real pickup possibilities five days out from the election.

I'm touring Pennsylvania now through election day, as part of the AFL-CIO's Labor 2006 Program. The AFL-CIO is active in these races, no doubt. They report that union members under their direction have made 550,000 phone calls and knocked on 185,000 doors already this election cycle, particulary targeting the state's 1.4 million union members (out of a total population of about 12 million). My Pennsylvania tour started at 8:30 yesterday morning in the Lehigh Valley, with a Bob Casey "Meet the Candidate" coffee hour before a crowd of about 60 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) members at the Local 375 hall in Allentown.

At the event, Casey was introduced by Bill George, the charismatic president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. George knows how to rally this crowd. "Your neighbors have the same problems you have, whether they're union or not -- they're your neighbors!" More of what I've taken to calling George-isms:

"They don't have just their hand in the cookie jar. They've got their whole arm in the cookie jar."
- On the current crop of Republicans in Washington and their corporate allies

"Do we have to wait until 700,000 Iraqis have died?"
- On when Americans can question U.S. leaders on the war in Iraq (and after discussing U.S. troops)

"Because unions negotiated it."
- On why members of the House and Senate have good health care coverage

George talks about how when the Bush Administration fumbled the football, the American labor movement was there to pick it up. And Bob Casey, George says, is part of that movement, coming from the part of Pennsylvania that understands the importance of "Molly McGuire and the Lattimer Massacre."

I jumped at the chance to travel to PA as part of the AFL-CIO's Labor 2006 program precisely because I have no idea what George is talking about here. (For the record, Ms. McGuire was a perhaps fictional Irish woman who agitated for tenant's rights in the 1840s; the Lattimer Massacre was an 1897 incident in eastern PA where 19 miners were killed by police during a demonstration.) I'm well versed in the civil rights struggle but my knowledge of the American labor movement is limited to A. Philip Randolph's organization of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Progressives need to be educated in both histories. With that in mind, can anyone recommend any good books to get up to speed on the labor movement? (Post-election reading, of course.)

Back to the campaign trail.

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