60 ??!!

The big news of the day is that Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is switching his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

Ezra Klein (where I caught the news) has some thoughts about whether Specter's anti-EFCA stance forced the move.

Specter's full statement is available here, interestingly his website makes no mention of the switch. The WaPo has some standard commentary as well.

In the statement Specter promises not to become a party-line voter for the Democrats, so it will remain to be seen how much of an impact his party switch will actually have on the Hill.

Now if Norm Coleman would stop crying and drawing out the process in Minnesota, a Senator worth being excited about would finally be coming to DC and the Democratic Caucus would hold 60 seats. At least psychologically that will be pretty cool.