We told you about Mike, and about The Gays, but there were a couple other elections that news people are talking about today. These were, obviously, early referenda on Barack Obama, and he lost.

Rural Democrats refused to have the House version of the public option reimburse providers with rates tied to Medicare, because Medicare underpays rural hospitals and doctors. Guess what they did for urban hospitals, though!

New York City's primary election is today! As in, right now! And for most offices in this town, this is the de facto general election. Polls close at 9pm, so you even have time to hit happy hour beforehand.

Delay tactics and procedural shenanigans by the minority party are generally harmless and often entertaining traditions in the House of Representatives, but guess which party is way better at them?

Wonderful news: Hiram Monserrate is a Democrat again! The New York state Senator who famously glassed his girlfriend and whose term cannot end soon enough switched back to caucusing with his party and doomed the Senate to (yet more) gridlock.

Washington views life as a zero-sum game: If you win, then I lose. Our leaders, in pursuing partisan passions, forget that the whole point of economic stimulus is to make the pie larger.

It's semiofficial! Roland Burris, hero, will be the new junior senator from Illinois.

So Roland Burris, the crazy new Illinois Senator-in-waiting, will be seated! According to the Associated Press! But not according to Harry Reid. But... maybe?

Cops are leaking details of their investigation into incoming State Senator Hiram Monserrate's little face-slashing incident.

Blago faces impeachment! The embattled Illinois governor is about to become even embattleder, as the Illinois House rushes back to work (next week).

Hiram Monserrate, a Queens Democrat and state senator-elect, will be taking his oath of office on January 1, even though he allegedly slashed his girlfriend's face with a broken glass.

Sad! Crazy-coiffed, fabulously scandalous Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich will not appoint anyone to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat, according to his fun-loving lawyer, Ed Genson. Why? Because Democrats are mean.

"Maybe you remember little Bobby Gibbs," a story in the Villager of Auburn, Alabama begins. "He and his brother John were born here, he went all the way through Auburn city schools, and he graduated from Auburn High in 1989." Now little Bobby Gibbs is President-elect Barack Obama's new press secretary! And to think, just a couple years ago he was persona non grata at the DNC and the netroots wing of the Democratic Party.Gibbs began his flack career on Capitol Hill, working in the press offices of 10 Congressmen and eventually graduating to the nice gig of press secretary to John Kerry as he began his presidential campaign. That didn't last long, and soon Gibbs found a role at with Americans for Job, Health Care, and Progressive Values, a 527 group. That happy, friendly, shiny-sounding group was, of course, nothing but a shop for vicious smears against upstate Democratic candidate Howard Dean, who, in 2004, was annoying the Democratic Establishment by babbling about The War and other liberal nonsense.

Gibbs, the group's spokesman defended even the grossest of their anti-Dean attacks, including an ad that just featured a photo of Osama bin Laden and a narrator saying Dean was unqualified. Ha! Democrats!

Gibbs continued his odd habit of borrowing vile right-wing attack lines when it suited him years later as Barack Obama's media guru. Responding to the Clinton campaign's meltdown over David Geffen's donation to Obama (coupled with an attack on Bill Clinton's womanizing), Gibbs dusted off the old "sold the Lincoln Bedroom" line, becoming the only person besides Rush Limbaugh in a decade to remember or care about that story.
Now, of course, everyone has fallen in line, because Gibbs was really, really good on TV. But we get the feeling he's even better suited for the miserable position of White House Press Secretary than liberals might hope. It truly will be a fun four years, guys!

Do terms like conservative and liberal actually mean anything, or are they just empty labels that people toss around? Frequently the latter, says a group of Columbia University psychologists.

Tonight, Barack Obama will appear on your television screen for 30 minutes in order to convince you to vote for him next week. He'll be on CBS, NBC, Univision, Fox, MSNBC, and BET. (But not ABC! Tune in for Pushing Daisies!) Obama's half-hour TV buy tonight has some historical precedent, of course; Ross Perot did it, and look where it got him! But for a good look at how far the Democrats have come, let's all go back to 1983, when the Democratic National Committee hosted, yes, a telethon. It, uh, it didn't go so well. In fact it went unbelievably, comically awry. As the 1980s began, the Republicans introduced and perfected their massive, modern fundraising apparatus, utilizing direct mail and donor targeting to build a database of party supporters willing to shell out cash whenever and wherever it was needed. In 1980, the GOP raised millions more from hundreds of thousands more than the Dems could manage. And they kicked the Democrats' asses. So, heading into the 1984 elections, the Democrats knew they needed a lot of cash to compete. The GOP had more than a million active donors, the Dems had almost 300,000. So the Democratic National Committee somehow decided that a star-studded telethon on NBC would solve the problem. They spent $5 million on the program, hoping to raise an initial $10 million over 18 hours on Memorial Day weekend. And it was a star-studded affair! As the AP reported:

Saturday Night Live has a long, storied history of political satire, a reputation that was only burnished after this past Saturday's well-received Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit. The venerable comedy institution has been known to move the cultural dial with some of its depictions, whether it was the spring sketch that famously declared the media to be "in the tank" for Barack Obama or its 2000 impersonation of Al Gore as a "lockbox"-brandishing scold. Still, we're a bit puzzled by some of the quotes from an event held Monday at the Museum of the Moving Image, where Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler, and Lorne Michaels met to discuss their satirical process:

Maybe Barack Obama is a celebrity after all: According to the AP, more than 38 million viewers tuned in to watch the Democratic nominee's DNC speech last night. Even excepting the uncounted audience who tuned in via C-SPAN, PBS, or online, "Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final American Idol or the Academy Awards this year." If next week's Republican National Convention has got its work cut out for it, John McCain might want to start with a VP pick who's got more ratings power than the lead from 30 Rock. [AP]

Did you watch Hillary Clinton's speech last night? She went on late, and long, but we watched. It was pretty good! She is much better at giving speeches than she used to be. We are depressed that no one does big angry barnstorming Jesse Jackson speeches anymore except the tiny white tomte from Cleveland but whatever. Her speech was good on its own merits. A well-delivered and pleasantly inoffensive series of uplifting syllables. The second it ended liberal favorite Keith Olbermann was all "she hit it out of the park, masterful, blah blah" and his MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews made even less sense, but they were quite tired from being on TV, outside, in the rain, for 72 hours straight or so. What did the well-rested print pundits say? Everyone wants to marry that speech.

Oh, hey, look what some bloggers caught! Yesterday, Democratic strategist and original Clinton war room attack dog James Carville gave a lousy review to the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Which is his prerogative as an independent commentator, of course! Except that all the other liberals-and Democratic Party Operatives, like him-liked it, and loved Ted Kennedy, and loved Michelle Obama, and those little girls. But Carville, he was all, no, it sucked. "If this party has a message, it's done a hell of a job hiding it tonight, I promise you that." Click to see how his choice of footwear explains this bitter response to the first night of the party.