Statement from President Obama on the Senate vote:

With the Senate’s vote, the House Republicans are now the only people left in Washington holding hostage the middle-class tax cuts for 98% of Americans and nearly every small business owner. The last thing a typical middle class family can afford is a $2,200 tax hike at the beginning of next year. It’s time for House Republicans to drop their demand for another $1 trillion giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and give our families and small businesses the financial security and certainty that they need. Our economy isn’t built from the top-down, it’s built from a strong and growing middle class, and that’s who we should be fighting for.

There you have it: Senate Democrats just prevailed 51-48 a vote to extend the Bush tax cuts only for incomes up to $250,000.

Vice President Joe Biden presided over the Senate. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) voted with Republicans against the legislation.

Keep in mind, Harry Reid was unable to pull this off with larger majorities in 2009 and 2010.

Lots has changed since then, and no one factor contributed to the shift. Having President Obama on the ticket played no small role. That his opponent is Mitt Romney certainly made a difference. The White House’s shift into a more aggressive, populist mode after last summer’s debt limit debacle was a necessary ingredient.

Historians will have the benefit of hindsight to decide if this was part of a larger, post-financial-crisis shift in American politics that manifested itself in the Occupy Wall Street movement and continues to be fed by the anemic economy. Again, no one of these factors is dispositive and it’s difficult to assign relative impacts to each one. But all of a piece.

The GOP plan to extend all the Bush tax cuts failed in the Senate on a 45-54 vote. Senators voting against their parties: Mark Pryor of Arkansas for the Democrats; Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Susan Collins of Maine for the Republicans.

Here’s our explainer of what’s happening and why.

A second vote to extend the Bush tax cuts only on incomes below $250,000 in underway. Stay tuned …

Our Polling Editor Kyle Leighton on what we can and can’t tell from presidential approval ratings.

Important, um, career advice from Rhode Island U.S. Senate candidate.

In a rare reversion to how it’s actually supposed to run, the Senate will hold old fashioned majority votes on both the Democratic and Republican bills to address the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Today at 4 PM.

Romney campaign jumps on to the voter suppression/’vote fraud’ bandwagon.

Biden smacks back at Romney over “Anglo-Saxon” ‘advisor’ comments to the Daily Telegraph.

Sandy Weill, the former Citibank Chairman and CEO, who basically invented the mega-bank, now says the big banks should be broken up.

I think everyone assumes that Michigan is more than likely an Obama state in November. I’d be very surprised if it isn’t. But the polls continue to show a considerably closer race. Yesterday, the TPM Electoral Scoreboard moved the state back into the ‘Favors Obama’ category with a Rasmussen poll showing 6 point Obama advantage. But today we’re back with another poll by Mitchell Research showing Romney one point ahead. (Both polls were robopolls.)

The PollTracker Average currently puts the race at Obama 46%, Romney 43.4%.