Back to the interminable Minnesota Senate race, where the state canvassing board holds a critically important meeting today on the recount. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

TPM unveils the official Rod “Mr. Smith Ain’t Bleeping Going to Washington” Blagojevich timeline.

A quick update from a knowledgeable source who works in that big building with the dome …

I don’t think it’ll be hard to explain why Senate Republicans had the final say: that’s what the Constitution and Senate rules require. How else would we have passed anything?

I do think it’ll be hard for Senate Republicans to explain themselves.

They were invited, repeatedly, to participate in more than a week of negotiations with a Republican White House. They declined.

They were asked to provide an alternative bill. They refused.

Finally, one of their members – Senator Corker of Tennessee – participated in a day-long negotiation with Senate Democrats, the UAW, and bondholders. Everyone made major concessions. Democrats gave up efficiency and emissions standards. UAW accepted major benefit cuts and agreed to reduce workers’ wages. Bondholders signed off on a serious haircut. But when Senator Corker took the deal back to the Republican Conference, they argued for two hours and ultimately rejected it.

Why? Because they wanted the federal government to forcibly reduce the wages of American workers within the next 12 months.

Heard this morning that President Bush may still use TARP money to rescue the automakers. He reportedly doesn’t want to end up as the next Hoover.

Worth noting that the geniuses at Reuters manage to explain what happened last night in the senate without mentioning that the plan failed in the face of a filibuster by senate Republicans.

From TPM Reader MA …

I think it is really important to point out that the Republicans had many alternatives to avail themselves and that they chose the worst possible one.

1) Cooperate with White House and Democratic negotiators earlier in the process

2) Negotiate in good faith with Reid following the failure of the original bill

3) Pass the original bill

4) Vote for cloture on the original bill and then vote against it.

Option (4) would have been the grown up and responsible thing to do–the bill had, probably, majority support and the consequences of not bailing out the auto industry are dire. Allowing a vote is not synonymous with acquiescing or voting in favor of the bill.

I think the fact that option (4) doesn’t seem to have even been considered is indicative of the abuse of the filibuster in recent years. The filibuster is meant to be a tool to express extreme outrage, not as a device to force the threshold to passing a bill to 60 votes.
At this point, the filibuster rules have lost their relevance and should be abandoned (despite the fact that it will tie Democrat’s hands in future Senate sessions when Republicans are in control.

A few thoughts on this morning’s news.

Not surprisingly, with this morning’s news, we’re getting more than a few emails arguing that the Democrats, in their new position of strength, should weaken or entirely do away with the filibuster — i.e., invoking the nuclear option that Republicans repeatedly threatened through the earlier part of the decade. Despite the extremity of the moment, though, I just can’t agree with that. It is just bad practice — especially in the face of the last eight years — for numerical majorities not only to use the power of their numbers in straight up votes but to change the rules of the game itself. Notwithstanding the fact that filibuster has been increasingly abused, it was wrong in 2005 and it would be wrong now.

What I do think makes sense is for the majority to actually require the minority to filibuster — as in talk and talk and talk. We’ve arrived at a point in which it’s become standard, even in the most contentious of cases, for the minority to be allowed merely to signal the intention to filibuster rather than doing the actual thing itself. Filibustering is a tool of obstruction. It’s a critical right of the minority in the senate. But it is, by definition, obstruction. So it makes sense to put the obstructionists to their task, make them do it publicly. I don’t know why the Democrats are not doing that in this case.

Finally, this issue now goes well beyond the fate of the American automakers. Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons — first is payback against a major industrial union; second is payback against states like Michigan and Ohio who have been moving away from the GOP; third is the desire to advantage Japanese auto manufacturers who disproportionately do business in their southern states.

What even the White House can see at this point is that having one or more of these companies go under right now will rapidly accelerate the economic crisis, and in unpredictable ways.

As I mentioned earlier, the Minnesota state canvassing board is meeting today to make some crucial decisions on the Senate race recount. Already this morning the board has unanimously decided to ask local election boards to count an estimated 1,600 absentee ballots that were disqualified by clerical error, which is expected to boost significantly Franken’s prospects of catching Coleman in the recount.

A Hill staffer emails about the long-term political implications of the neo-Hooverites blocking the auto bailout:

It is possible that there was some sort of covert nod-and-wink between Bush and the Senate GOP that the latter could have their cake and eat it, too. Senate Republicans could posture against unions (and try to set the UAW up as the villain) and vote against the bill, while Bush would subsequently use the TARP authority for a bridge loan.

In the long run, the political fallout from this maneuver (whether Bush invokes TARP authority or not) means that the GOP has not only written off New England and the Mid-Atlantic, but the Midwest, and is hunkering down in its Dixie and Plains base. The GOP used to consider Indiana as a given, Ohio as a must, and Michigan as a like-to-have. Now all three are gone, along with Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The Fox affiliate in Chicago is reporting that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Obama’s incoming chief of staff, spoke with Blagojevich directly about who would fill Obama’s Senate seat and that the conversations occurred during the period when Blagojevich was being recorded by the feds.

It’s not clear what this means, and the point can’t be made often enough that it would be really odd if the Obama team was not talking to Blagojevich about the seat. But as a commenter at TPMmuckraker notes, one thing is perfectly clear:

Rahm talking to Blago: if they ever get hold of a transcript, it will have to be entirely redacted with “bleeps.”

TPM Election Central reports that Hillary has agreed to the Obama camp’s request that she name James Steinberg as deputy secretary of state.