After each of the last three election cycles, we’ve expanded TPM and changed the kind of organization we are. Along the way we’ve gone from a staff of one in early 2005 to a staff of eleven today.

After the 2004 cycle, we began launching TPM’s sister sites (starting with TPMCafe.com) and building our own original reporting capacity (starting with TPMmuckraker.com).

After the 2006 election, we took that small network of sites with commentary and focused original reporting and began expanding it into a full service news site for political and hard national news, with original reporting, news aggregation and breaking news. That involved our move into video (with TPMtv), hiring new reporters and redesigning the site’s main page with the news section you see to the right.

Now that the 2008 election is over we wanted to share with you what we have planned for 2008 and beyond. TPM began during the 2000 recount. And its evolution has been always been bound up with my stance as a voice of opposition to the Bush administration. So the end of the Bush years and the beginning of a new Democratic administration presents us with something dramatically new.

In fact, I think it’s important to step back to recognize just how new it is in the history of the country. On paper, there was last unified Democratic control in Washington sixteen years ago during President Clinton’s first two years in office and before that during President Carter’s presidency. Looks, however, are deceiving. For more than half a century before 1992, the Democratic party was actually two parties, even after the Civil Rights movement cleared the old-style segregationists and neo-dixiecrats from the party — a national party and a southern one, a fact that created conservative governing majorities on numerous issues. What’s more, both Clinton and Carter ran on platforms of bucking their party and its entrenched congressional majorities. For both these reasons and many others, what will begin in January is something this country hasn’t really seen since the first half of the 20th century.

So January will usher in a new Democratic Ascendancy in Washington. And here at TPM we believe we are uniquely qualified to chronicle it. So to that end we are hiring two new reporter-bloggers to be based in Washington, DC, one assigned to the White House and one assigned to Capitol Hill. The Obama White House and the expanded Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill are unquestionably the political story of the next two years. And with your help we plan to be there on the ground and and here in New York, covering it in force, fully, critically and down to the minute. We want to keep you informed on what you’d know if you were reporting every day at the White House or on the Hill. Think of us, in that sense, as an insiders’ publication for outsiders, which is how I’ve always thought of us.

Now, the big dailies have dozens of reporters on this story. And the VC-backed internet outlets have not many fewer than that. So we’re not going to — and it’s never been our plan — to compete on numbers. But we do have you — an audience that is more engaged than that of any other publication covering what we cover. That’s not only important in the sense of the general support you’ve given us over the years that has allowed us to grow to this point. You’re also a critical part of our reporting model, our big leg up on everyone else. And that’s a relationship and a resource we’re going to continue to deepen and rely on as we make this big next step.

We’ll be sharing a lot more details with you over the next few weeks and months. So much more to come. If you have any questions comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Colin McEnroe, from the Hartford Courant …

When you consider the plight in which Harry Reid finds himself, consider this: Lieberman, who has broken violently with his party and engaged in campaigning loathsome fear-mongering against the man he once begged to come and save him, holds a prestigious committee chairmanship.

Hillary Clinton, at the moment, has no chairmanship at all because of the seniority system.

I don’t have any put together thoughts on Obama’s presser. But a few quick observations. He seemed a little tight at first — during the speech and at the beginning of Q&A. But then he warmed to it and seemed much better.

The Clinton-Bush transition was abbreviated because of the Recount. But I remember during the Bush-Clinton transition, Bill Clinton was conspicuously deferential to the one president at a time rule, invoking it repeatedly. At least that is my recollection. Obama was deferential. But I would not say extremely so. I thought a telling moment came when asked what would happen if he and President Bush came into conflict over key policy decisions — especially on the economic crisis — during the transition. One way to answer this would have been for Obama to say, there’d be no conflict. I’m not president. He is. etc.

He didn’t say that. He said “I’m not going to anticipate problems.” A very different answer.

Finally, “mutts like me.” A line for the ages.

The President-elect’s first presser:

The Omaha World-Herald is calling the electoral vote of Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district for Obama.

That would appear to make the total 365.

Al Franken is still behind in Minnesota. But as they’ve been finalizing and rechecking votes (all before any formal recount), Norm Coleman’s lead has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. As of Friday evening the number separating the two was down to 221 votes — well within the margin that recounts can sometimes overturn. (Indeed, Jon Chait notes that optical scan machines could produce non-trivial swings in the vote since votes that don’t register on the optical scan machines often have evident voter intent on visual inspection.) But, now, as he sees his margin dwindle, Coleman is trying to play the ‘vote fraud’ card in a desperate attempt to retain his seat.

As we and many others have chronicled, there’s a surfeit of reasons to strip Sen. Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. But one, perhaps the most obvious and substantive, has gone little mentioned. Simply put, he was terrible at it. Lieberman’s committee is the senate investigations and oversight committee, the senate’s counterpart to Rep. Henry Waxman’s committee in the House. And if you remember a lot about Waxman’s investigations and hearings and nothing about Lieberman’s, that’s because Lieberman didn’t hold any. Even in the face of endless scandals of the late Bush administration, Lieberman couldn’t find anything worth poking into.

Dahlia Lithwick brings us up to date on one of the many (but in this case, too little noted) bright spots of this election: Rep. Virgil Goode’s (R-VA) apparent defeat at the hands of Tom Perriello.

Late Update: Don’t forget: Perriello was TPMCafe’s Table for One guest last year.

Sarah Palin defends herself, says her comments about the country of Africa were taken out of context. That and other political news in today’s Election Central Saturday Roundup.