As you likely know, on Tuesday a special election will be held in New York’s 20th congressional district to replace now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). The race pits New York State Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco against Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist.

At the start, national Democrats were not eager to get heavily engaged in this race. The 20th is a Dem-trending but still basically Republican district. George W. Bush carried the district in 2000 and 2004, though Obama won it by a

solid margin in 2008. And it was long represented by Republicans until Gillibrand beat scandal-plagued Rep. John Sweeney (R) in 2006.

So it was the kind of race where there was more for Obama and the Dems to lose than gain since a victory would not necessarily make headlines and a defeat, especially if the national Dems seriously engaged, could be spun as the beginnings of a resurgence for Republicans or evidence of deterioration for Obama.

But over the last several weeks, Tedisco, who seemed like the odds-on, though not overwhelming favorite, watched his lead slip away. And the most recent polls suggest that Murphy has opened a minuscule lead.

As interesting to me is that the fact that Murphy, far from charting an independent course in this Republican-or-swingish district, has based his campaign on two things: support of Obama and support of the Stimulus plan. Murphy’s latest mailer tells voters: “On Tuesday, you can help President Obama,” by electing Scott Murphy.

Tedisco, meanwhile, has been reduced to framing his campaign around the intricate claim that Murphy supports the AIG bonuses because Murphy supports the Stimulus bill and the Stimulus Bill didn’t contain the retroactive limits on bonuses that would have nixed the AIG bonuses. Got that?

In any case, now in the final stretch, national Dems are getting in in a pretty big way, signaling they think the chances of a Murphy victory are good enough to take the risk. Obama sent out an email to supporters in the district, formally endorsing Murphy. Biden recorded a radio ad. And the DNC is up on the air in the district reminding voters that Obama supports Murphy.

At this point, they’re all in. We’ll know more Tuesday night.

Never fear! We’ve pulled together all the best stuff from the last week for your reading and viewing pleasure. Bachmann, Jindal and exploding Volcanos, the shiny GOP budget leaflet, Michael Steele and so much more.

From the Times …

The financial giant Goldman Sachs spent tens of millions of dollars to bail out two senior executives last fall who were short on cash, according to the bank’s proxy statement filed on Friday.

In an unusual move, Goldman bought back stakes in some internal investment funds from Jon Winkelried, the bank’s co-chief operating officer, and Gregory K. Palm, its general counsel.

Both executives are among the largest shareholders in the bank, owning more than a million shares each, and directors were concerned that a large sale of Goldman shares by the two men would alarm investors during a period of market turmoil, according to a person briefed on the matter.

I wanted to share this graph with you. It’s not dispositive of any specific questions in itself. But it’s a valuable set of data for evaluating the question we’ve been discussing in many posts today — the relative size of the financial sector relative to the rest of the economy.

The graph comes from an article by Simon Johnson in the current issue of The Atlantic, ‘The Quiet Coup‘, which I strongly recommend.

The text is a little small. So the first graph shows financial sector profits as a percentage of US business profits going back to the end of World War II. The second charts income per worker in the financial sector as a percentage of average compensation across the economy. As you can see, the pivot in each case is around 1980.

The number that jumps out at me is that at that peak point upwards of half the profits in the entire US economy was in the financial sector. And it’s been near or above a third for most of the last decade. Quite apart from the public policy implications, but rather in the realm of political economy, these graphs provide a revealing look at what the 2005 push to privatize Social Security was all about and what the implications of its success could have been.

For now, late as it is, I’ll leave you to make your own judgments about what it means and, I’d strongly recommend, read Johnson’s article. And we’ll return to this subject over the weekend.

Also check out our TPMtv interview with Johnson from last month.

Obama says he told bankers: “Show some restraint. Show some — show that you get that this is a crisis and everybody has to make sacrifices.” That and other political news in today’s TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

The New Yorker reports that then-lame duck Dick Cheney disparaged Barack Obama to Israeli officials during the transition period. That and other political news in today’s TPMDC Sunday Roundup.

AP says GM CEO Rick Wagoner is stepping down immediately.

Until quite recently, I’d seen a Kindle only once. It was at a friend’s house, only for a moment, and my general impression was that it was clunky and only borderline readable. But I’m very partial to my iPhone. So a few weeks ago in my never-ending quest to find iPhone ‘apps’ I might actually use, I noticed that Kindle, or rather the Kindle software, was now available for iPhone. So I promptly downloaded it and bought my first book.

Like everything else on an iPhone it was very easy on the eyes. Maybe even beautiful. But after reading a bit, it struck me mostly as a clever novelty. The text was crisp and readable. But the physical thing itself was just too small. Maybe half as small as anything you could hold and get comfortable with like you can with a book.

But then my habits betrayed my first impression. I kept reading — when I had a free moment, before I went to bed at night and then just when I wanted to read my book. Even at that small size the system provided me what you need from a book, which is that you fall into the writing and forget the book. Or in this case, the imitation of a book.

Then, with me reading my Alexandria book on my Kindlefied iPhone, my wife got the idea to order the real thing and promptly got hooked reading on an actual Kindle.

Now, here’s the thing. And I’d appreciate hearing from those who’ve used either or both to see whether others agree. But I still find the greyness (which is mainly the non-backlitness) of the Kindle inferior to my iPhone. It’s designed that way in part because it allows the battery on a Kindle to last an insanely long period of time but also because it’s supposed to be easier on the eyes. Maybe I just spend so much time in front of a monitor that my eyes are trashed and I don’t know the difference. But for me, on the iPhone, it just looks more crisp and readable.

All that said, though, I tried reading a book on the actual Kindle (the new one that just came out) and I fell right into the reading there too. It maybe took me 10 minutes to get acclimated. Even though I like the cleaner, whiter screen better, the physical size won me over, at least on the initial use.

(Porting the product to other devices is very clever on Amazon’s part. Not only does it expand the market for their digital books. I suspect it will function something like the iPod has with Apple, a gateway gadget that gets people to switch to Mac from PC once they see how well Apple technology works compared to PC drek.)

What I’d intended here, though, wasn’t just a product review. I’ve always been an inveterate collector of books. Not in the sense of collectibles, but in the sense that once I buy a book, I never let it go. As I made my way through adulthood it was while dragging a tail of several hundred books along with me.

Finally, only a few months ago, I purged a decent chunk of my collection. And most are now in storage. But in our living room we have two big inset shelves where I keep all the books I feel like I need or want ready at hand. And last night, sitting in front of them, I had this dark epiphany. How much longer are these things going to be around? Not my books, though maybe them too. But just books. Physical, paper books. The few hundred or so I was looking at suddenly seemed like they were taking up an awful lot of space, like the whole business could dealt with a lot more cleanly and efficiently, if at some moral loss.

Don’t get me wrong. Book books still have some clear advantages. Kindle is a disaster with pictures and maps. But I didn’t realize the book might move so rapidly into the realm of endangered modes of distributing the written word. I was thinking maybe decades more. The book is so tactile and personal and much less ephemeral than the sort of stuff we read online.

I hope it’s clear that I don’t view this as a good thing or something I welcome. When I had the realization I described above it felt like a sock in the gut, if perhaps a fillip on the interior decorating front. All the business model and joblessnes stuff aside, that’s how I feel about physical newspapers too. There’s a lot I miss about print newspapers, particularly the serendipitous magic of finding stories adjacent to the one you’re reading, articles you’re deeply interested in but never would have known you were if it weren’t plopped down in front of you to pull you in through your peripheral vision. Yet at this point I probably read a print newspaper only a handful of times a year.

When I think about it I kind of miss it. In a way I regret not reading them. But I just don’t. I vote with my eyes. And I wonder whether I’ll soon say something similar about books.

From McClatchy:

President Barack Obama on Monday will reject requests for almost $22 billion in new taxpayer bailout money for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, saying the car makers have failed to take steps to ensure their viability.

The government sought the departure of GM chief Rick Wagoner and said the company needed to be widely restructured if it had any hope of survival. It said it would provide the company with 60 days operating capital to give it time to undertake reforms.

The government will grant Chrysler 30 days operating funds, but said it must merge with another carmaker in order to remain viable. Talks with Italian carmaker Fiat are underway.