Lisa Murkowski Concedes to Teabagger - End of the 30-Year Murkowski Family Reign

The numbers started to go Sen. Murkowski's way this morning. Alaska election officials were counting absentee and questioned ballots from last week's GOP primary for her U.S. Senate seat. Trailing Tea Bag Express favorite, Joe Miller by less than 2,000 votes, she didn't close the gap enough by late afternoon today to make the numbers add up. Late in the afternoon Murkowski conceded.

Though polls were released over the weekend showing Murkowski might handily win a three-way contest as a Libertarian Party candidate, Sunday that party's governing board in Alaska voted 5-0 to not offer her a rent-a-party slot (something that has been done in Alaska before, resulting in the election of Wally Hickel in 1990).

Sen. Lisa Murkowski replaced her father, Frank, in the U.S. Senate by being appointed to a vacancy by the governor. Frank Murkowski had had to leave his senate seat to become that governor, creating the vacancy necessitating the appointment.

One of the candidates interviewed for the vacancy had been newly out-of-work Wasilla mayor, Sarah Palin. Since Frank's appointment of his daughter to the seat over the less qualified Palin, the latter has been chafing for revenge. The first episode was her defeat of Frank in the 2006 gubernatorial primary. Gov. Murkowski had been terribly inept. Today was the final episode.

I predicted the strong possibility of Joe Miller's victory over Murkowski in this primary back in July. So I wasn't "stunned," as were many.

Actually, I had hoped for it. Joe Miller is not Alaska. He wouldn't have beaten Lisa Murkowski without a huge infusion of campaign cash from the Koch Brothers and a ballot proposition designed to bring out fundamentalists and evangelicals to the polls.

The Alaska and national Democratic Party apparatchiks have yet to digest what a gift Miller presents them. As Howie Klein, one of the most savvy progressive analysts of politics in the country observed Sunday:

McAdams isn't a conservative corporate shill and isn't interested in enriching himself at the public's expense. The DSCC doesn't know how to deal with that kind of candidate.

Grassroots Alaskans do.

Our most dependable correspondent in Alaska, Phil Munger, has been raving to me about McAdams for months. And this week I finally spoke with Scott on the phone. He seemed committed to a kind of economic populism that results in winning campaigns in the West. In other words, Scott McAdams is more interested in solving real problems real American families face than in staking out ideological positions.

If the Alaska and national Democratic party organization can energize McAdams' campaign, he will beat this teabagger who looks and thinks a lot more like the unibomber than he resembles any of our constitutional founding fathers he is do fond of ripping off.

Scott McAdams will be this coming Saturday's Blue America guest at Crooks & Liars. 11:00 a.m. Pacific time Saturday.Howie will host Scott for two hours of questions. Who knows, maybe even Teabagger Joe Miller will show up to ask a question or two. Whatever, check Scott out then.