Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the son of one president and the brother of another — has been working the phones since Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) announced earlier this month that he won’t seek reelection in 2010. Sources say Bush hasn’t made up his mind about running for Martinez’ seat, but that he’s getting green lights from would-be contributors and blessings from Republican Party leaders.

One would think that the name “Bush” would be political poison for the next ten generations. Apparently, one would be wrong:

Although Bush’s older brother will leave the White House next month with approval ratings around 30 percent, sources say that the former Florida governor is hearing from GOP leaders that the Bush family name won’t be a barrier if he decides to enter the race.

“Quite the opposite, actually,” said one source close to Jeb Bush. “What he’s found is that everyone is encouraging him to run. It’s actually been a little overwhelming.”

This is largely based on Jeb’s not-entirely-incompetent record as governor of Florida, but the bar has been set low when the lack of flailing, disastrous incompetence is seen as sufficient qualification in and of itself.

While it’s true that Jeb has always been considered the smart one, we would do well to remember that, like other smart ones, this is at best a relative measure, as a small gallery will attest:

McCain’s concession speech is on now, and he’s being quite gracious — this is the McCain I remember from 2000 and haven’t seen since.

Update 8:23pm

MSNBC has just called Ohio for Obama. Wow. That’s pretty much game over, barring any kind of west coast shock.

Nice. Now it’s all about the House and Senate races. More later…

Update 8:15pm:

Wisconsin got called amazingly fast, faster than it’s been called in the last two cycles. I take that as a good sign… Basically, all Obama has to do to win at this point is to take Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, and the West Coast states — which he’s been projected to do for weeks now. But it’d be nice to know for sure…

7:30pm

Looking good so far…

We can start to breathe normally again, I think… MSNBC has called Pennsylvania for McCain, as has CNN, and he’s looking strong in Indiana — and if he’s looking strong in Indiana, things look mighty fine indeed. At the moment, I’ll stick with my prediction of 351 electoral votes.

In addition, looks like Kay Hagan has unseated Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and Jeanne Shaheen has beaten Sununu the Younger in New Hampshire.

And yeah, I found wireless. More later, depending on whether I can find it again in other locales…

Update from Acallidryas: I may have to revise my EV estimate upwards…

Long answer:

While still not the likeliest of outcomes, the Democrats holding 60 seats in the Senate after the coming election is certainly much more possible than it seemed months or even weeks ago. Follow the bouncing ball, if you will…

The current composition of the Senate is 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats — effectively, Dems are in the majority and have all the rights thereby allowed by Senate rules.

Of the 100 seats in the Senate, 35 are up in the current cycle. Of those, 12 are being defended by Democratic incumbents, 18 by Republicans, and 5 are open due to retirements. All 5 of the open seats are being vacated by Republicans.

As it stands now, the Democrats are favored to pick up three of those open seats. In addition, Republican incumbents in Alaska, Oregon, Minnesota, North Carolina and New Hampshire are currently in serious trouble. If those trends hold, that’s a pickup of 8 seats. That makes 57, and with Sanders and Lieberman caucusing with the Democrats, we get 59. Very close indeed.

Add in the potential of Jim Martin unseating Saxby Chambliss (and pollster.com just moved this race to a tossup), or Rick Noriega unseating the loathsome John Cornyn, or even Kentuckians convincing themselves to finally Ditch Mitch, and a filibuster-proof majority is tantalizingly close.

What about endangered Dem incumbents? There aren’t any. The only one who was looking at a tough reelection battle was Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, who’s currently sporting a double-digit lead over challenger John Kennedy. That race has turned so boring nobody other than Rasmussen is even bothering to poll it anymore.

What about Lieberman, the wild card? Will he caucus with the Democrats? Do we need him to? Do we even want him to?

Yes, no and no, in that order. Holy Joe is so starved for power and attention that I can’t see him turning down a chance to stay in the majority. From the Dem standpoint, the only reason to want Lieberman in the caucus is to make that 60th filibuster-proof vote.

But how much sweeter would it be if his vote was made unnecessary by a couple of upsets Nov. 4th? Sweet indeed, folks, sweet indeed. He can have his “Connecticut for Lieberman” caucus all by himself in the corner.

Of course, having that many votes in the Senate will cause problems, as will what’s shaping up to be at least a 20-seat pickup in the House. More on that later, but for now let’s just say that if the Republicans get reduced to the irrelevant minority that many are cheering for, Democratic party factionalism will rule the day in Congress to an extent that will be ugly to watch.

Current presidential poll averages show Obama pulling ahead in states like Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and widening his leads in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Indeed, some PA polls have Obama out front by double digits.

But wait, there’s more: Rasmussen has McCain’s lead in Texas and Mississippi down to single digits, and the latest polls out of Georgia show that race tightening up even more (not that they’ll turn blue, but still…). And Indiana, which is as reliably red as red gets, is currently within the margin of error — a genuine tossup. That’s a lot of defense for the McPalin team to be playing this late.

Wade through the Senate races and you’ll see that the Republicans have 9 incumbents in some form of electoral trouble, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, while the Democrats have precisely none (not even Mary Landrieu, who was seen as vulnerable). That’s not counting the open seats in Colorado and New Mexico, which are both trending D. 60 seats is not out of the question for the Democrats, while the House races show potential Democratic gains of 20-25 seats.

A month is indeed a long time — a lot can and will happen between now and election day — but these kinds of numbers four weeks out are nothing but disastrous for the Republicans.