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I remember the last time we were talking about magic numbers. It was during those brisk fall days in 2008 when a minor blip in the subprime housing market had only begun to be an economy crippling downturn. A young Johnny McCain still held out hope that he would pull off an upset for the ages. And a team of hard charging, no-nonsense, seemingly humorless athletes counted down the numbers until they would stamp their passports to the playoffs and what turned out to be Philadelphia’s first championship in a generation.

Back then, talk of a “filibuster proof” majority was left to the pundits and activists with those on the left having visions of mass transit lines being built by troops who were quickly returned home from the deserts of the Middle East and the mountains of Afghanistan.  Those on the right broke out into cold sweats at the thought of 90 percent marginal tax rates and that gross, carbon-free air.

And yet, here we are.  Obama won North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana.  Democrats won senate seats in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon and Alaska.  They lost potential pick ups in Mississippi and Kentucky leaving even the undecided race in Minnesota to mean very little since a 60-vote supermajority appeared to be out of reach by a single vote.

Until now.

Arlen Specter has succeeded in doing what so many tourism and marketing campaigns have failed to do in the last several years - get people talking about Pennsylvania.  A good day in Pennsylvania might not beat a bad day anywhere else but at least for now, the Keystone State is the home of the Senator who has Democrats (mostly inside the Beltway) giddy with possibility while Senate Republicans are “visibly in agony right now.”

The blogosphere is going nuts with commentary about the move, speculating what this could mean for the 111th Senate.  Matthew Yglesias notes that according to voting records, that the most conservative Democrats were still to the left of the most liberal Republican (Olympia Snowe).  If Specter jumps over Snowe and becomes the Democrat directly to her left on the spectrum, he’s really only moving about 3 spaces to the left, not a huge ideological shift.  If, however, he experiences what Yglesias calls “ideological drift” PA could end up with a senator even further to the left of the Democrat it already had (Casey).

Specter’s 2010 campaign already has a Youtube Channel with several of his 2004 campaign commercials, specially the ones that showed the lefter side of Arlen Specter and ran after he dispatched Toomey in the primary. Now that he’s free from worrying about PA’s increasingly conservative GOP base, Specter may be tempted to add his Michael J. Fox-starring ad about stem cell research to the list.

Specter’s decision comes shortly after a Rasmussen poll showed him down to Republican challenger Pat Toomey by a whopping 21 points, with Toomey holding the magic 51 percent.  Without Rick Santorum and George W. Bush (h/t to BD for videos) to carry him across the finish line, Specter must have realized that he had no shot come May 2010.  This opens the door for a well-funded and popular moderate Republican to step and wage an epic battle against Toomey for the soul of the PA GOP, but considering how far to the right that soul has gone, it’s unlikely. (We’d love to see it, though!)

I noted several weeks ago, while plenty of others were also speculating about a Specter shift, that it wouldn’t be the first time in his life that Specter had a (D) after his name, having left the Democratic Party in Philadelphia when it was clear that there was no place in the machinery for him. And now things have come full circle.  Once again, his party has no place for him so he moves to the one place that he seems to want to be more than anywhere else, his elected office.

So that brings us back to the magic number - 60.  Specter’s move suddenly makes the resolution of the Coleman-Franken debacle in Minnesota very important.  Not that it wasn’t important for the rule of law and the right of free elections that the loser recognize when he has lost, but now it’s crucial to get the entire senate “duly chosen and sworn” so that the business of governing can truly get going.  Senate rules dictate that 3/5 of the those duly chosen and sworn can bring debate to a close. With the Minnesota seat still unoccupied, it would seem that 3/5 of 99 or 59.4 leaves the Democrats just six-tenths of a senator shy of that filibuster-proof majority (so now all they need if for Jim Bunning to switch and they’ll get that six-tenths… hi-yoooooo).

The Minnesota Supreme Court is expected to rule in June and declare that Franken did indeed get the most votes.  That leaves it up to the Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, to certify the election - something that he has indicated he would only do after a long period of studying the results - and the Republican GOP to recognize the last piece of this puzzle.  They could filibuster Franken’s seating but they would need every single one of their 40 members to hold that line, a tall order.

Nationally, Specter’s switch leaves the Republican Party with one fewer moderate, one fewer member.  If this trend continues - as Krugman theorizes - a smaller party will drift even more rightward causing it to get even smaller, etc. until their convention is being held at the Ramada on the outskirts of Omaha.

Back here in Pennsylvania, rumored candidate Josh Shapiro says he won’t be running against the Democratic incumbent,  Joe Sestak and his large campaign war chest aren’t “ruling anything out,” and the only actual candidate, Joe Torsella, is in it to win it… for now. With the official appartus of the PA Democratic Party and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee most likely lining up behind Specter, any Democratic challenger will have a difficult task taking on the immortal Specter.

So the magic number remains 60.  For Specter, the magic number is 6, as in 6-term U.S. Senator.