Over at Politico, Jonathan Allen reports that "The race is on for permanent control of the Ways and Means Committee," and that "Sources close to Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, who is sixth in seniority on the panel, say he’s reviewing his options and has significant support from Democratic colleagues and business interests on K Street. Neal would have to climb over Levin, Washington Rep. Jim McDermott and Georgia Rep. John Lewis to get the gavel. Asked about his own intentions Thursday, McDermott, cited a Rangel saying that every member of every committee plans to be chairman or chairwoman someday. 'There’s always time to consider things,' he said."

That's about the most definitive statement I'd expect McDermott to give anyone, so I'm going to assume that there's a 50% or better chance that McDermott pursues the chairmanship.

If he does, what would this mean?

Well, for starters, if Rep. Pete Stark got the brush-off for being too politically problematic, it's worth noting that McDermott might be no barrel of laughs overall on that count, either. Also, McDermott is, of course, rather tax-favorable (he and Rangel have received roughly equivalent ratings in several recent years from Americans for Tax Reform). And there are some on the Hill (from both parties) who I have heard on numerous occasions describe him as generally less-than-engaged, aloof, and/or difficult.

However, it's also worth emphasizing that a McDermott takeover could be, on balance, a half-decent thing for free trade advocates, should there be anything on the free trade agenda to potentially move. Seattle is, of course, heavily trade-dependent and while McDermott hasn't cut as pro-free-trade a line as other members of the Washington delegation, in comparison to equally liberal Democrats from much of the rest of the country, he looks positively libertarian. [intro]...

From the Seattle Weekly... (For the uninformed, Rob McKenna is Washington's current Attorney-General and, in my humble opinion, it is exceedingly likely that he runs for Governor in 2012):

The state Democratic party seems to have outsmarted itself. It bought the url robmckennaforgovernor.com with plans to turn it into an attack site on the man Republicans consider one of their brightest stars.

But when the page went live by accident, resulting in a lot of embarrassing press yesterday, the Democrats quickly took it down and created a redirect.

So with all that publicity, where did the Dems decide to send all the traffic coming to the site--the Democratic National Committee perhaps? Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire's own Web page? No, that would make too much sense.

Instead the Dems sent people to robmckenna.org, i.e., the Attorney General's own promotional site, thereby sending traffic to the very man they're trying to defeat. (McKenna has not yet announced a run for governor, but rumors abound in both parties.)

Democratic party chair Dwight Pelz had no comment today about the maneuver, except to say that the party's technical director, Misty Shock, had settled on this "solution" after being called about a Seattle Times story....

Or at least this, which is apparently not a joke:

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