Wednesday and Thursday mark Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential elections. Sadly, what should be a purple-fingered moment brings some hope and much disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – Mubarak was a loathsome stooge, a petty and incompetent rentier tyrant who deserved what he got and more.

Political dysfunction. Partisanship at record levels. Attack politics run amok. And public approval of Congress scraping the single digits (Sen. John McCain is fond of saying it's down to blood rlatives and paid staff).

Senator Blanche Lincoln's victory in the Arkansas Democratic runoff last week was a huge blow to Big Labor and removes the credibility of the unions' threat to end the careers of Democrats who don't do their bidding.

Welcome to open-field politics.

Barack Obama is showing signs that he may keep his distance from the Democratic Party as president.

New Orleans has elected its first white mayor since 1970 in a city where politics has long been racially divided.

Politically, it's still November 7, 2000: The two parties remain in stalemate.

Ukraine faced a fateful choice on Sunday: not just between two sharply opposed candidates in a presidential election runoff, but between two political systems. Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko promised a genuine liberal democracy along Western lines, while Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych represented those forces that, backed by a neo-imperial Russia, would rule this large European nation through force and fraud.