National

From Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter:

“Mitt Romney’s continued embrace of Donald Trump and refusal to condemn his disgraceful conspiracy theories demonstrates his complete lack of moral leadership. Now he’s even standing by silently as Trump assails John McCain’s courage in standing up to the most extreme and hateful voices in the Republican Party—all in order to raise money for himself. If Mitt Romney lacks the backbone to stand up to a charlatan like Donald Trump because he’s so concerned about lining his campaign’s pockets, what does that say about the kind of president he would be?”

There was not much by way of polls released over the holiday weekend, so we will have to make do today by looking at some internals of recent polls. Given that the economy is the most important issue of this election, and given the conventional wisdom that a bad economy dooms President Obama, how do we explain Nevada?

We have a foster family shortage in Delaware. The number of foster children that need homes outpaces the number of foster families available to take them in, by an astounding 2 to 1 margin. Therefore, Lt. Governor Matt Denn is asking religious organizations, churches, mosques, and synagogues from around the state to ask their congregations to consider opening their homes for these foster children.

We got polls out of Georgia and Indiana!!! That never happens. Yesterday we saw the new NBC / Marist Polls in Virginia, Ohio and Florida. Aside from the top lines, we have other results from that poll that are interesting. In almost all issue areas, Obama leads. Social Issues like abortion, contraception and same sex marriage, Obama is viewed as the better candidate to handle them. Same thing for foreign policy and the economy. The only issue area where Romney leads is the "the national debt," which is ironic since Romney would add untold trillions to the debt with his massive tax cuts and continued wars on Afghanistan and Iran.

Today, I formally filed for election to serve the banks (TC, see my notes throughout. "people" sounds better here) of Delaware in the United States Senate. When I take the train back home to Delaware almost every night, I laugh my ass off at the fact that I have (too much transparency... try "am humbled by") the opportunity the people of the First State have given me to serve them in our nation's capitol. Delaware is a place where the petty politics of division and negativity that we see all too often in Washington these days aren't welcome.

Was this the big announcement yesterday? Cory Booker? I guess Anthony Wiener wasn't available to take a crap on the President's re-election messaging.

And now onto the House. Since the last time we did this in March, some new candidates have filed. But before we go on, I should note something. In the chart below, I list every incumbent unless they have announced that they are not running for reelection. In a lot of cases, some incumbents have not yet filed, but they have some more time to do so, since the deadline is not until July 10. All 41 Representatives are up for election. So let's see what has developed in the House races since the last time we reviewed the playing field.

It has been a couple of months since we have done this, so let's check in on the playing field of our General Assembly races this fall. First up is the Senate. The Senate has 21 members, 14 of them are Democrats and 7 are Republicans. The GOP would need to pickup 4 seats to gain of majority of 11. The big news since we last did this is that Liane Sorenson, the moderate Republican Senator who was redistricted into a very competitive race with Democratic Senator Dave Sokola in a new merged 8th Senate District in the Newark area, decided to retire rather than face Sokola. I must say, I found that surprising. I had listed that race as a toss up of course, but if I had to bet the race, I would have said that Sorenson had the edge. But maybe the demographics of the new 8th SD were too daunting.

Holy poll drop, Batman. New presidential polls in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Wisconsin change our map dramatically. The new map in question. Yes, I am putting it at the top now, and also in the excerpt section you see on the front page.