Open Thread

Today begins the Supreme Court's nearly unprecedented three days of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Given Commerce Clause precedent and caselaw going back to at least the mid 1930's, the Obamacare law should be upheld as constitutional. But you never know with conservative activist judges.

Since I was MIA yesterday, we have lots and lots of polling goodness inside today. In Connecticut, both Democrats and Republican agree that failed 2010 candidate Linda McMahon should be the Republican nominee for Lieberman's seat. See why inside.

I am traveling today, so hopefully my wonderful colleagues will provide you with some Open Thread goodness. Or you can provide it in the comments. See you tomorrow!

Mitt Romney is your nominee. Or then again maybe not. The sound of the celebrations of the Republcan side is .... is..... deafeningly quiet. I would more describe it as a half interested groan. Even though Mitt Romney has no real meaningful opposition, he may still fail to capture a majority of the delegates until June, unless of course Santorum and Gingrich drop out and endorse Romney now, and that is not going to happen. So given that, I would have to say Mitt Romney is the weakest presidential nominee on the Republican side since Wendell Wilkie.

From Chuck Todd:

The earliest Mitt Romney could win the 1,144 delegates needed to capture the GOP nomination, per our count is May 29, and that's assuming he wins every single delegate after today. If you assume that he wins a 60%-40% split of the remaining the delegates, Romney won't get to 1,144 until June 26, when Utah holds its primary. And if Romney and Rick Santorum continue to trade victories as they've been doing over the past month -- with Santorum winning his demographic strongholds and Romney winning his -- Romney would fall about 50 delegates short of the magic number, according to our math.

OPEN CONVENTION!!! SARAH PALIN COMPROMISE NOMINATION!!! No, no, God does not love me that much

Romney looks to be heading to a significant win in Illinois, which makes me wonder why the hell Rick Santorum wasted time in Puerto Rico sunning himself. That time lounging may have been better spent campaigning in deep red sections of downstate Illinois.

Governor Markell was on CNBC again this past Thursday. Here is part of his appearance.

Here are some polling numbers for this Green Saturday. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all.

A new Gallup Poll finds just 35% of Republicans say they would vote "enthusiastically" for either Mitt Romney if he wins the GOP nomination. Just 34% were enthusiastic about voting for Rick Santorum and only 28% were enthusiastic for Newt Gingrich.

"What should really give Republicans sleepless nights (if the numbers hold) is the demographic groups currently supporting Obama. In the Pew poll, Obama outperforms Romney by 20 points among all women, and by 31 points among women aged 19-49. He outperforms Romney by 28 points among young people 18-29 years old and ties him among people 65 and older. And he outperforms Romney in every region of the country and among every income group." -- Charles Blow Oh, and Mike Matthews is back.

Shockingly, there are no new primary or general election polls to parse today. To feed the polling addition, here some new Presidential approval polls, which tend to show the CBS poll was an outlier. Also check out this op-ed in the New York Times from an Executive from Goldman Sachs who is burning bridges while resigning.

“I’ve got a lot of good friends, the owner of the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets, both owners are friends of mine,” he added. “But let’s keep him away from New England.” — Mitt Romney, stepping in it once again. He is almost a self parody at this point.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll indicates that 60 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan is not worth its costs, and Republicans are evenly divided on whether the war has been worth it. Indeed 54% say the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan without completing its current effort to train Afghan forces to become self-sufficient. With the recent and disgusting murders by an American soldier, we need to hightail it out of there. And soon.