This week, the 2012 election season finally got to pig out on an empty-calorie feeding frenzy, in which everyone in the media pretended to have some sort of lofty conversation about the role of private equity in society while actually reminding everyone else that political elites are completely removed from the real-life stakes of the lives of normal Americans. It made for a great show, though! Pundits screwed on their super-serious faces and reporters faked thoughtfulness and everyone who was pretending to know something about the subject did a fine job of acting like they were doing something interesting.

But let's face it: The only reason anyone was talking about private equity was because somewhere, some surrogate had gone "off message," and suddenly there was catnip everywhere!

In this case, it was Newark Mayor Cory Booker on "Meet The Press." While presumably attempting some sort of Obama surrogacy, Booker suddenly veered and claimed to be "nauseated" by all the "attacks on private equity." In typical "Meet The Press" fashion, no one on the show seemed aware that something that would soon be deemed extraordinary had just happened. But before long it was a firestorm, Booker was walking it back, and you just knew that everyone was going to be talking around the topic for the next week, because oh my, Cory Booker went wibbly-wobbly, on the teevee!

Some interesting conversations with the American people might have been had. (Like, maybe: "Hey, everyone, if you haven't heard, everyone in politics is, to some degree, a huge sell-out because piles of cash speak louder than your state of economic dislocation.") But to have that sort of conversation with the American people, you actually have to care about the American people. And what the media cares about is a good talking-points derailment disaster. No one's heartbeat ever quickens while everyone on the same "side of the aisle" is robotically intoning the same catch-phrase over and over again. But deviate from the norm, however, and suddenly everyone's browsers crash. (This is how a plain-spoken statement from Joe Biden about marriage equality and basic justice becomes known as a "gaffe.")

There are, of course, a few obvious things to be said about this, the first of which is -- guess what! -- Booker owes his political livelihood to donors from the financial sector. Many of the Democratic pundits who followed in agreement were Acela-stan creatures who share that quality, like Ed Rendell and Harold Ford Jr. And President Obama himself is desperately courting that Wall Street coin, as well -- he's simply hoping that the private equity set will allow him to make the occasional populist grandstand in exchange for privately whispered reassurances that he's on their side. (Leaving aside, naturally, anything his affiliated super PACs have to say about it, because after all -- wink-wink, nudge-nudge! -- he has no control over what they do. No sir!)

Of course, much was made of Booker's subsequent, awkward walk-back, which likely came to pass because Team Obama Re-Elect went bat-poop crazy when they heard his remark. But the reversal also demonstrated the Trouble of Being Cory Booker: See, he needs those Wall Street allies to fund his political ambitions. At the same time, he wants New Jersey voters to think of him as being "one of them." In seemingly protecting Romney, he flew too close to the wrong sun and risked his "of the people" authenticity. (And how concerned is Booker with "authenticity?" Let's recall that he shovels snow every winter, on Twitter.)

Does Mitt Romney's record at Bain matter in this election? To the extent that he claims it exclusively informs his expertise on economic matters, a bunch. So the Democrats are going to "go there." But we're really many months away from being able to determine whether "going there" is actually "working." And it will never be determined unless the media demonstrates an interest in the actual audience of those critiques. When the Obama campaign brings up Bain Capital's misadventures with Ampad, for example, this message is being pitched to the residents of all the decaying Rust Belt erstwhile boomtowns that dot the midwestern swing states.

The media, however, presumes that it's all about them. Witness, for example, Jennifer Rubin's "Ten ways you know the Bain attack is bombing," which appears to have been carefully researched within the 10 square feet around her desk. Most of the people she mentions, in terms of who the attack is influencing, come through a single prism: political elites and Beltway media-types.

Politico is unimpressed? Why would you expect them to emerge from behind their studied "post-concern" pose? Chris Matthews is "having a meltdown?" He blew a bigger gasket when the roads between his home and his office weren't sufficiently plowed of snow.

By the time you get to the part where she's noting that Mickey Kaus thinks that Democrats are wrong (which is no more noteworthy than water claiming to be wet), you know that somewhere, this listicle is going to derail. And, sure enough, it does:

The media is going to town on stories like this from ABC News: "The Obama campaign's latest attack tells the story of workers at an Indiana office supply company who lost their jobs after a Bain-owned company named American Pad & Paper (Ampad) took over their company and drove it out of business. Here's what the Obama Web video doesn't mention: A top Obama donor and fundraiser had a much more direct tie to the controversy and actually served on the board of directors at Richardson, Texas-based Ampad, which makes office paper products. Jonathan Lavine is a long-time Bain Capital executive and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. He is also one of President Obama's most prolific fundraisers." Oh well, then it was smart business and a good faith attempt to save the company.

Yes, well, the reason that Romney's team is making sure everyone knows about Jonathan Lavine is because they are afraid that the "Bain attack" isn't going to bomb. (The Obama team's take on this, by the way, is overstated. And the Romney response contains dodges.)

But, by next week, this moveable mess will have found something newer and shinier to play with, and no one will ever check in with those forgotten Middle Americans from once-flourishing factory towns, who might have their own thoughts on the way Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Cory Booker or the reporters who cover them demonstrate an understanding of their situation. And this week will be known as the week that Booker's comments were really bad for Barack Obama.

But honestly, just how bad will life ever be for Barack Obama? Or Booker? Or Romney? Or any of the people who took part in this conversation? Life inside the bubble is always sweet, and the residents of the bubble spent the whole week reminding us of that.

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COAL COUNTRY LOST TO OBAMA: If it's possible to have a rough week in the Democratic primaries when you are actually going to win them all without any trouble, this was the week, because the vagaries of the Democratic primary schedule put President Obama on the ballot in Arkansas and Kentucky.

Things did not, strictly speaking, go very well. As expected, John Wolfe, who jumped into the Democratic primary as a challenger wherever he was able to do so, actually did well in Arkansas, grabbing 42 percent of the vote. On the level of raw numbers, Wolfe actually underperformed against his poll numbers, which had him losing by a mere seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent. That means Obama did manage to square away a greater share of the undecided vote. But Wolfe had never managed more than 12 percent anywhere else, so it was a minor embarrassment for the incumbent.

In Kentucky, there was no challenger to Obama other than the concept, "uncommitted," which managed the same 42 percent that Wolfe did.

But the numbers don't tell the entire story. Yet there is a story to be told, that links these results with Obama's previous bad primary night in West Virginia (where he ceded votes to a prison inmate) and Oklahoma (where he nearly lost a delegate to anti-abortion activist Randall Terry). Alec McGillis got that story:

These sorry performances by a sitting president with no real competition for his party's nomination are being taken by many as further proof of Obama's weakness as an incumbent running in hard times. Well, no. Obama certainly is a vulnerable incumbent, as suggested by the latest national polling showing him only slightly ahead of Mitt Romney. But Kentucky and Arkansas offer little in the way of affirmation. For the hundredth time, let me suggest that people take a look at this map. It shows the counties where Obama in 2008 got a lower share of the general election vote than John Kerry had four years earlier, even as Obama did vastly better than Kerry nationwide. It is a virtually contiguous band of territory stretching from southwestern Pennsylvania through Appalachia and across the Upland South, finally petering out in north-central Texas. It is, almost to a T, what Colin Woodard, in his fascinating new ethnographic history of North America, American Nations, defined as the territory of the "Borderlanders" -- the rough-hewn Scots-Irish who arrived in this country from the "borderlands" of northern Ireland and Scotland, and claimed for themselves the inland hill country, far from the snooty Northeastern elites and Southern gentry. And look more closely at the map -- where was Obama's 2008 dropoff particularly heavy? In eastern Kentucky and most of Arkansas.

Cast your mind back to 2008. Back then, Obama managed to lose this group early, when he made his famous "guns and religion" remarks. Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (D), himself of Scots-Irish extraction, performed some useful triage as an Obama surrogate, but he won't be back for an encore in 2012.

Nevertheless, as McGillis notes, as hard a time as Obama is having with these voters, they still represent a sunk cost to him electorally. He was never going to be competitive in those states, anyway. But this regional tic has a cousin in the form of working-class whites who feel like the economy is moving in the wrong direction, and Romney is running away with those voters.

GOP HEARTS ROMNEY, FINALLY: Back during the early primary season, Romney's run of success was often met by shrugs from conservative elites. Yeah, but he didn't win 35 percent of the vote. Yeah, but he has a problem with evangelicals. Yeah, but the Tea Party wants a "real conservative." Yeah, but George Will just hates him and says that the GOP should all but concede the White House to secure the Senate. And what followed from there was this constant murmuring in the background that somewhere, in some dark room, there was a team of GOP bigwigs with a super-secret plan to get some new candidate into the race, just in time to save themselves from Romney.

Yeah, but! As it turns out, the GOP has finally learned to stop worrying and love Mitt. Per Jonathan Martin:

Top Republicans, long privately skeptical about their presidential prospects, are coming around to a surprising new view -- that Mitt Romney may well win the White House this November.

Margin-of-error polling, fundraising parity last month, conservative consolidation around Romney and a still-sluggish economy has senior GOP officials increasingly bullish about a nominee many winced over during a difficult primary process.

Interviews with about two dozen Republican elected officials, aides, strategists and lobbyists reveal a newfound optimism that with a competent, on-message campaign, Romney will be at least competitive with a weakened incumbent. That's a dramatic shift from the fatalistic view many party stalwarts shared mere weeks ago.

The real question is: what took them so long? Romney is today the same man that entered the primary -- a person with no particular desire to put his personal stamp on the nation and whose convictions are one-hundred-percent fungible. His closest competitor, Rick Santorum, while possessed of the needed conservative bona fides, had plans and convictions. He wanted to restore the middle-class manufacturing sector, for example. Romney places no such demands on anybody. He is quite literally a figurehead that can be browbeaten into taking a position on whatever you want.

As Grover Norquist sized it up: "We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go ... we just need a president to sign this stuff ... Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States." It took everyone else in the GOP a long time to get up to speed on this, we guess!

ROMNEY ON UNEMPLOYMENT: This week, Romney picked his spot on unemployment, and pointed at it. In an interview with Mark Halperin (that was precisely as Andrew Sullivan described it), Romney said, "I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, or perhaps a little lower."

The first turn of this story went like this: It was an interesting move for the famously risk-averse Romney, especially considering the fact that the Obama administration had made a bold promise on unemployment when they took over the White House. Their failure to do so has dogged them ever since.

On the second turn of the story, things got more interesting, because that's when everyone realized that Romney wasn't promising anything at all. As First Read noted: "The Congressional Budget Office, in its baseline projection of the economic and budget outlook, said it expects the unemployment rate to drop to around 6 percent naturally at some point in 2016, coincidentally toward the end of what would be a hypothetical first term for Romney."

Dan Amira had the best reaction:

Assuming the CBO's forecast is accurate, Romney's projections would seem to somewhat undercut the central premise of his candidacy -- namely, that only he, and not President Obama, knows how to get America back to work. Now he's telling us that it won't make much of a difference who America chooses, which isn't the most impressive pitch in the world. It's kind of like proposing to your girlfriend with, "If you marry me, I promise that I will make you just as happy as most other guys could, and definitely not less happy."

DOWNTICKET RACE RADAR: The Associated Press has the lowdown on a competitive race in North Dakota, where Heidi Heitkamp is the Democrats best hope to hang on to the retiring Kent Conrad's Senate seat. She goes up against state Rep. Rick Berg, described by Salon as "a successful real estate developer and longtime state legislator elected to the House just two years ago with strong tea party support." In Arizona, Ron Barber is in a tough race to keep the seat occupied by his boss, Gabby Giffords, in the Democratic column. Something that connects both races? Both candidates are a bit slow to embrace the Obama administration. (Barber had to go through a Cory Booker-like "clarification" this week over this.)

SUPER PAC TRACTION: Steve Kornacki notes that "the real power of super PACs probably isn't at the presidential level but rather in lower-profile Senate and House races." This is something we've previously discussed in terms of the Nebraska Senate primary that Deb Fischer won, and Kornacki has the skinny on how the same super PAC influence was seen in this week's primary for the House seat in Kentucky's 4th District.

WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT BAIN: They said that Bain's business model was "not what [their party] was about." They called it "exploitation." They called them "vultures." They found it "pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company." They said that Romney's work at Bain was a killer of jobs. They said that "getting rich off failure" was "indefensible." They said Mitt Romney was "not telling the truth." They even said that "the ultimate insult" was Romney telling South Carolinians that "he feels your pain," because "he caused it." And "they" were his fellow Republicans.

VEEPSTAKES: InTrade's top five prospects for Romney's running mate, in order: Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty. But Mitch Daniels says to forget about it, he won't even take the call.

[Got an interesting downticket race, you'd like us to cover? Tips are always welcome. Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

We have apparently entered the part of the 2012 mid season where the rapid accumulation of polling data is met by a burgeoning field of experts who think everyone should ignore the data in new and exciting ways that not everyone agrees upon completely.

Should you care about the national head-to-head tracking data among likely voters excluding cell-phone users? Or is it more important to pay attention to state-by-state snapshots of registered voters, cross-referenced with state-level expressions of approval rating and party enthusiasm? You should definitely do none or all of these things, sometimes or never. Or, you could do the opposite. There is literally something, nothing or everything that you can do about it.

But, hey, let's get some expert opinion up in here. Here's Paul Begala, writing for the Daily Beast:

Quick readers’ guide to the 2012 polls: until the final two weeks, ignore the head-to-head horserace. It’s an artificial question: “If the election were held today, would you vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama?” You can almost hear the poor person on the other end of the phone saying, “It’s only May. We don’t know Romney’s running mate or his platform. We haven’t had debates or even a campaign.”

Instead of obsessing about who’s up and who’s down, look at how folks view the direction of the country. When the “right direction” number creeps up close to 50 percent, the incumbent is going to win. But when it plunges, get ready to back the moving van up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. At this writing, that all-important indicator is a middling 31 percent—almost precisely equidistant from both an outright rejection of Obama and an incumbent’s safe reelection.

Right! Everyone should pay strict attention to the number that currently says that President Barack Obama will almost certainly win the election unless he doesn't. Got it!

(When did 31% become a "middling" number where the poll question, "is the country moving in the right direction" is concerned, by the way? OH, I PROBABLY JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND "POLLING.")

Jonathan Bernstein has better advice that's founded in very simple statistics.

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Romney Revolves On Health Care: Jonathan Cohn has the latest on what Mitt Romney will do for his second attempt at a health-care reform, now that his first attempt has been deemed to be anathema in the GOP circles that once applauded it. An early review: "Never before in history has a candidate run for President with the idea that too many people have insurance coverage.” [The New Republic]

Defining Down "Skill Set": As it turns out, the only skill you need to be a political reporter is to not be a corpse or a plant or a piece of furniture. [Wonkette]

Is Romney A Secret Keynesian Anti-Austerist? The speculation continues, because his Keynesian side keeps on peeking out. On the other hand, so does his tendency to answer questions with Sarah Palin-style word salad. [The Plum Line/Daily Intel]

Non-Surprise Of The Day: I'm sure this is going to just shock you to your core, but as it turns out, "Many local television stations do not consistently evaluate the accuracy of the political ads they air." [CJR]

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For a long while now, the hotly contested Senate race between Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren has centered around on Warren's claim to Native American heritage -- when and where it was made, what impact it has wrought, et cetera. It was never particularly clear why this controversy's prosecution or resolution would in any way benefit the lives of ordinary Americans, but it was very shiny and the media liked to stare at it, in befuddlement.

As it turns out, Massachusetts voters have essentially put the whole hullabaloo on fade, and are waiting for everyone else to join them in the future. As Josh Lederman of The Hill reports:

A Suffolk University poll released Wednesday showed Brown leading Warren by just 1 point, 48 percent to 47. Although 72 percent said they knew about the controversy, 69 percent said it wasn’t important. Just under half of voters said they believed Warren was telling the truth.

And, during the time that this matter was roiling, Warren "actually gained 8 points in the poll despite the flap over her heritage," the same polling outfit found.

George Will could have benefited from this information, because he clearly misjudged public interest in the matter. He published a whole op-ed about it on Thursday, and it included this paragraph:

So, although no evidence has been found that Warren is part Indian, for years two universities listed her as such. She has identified herself as a minority, as when, signing her name “Elizabeth Warren — Cherokee,” she submitted a crab recipe (Oklahoma crabs?) to a supposedly Indian cookbook. This is a political problem.

Whoopsie!

Lederman gets a quote from Joe Malone, a former Massachusetts treasurer and "major GOP player" in the state, who masterfully conjures the perfect image for this weird state of temporary obsession -- a "gapers block." "This has been like a fender-bender on the side of the road," Malone said. "They’re slowing down to look, but it’s not changing where they’re heading."

HONK, HONK. Come on, George Will, you drive too slowly!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

The presidential escapade continues to draw most of the media's attention these days, but there are actually some interesting downticket primaries to watch in Arkansas and Kentucky Tuesday night. Over at the Plum Line, Jonathan Bernstein provides the essential warm-up, and points to a downticket primary in Kentucky that serves as a "proxy" for a power battle between Kentucky's two senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul:

National Journal’s Scott Bland tells us to watch the Republican primary in Kentucky 4 for a proxy McConnell/Paul showdown, with the winner getting a safe GOP seat, and both primaries in Arkansas 4, which has an open seat that will most likely be a Republican pickup. Also, in Arkansas 1, the Democrats may have a chance for a serious November challenge to incumbent Republican Rick Crawford, depending on today’s results. These contests will offer real results, with real consequences, even though the national media prefer to obsess about the presidential race -- despite the probability that nothing happening right now in that campaign will make any difference at all in November.

Bernstein also advises you keep your eye on the upcoming David Dewhurst/Ted Cruz tilt in the GOP primary for the Texas Senate seat. There's a decent chance that we'll soon be adding the GOP primary for the Arizona Senate seat to the watchlist as well. Here's the latest on that from Public Policy Polling:

Republican Senate primaries not going the way they're expected to has become the new norm over the last two election cycles, and there are indications Arizona could be the next state with some upset potential. PPP's newest poll finds that Wil Cardon has cut 27 points off of Jeff Flake's lead over the last three months. Flake still has a solid advantage of 22 points, 42-20, but it's a far cry from the 49 point lead he had at 56-7 when PPP surveyed the state in February.

Cardon's early advertising appears to be having an impact. His name recognition has nearly doubled from 17% to 35% and the numbers suggest that as he continues to become better known he may pull even closer to Flake- among voters who have an opinion about Cardon, whether it's a positive or negative one, he trails only 45-35.

More here.

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Deficit Hysteria Explained: Steve Kornacki gives it a try, in the context of today's "subtle" new Crossroads/GPS ad. [Salon]

This Day in Pixel Parsing: I guess some people have nothing better to do with their lives than worry about the secrets of this photo of Barack Obama hurling a football. [Wonkette]

Arizona Lunacy Spreads To Iowa: Apparently this new "birther" craze I'm hearing so much about is taking Iowa by storm. A storm of stupid. [Taegan Goddard]

From The Foundation Of Obvious Studies: Apparently, it is such a slow newscycle that it's okay to write a big piece about how the key to the election is getting the people who like you to come out and vote for you. Moreover, this is a condition that specifically recalls the 2004 election, because we all remember how in 2008, Obama and McCain were always telling their base, "You know, whatever, just chill." [Wall Street Journal]

Jeff Greenfield has heard all of your wild-eyed ideas about the possibility that President Barack Obama might pursue some election year gambit and switch out Joe Biden for Hillary Clinton atop the 2012 ticket, associated political hacks of America, and he would like you all to cut it out, thanks so much!

When you read a rumination--or recommendation, or prediction--that President Barack Obama will replace Vice President Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket--the odds are overwhelming that its creator was inspired by two thoughts:

1. My deadline is an hour away.

2. I got nothing.

That's 100 percent correct, even though it forgives the possibility that these pieces are mainly conceived by dint of the fact that a political reporter stood too close to Sally Quinn at a cocktail party, heard her thoughts on the matter, and decided that opened the door to a story where "political insiders are discussing the possibility," when they are really just filling the void between drunk and bored with idle blather.

Greenfield goes on to suggest that if the mood suddenly seizes you to write about this, you should ask yourself a series of questions, one of which is "if Obama were to attempt this, how would he explain it?" The nice thing about this is that if Obama were attempting such a maneuver, you wouldn't need to ask a question, because the reason why would be one of two painfully self-evident possibilities: either 1) Biden has perished in an Amtrak derailment, or 2) Obama is losing the election by six points in October, and is all out of ideas.

Find a new toy.

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If President Barack Obama is going to lose one of these Democratic primaries, it obviously won't be to some convict in West Virginia or to anti-abortion performance artist Randall Terry in Oklahoma. However, it could happen in Arkansas tonight, where he is challenged on the ballot by John Wolfe Jr. (Okay, it probably won't actually happen, but let's just suppose for a moment that it's possible.)

Who is John Wolfe Jr.? He is an attorney from Chattanooga, Tenn., who has run multiple campaigns for multiple offices in the past 14 years, racking up an impressive number of "I Participated" ribbons. In 1998, he lost the Democratic nomination for Tennessee's 3rd District congressional seat. He followed that up with an unimpressive showing in 2001's mayoral race in Chattanooga. A year later, he won the 3rd District nomination and lost to Zach Wamp. He repeated this achievement in 2004. In 2007, he crossed "lose a special election for a state Senate seat in Tennessee" off his bucket list.

Now he's running for president, because why not, right? Wolfe has, thus far, competed for the Democratic nomination in New Hampshire, Missouri and Louisiana, and will compete in Arkansas and Texas. His best showing so far has been in Louisiana, where he ended up with 11.82 percent of the vote, qualifying for delegates. State officials have, to date, denied him those delegates, on the grounds that he did not fulfill his filing requirements. Tonight, he might end up taking an even larger -- and potentially uncontestable -- share of Arkansas' delegates.

The Democratic Party reserves the right to deny delegates to anyone running for their nomination who is not running in good faith. This is why Terry and Keith Judd (the aforementioned convict) won't be receiving convention delegates. But Wolfe is not acting in bad faith and, as a former party nominee, falls well into the "plausible" category of competitors, never mind the fact that his is the longest of long shots.

In an interview with WikiNews, Wolfe characterized his candidacy as the pro-Glass-Steagall populist alternative to the incumbent:

So what is your reaction to the showing of prison inmate Keith Russell Judd in that primary?

Wolfe: Well it shows that Obama's left a void. His lack of leadership has left a void and people are upset. He should be out there with the people. He should be in those coal mines. He should be in those towns, where those factories have left, and he ought to be out there with the homeowners who've been foreclosed on by his campaign contributors. People know this man is nothing but a Wall Street creature. They know that his advisers in the White House are all failed executives of failed banks that have been bailed out: people like Emil [Michael], people like [Jacob] Lew, [William] Daley, they're all from the big six: the big corporations we had to bail out. Yes. What did they get for their failures? Promoted to the White House. People know that. Most of the guys who are raising his campaign money. They're sick of it. And that's why people in West Virginia, and lot of the blue collar people don't like Obama. It's his own fault because he is not of the people. He is of Wall Street. People are finally starting to see that.

John Wolfe isn't [of Wall Street]. John Wolfe worked his way up through.

John Wolfe is the sort of person who talks about himself in the third person, apparently.

Wolfe isn't entirely to the left of Obama. For example, he states pretty forthrightly that while he is "for equality" in LGBT issues (and he has compiled a decent record fighting on the gay community's behalf), he personally has "a little bit of a hard time with accepting gay marriage." Not that he thinks Obama's "evolution" is any great shakes: "If you look at what Obama said, it wasn't even progressive."

Wolfe's not entirely averse to the Obama presidency, and says that he "expects to" support him in November. But it won't be very enthusiastic support:

Wolfe: I expect to support the president, but to me, there's not a lot of difference between him and Romney on the economy and there's not that much difference between him and Romney on foreign affairs. There's not that much difference between him and Romney on civil liberties. The differences are a lot narrower than people think and they mostly arise in areas again of identity politics. [...] Romney alarms me a lot more than Obama does in that area. I think Romney would probably give too many tax cuts to the well-to-do, the ones that are already very wealthy. I think that Obama would at least put an end to that. I don't think he pushed quite that hard for a tax increase, but I don't think he'd even fight for tax reductions either.

While Wolfe battles for the nomination, he's simultaneously fighting the Louisiana Democrats, who he says have wrongly denied him the delegates to which he is entitled, accusing the party of "perpetrating a fraud on the vote" and "treating [Obama] again like a king."

Tonight's Arkansas primary provides Wolfe with the opportunity to take his largest share of a statewide primary vote -- and perhaps more delegates -- than any of Obama's ersatz competitors have thus far managed. The role of the thorn in the side of the eventual Democratic nominee is one that Arkansas has uniquely managed to play in previous presidential election cycles. As Dave Weigel remembers, Al Gore and John Kerry both posted some momentarily embarrassing results in Arkansas along the way to securing the nomination.

A poll conducted on May 10 by Talk Business/Hendrix College in Arkansas had Obama up on Wolfe by a surprisingly thin seven-point margin -- 45 to 38 -- with 17 percent still undecided. So, at the very least, you should gird yourself for several "Wolfe At The Door" headlines come Wednesday morning.

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What began in Indiana continued in Nebraska this week, as long-shot state Sen. Deb Fischer scored an underdog victory in Nebraska's GOP primary for the U.S. Senate, besting the efforts of two candidates more firmly established in the state's political hierarchy -- state AG Jon Bruning and state Treasurer Don Stenberg. Combined with Richard Mourdock's victory over Dick Lugar in the Indiana Senate primary, the 2012 midseason is developing a tidy upset narrative in down-ticket races.

It was a perfect storm of circumstances that allowed Fischer to take the race by the reins and ride the rail to an impressive victory. Bruning was the establishment favorite, but going into the race, he had reason to feel that wouldn't be a handicap. Having earned the backing of presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, as well as the Tea Party Express, he had every reason to believe he'd earned the "true conservative" imprimatur. But Bruning may have taken the Tea Party playacting a bit too far when he compared "welfare recipients to scavenging raccoons." And the Nebraska press went at Bruning pretty hard, running embarrassing stories and exposing baggage.

Meanwhile, Stenberg was making his fourth run for the U.S. Senate, and a candidate that desperate to succeed can usually be counted on to battle with the intensity of ... well, let's say a cornered raccoon! And so, for most of the campaign, the ostensible frontrunner and his presumed competition spent their time at each others' throats.

But even as he was beating back Stenberg's threat, the Club for Growth kept Bruning from breaking out. And as this melee wore on, it was Fischer who suddenly started gaining traction in the polls, coming to within spitting distance of Bruning. That's when the rest of what needed to happen fell into place for Fischer. She earned the late-stage endorsement of Sarah Palin (who, having also backed Mourdock, is 2-for-2 in endorsements thus far this cycle), and right when she needed it, Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts (more on him in a moment) kicked in $200,000 for Fischer's closing argument. Fischer had, up until then, been badly outspent. But in this three-way race, a little late money was all she needed to get over the finish line.

In the end, Nebraska conservatives looking for the genuine article picked correctly. But there are ramifications down the line now if she takes the Senate seat. Let's recall that when Mourdock won, he immediately promised an escalation in polarization and the furtherance of the spirit of compromise's slow death. With Fischer, you get much the same -- she's a debt-ceiling crackpot of the highest order, poised to join with her party's hostage-taking legislative gangsters. (This is why even though the Club for Growth backed Stenberg, they'll take this victory.)

Of course, Steve Kornacki sees Fischer's victory as part of a trend that benefits Democrats in general -- one in which "the Republican Party base's revolt against its own establishment" could "actually cost Republicans outright Senate control":

Fischer could end up being a perfectly competent candidate, one who isn't prone to erratic behavior and pointlessly inflammatory rhetoric and who doesn't have any serious skeletons in her closet. Certainly, she showed strong communication skills in her acceptance speech Tuesday night. And because of Nebraska's deep red shading and its particular antipathy toward Democrats in the Obama era, Fischer's margin for error is probably substantial. The same mistakes that derailed [Sharron] Angle in Nevada may only be the difference between, say, a 20- and 10-point win in Nebraska.

That said, Fischer absolutely is an untested candidate. Bruning and the race's other major candidate, state Treasurer Don Stenberg, spent months firing shots at each other and gobbling up all of the attention. The intensity of their battle probably helped create the opening that Fischer seized, but the late timing of her surge also spared her from facing much in the way of media scrutiny or attacks from her rivals. She raised and spent very little money, and not much is known about her.

While Nate Silver has, of late, seen the Senate races growing more favorable to the Democrats, we feel that Kornacki might end up being wrong about Fischer's chances here. Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator who is returning to retake his seat, was a weak candidate against Bruning, and there's no reason why Fischer can't exploit the same weaknesses. And as Kornacki admits, his speculation came ahead of any "meaningful" Fischer-Kerrey poll numbers. "Presumably," Kornacki writes, "the GOP nominee will begin with a solid lead." But we don't think he imagined this sort of solid lead: Rasmussen has Fischer up on Kerrey with a staggering 56-38 lead.

And we continue on the road to Texas and Utah to see if this trend continues.

____________________

BIG-MONEY BATTLES: When the week began, the air quickly grew thick with news of swelling war chests and the coming Super PAC-led cash Armageddon. Crossroads GPS was matching the Obama campaign dollar for dollar. Team Obama Re-Elect was rolling out a plan to stage a Super PAC "Super-O-Rama" (sweet fancy Moses, how the word "super" is going to get abused this year!) convention gambit -- a fundraiser to end all fundraisers in the sworl of peak Obama enthusiasm.

All of this created the sensation that two massively funded campaign behemoths were set to stage the electoral equivalent of the Battle Of Minas Tirith, and that the rest of us had better just bunker down for the coming waves of brutal destruction. But that's when an unplanned preview of coming attractions was dragged out into the light by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times, who obtained a proposed campaign against President Obama -- run by post-modernist campaign creative Fred Davis and funded by the aforementioned Joe Ricketts of Chicago Cubs/TD Ameritrade fame.

Their plan? Resurrect the old Rev. Jeremiah Wright story, stuff that 2008 zombie full of steroids and meth, and unleash hell to the tune of $10 million. But the exposure of this plan led to its immediate demise. Democrats gave it the eye roll. Sensible GOP strategists wondered, "What happened to the critique of Obama's first term?" And what followed was every single party to the plan stepping forward to repudiate it.

The minor figures Davis had proposed as the public face of the campaign publicly gagged. Ricketts himself denounced it. Romney soon followed. Ricketts, now exposed as a guttersnipe and a government handout hypocrite, has got real problems. He'd been seeking assistance from Chicago taxpayers to help him rebuild his private den of failure, Wrigley Field. Now, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel won't return his phone calls. And Romney, in his attempt to make a clean break from Ricketts' plan, was reminded of previous comments he'd made about Wright, prompting this quote for the ages: "I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was."

So by week's end, we got a taste of what the epic tilt between deep-pocketed campaign flunkies was really going to look like: big, loud, stupid nonsense. As Matt Yglesias points out, there's no reason to have believed otherwise: If some rich twits have got enough money to buy slime by the vat, there's no reason a guy like Fred Davis shouldn't take the money and give 'em whatever pile of idiot-carnage they want.

But here's the secret about these big Super PAC battles. In the presidential election, they are going to get a lot of attention because that's where the media eyeballs are. But in the end, the two sides are both going to stack up so much green that either these efforts will be a complete wash, or there's going to be scandal or backlash when one side takes things too far. And as the amount of money makes it a wash, the "going-too-far" part is incentivized, because it's the only way to break out of the deadlock.

Down ticket, it's a different story. There's not as much attention being paid to the lower races. The candidates don't have as much insulation against incendiary attacks. And most critically, those who want to influence the game with their personal fortunes get more bang for their buck. Ricketts is an obvious example -- if he'd gotten his $10 million wish, he'd have plunged the campaign into silliness and made it harder for Romney to square with Obama on his preferred economic argument. (Plus, his Wrigley Field ambitions have been dampened.) But in Nebraska, $200,000 bought him a Senate primary. It's pretty clear where the money was better spent, and where the effort was wasted.

So as the national story of big money in the presidential race gets hyped, store this away: The real Super PAC action is going to happen down-ticket.

TEAM OBAMA RE-ELECT TROLLED BY POLL: The first two polling outfits to report general-election numbers put an interesting strain on everyone's partisan preferences. First out of the gate was the New York Times/CBS poll, which had Romney beating Obama 46 to 43 percent. Next came a Fox News poll, which had Obama up on Romney 46-39. This made for strange bedfellows, as conservatives touted the New York Times for a change whilst Democrats cuddled up with Fox. Everyone's attitudes are evolving on marriage, it seems.

But it was the Obama campaign that ended up getting rattled by the results. In the cross-tabs of the Times poll, Obama was losing women to Romney 46-44, a result that wasn't matched anywhere else, and which really hampered their ability to remain the champion of female voters. So the campaign cried "bias." Now, as Dylan Byers went on to report, there were well-founded reasons to take the Times poll results with a grain of salt. Still, it's May. A little early to be freaked out by a certain poll result.

Of course, when is a good time to get publicly flustered by a poll result? We say right around a quarter-till-never. There's nothing to gain from frantically waving your arms at a single poll. In a race like the one we're likely to have between Obama and Romney, if you wait a little while, you'll get more data and a better picture. If a trend develops, then it's time to worry, yes. But publicly sweating this stuff makes you look skittish. And it makes us wonder if there's more to that than a single poll result.

As it happens, the rest of the polls did tighten. The current Real Clear Politics polling average puts Obama up 45.8 to 44.1. Obama's electoral map shows a slightly more favorable spread. But this is going to be a close race. Everyone should get used to it.

RON'S RUN DONE, RAND'S RUN BEGUN? We're going to just lightly tread on the idea that Ron Paul's begun the final stage of his 2012 campaign. This week, Paul has suspended participating in future competitions on the primary calendar. But he is still actively looking for delegates and is putting together a plan for the Republican National Convention. So his effort continues. We want to make that clear, because we don't want anyone else accidentally calling up the New York Observer to complain about our coverage.

As we have been very dutifully reporting all this while, the Paul campaign is not entirely about competing for a presidential nomination. It is also geared toward building out the campaign infrastructure for future Paulist efforts. This year, the Paul campaign put a huge emphasis on political training and professionalism -- the goal was to put a shaved and well-groomed face on the movement, train foot soldiers in the hidden mechanics of the primary system, and get acolytes used to working with state-level party functionaries. This shrewd strategy has caught more than a few people off guard, especially the media: While they were scoffing at Paul's long-shot chances, the Paul team was building a better machine.

Now, Ron Paul is making decisions that suggest he's moved on to considering the future of his movement, and especially, his son's place in it. The timing of the decision -- it comes before the Kentucky primary -- is the key, as Ben Jacobs notes: "If Ron Paul actively stayed in the race and didn't win any delegates in Kentucky, he would damage his son's political stock in a state where, despite being a U.S. senator, Rand Paul is still a political outsider."

Now, the elder Paul can keep his delegates bound to him and try to extract concessions in Tampa, while Paul fils sits pretty, waiting for his turn to carry the banner.

DNC MIA IN #WIRECALL: Greg Sargent has been all over the story of the Democratic National Committee's anger-inducing reticence to spend money in the effort to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election that pits Walker against the man he defeated in 2010, Tom Barrett. Four days ago, Sargent spoke to an apoplectic Wisconsin Democratic Party official, who complained, "Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support." Now, it looks as if the DNC might get involved, but as Rosie Gray reports, it's an open question as to whether they might do more than dip a toe in the water.

The anti-Walker forces on the ground think this is a winnable race, but the run of play is currently going in Walker's direction. So why no DNC? Le sigh. This is just the typical behavior of the Democratic Party establishment -- they want to hold on to the passion that the recall supporters have manifested in Wisconsin and spread it across the nation by November. But they are just too terrified of losing an election. Even if Walker retains his seat, if the DNC believes they can extract a "winning message," they see that as "victory."

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Jonathan Chait sums up Mitt's "Prairie Fire" speech about the budget deficit: "It's hard to wrap your arms around Romney's argument, because it's an amalgamation of free-floating conservative rage and anxiety, completely untethered to any facts, as agreed upon by the relevant experts." Fact-checkers went on to savage Romney's oration.

THE WEEK IN VEEPSTAKES: Tim Pawlenty says he's not the guy. Chris Christie says go away. So suddenly, everyone's interested in ... Bobby Jindal?

ROEMER REACTS TO AMERICANS ELECT FAILURE: The former Louisiana governor talks to Dave Weigel about Americans Elect's decision to give up: "I'm digging deep for words, but all I'm coming up with is bullshit." Buddy Roemer's hopes for proceeding now lie in earning the Reform Party's nomination. Roemer had wanted Americans Elect to invigorate his campaign -- and among "declared candidates," he was the frontrunner. But Buddy, we warned you that going in with Americans Elect was a huge mistake.

COMING UP: Next week, we have primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky. Arkansas could be a close race ... for the Democrats. Huh, what? Well, remember how some prison inmate garnered a substantial portion of West Virginia's primary vote against POTUS? Well, different state, similar concept: "[A]ccording to a Talk Business–Hendrix College poll conducted on May 10, Obama leads John Wolfe, a virtually unknown candidate, in Arkansas's 4th congressional district by only 7 points, 45–38."

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Nate Silver has taken a look across the great pollscape of American politics and has some good news for Democrats -- their odds of keeping control of the Senate have improved:

When we last took an overview of Senate races in December, Republicans appeared to be slight favorites to take control from Democrats, with a net gain of four to five seats representing the most likely outcome.

Since then, however, Republican fortunes have diminished somewhat because of problems with the quality of some candidates and key retirements. Although Republicans are most likely to gain seats on balance because Democrats have considerably more incumbents up for re-election, the question of whether the Republicans will win enough to gain control now appears to be closer to a tossup.

But there's a catch! It comes in the form of former Maine governor Angus King, who stepped up to run for the Senate seat of the departing Olympia Snowe, as an independent. King has massive in-state popularity, so much so that he became the instant frontrunner and chased the would-be contenders on the Democratic side out of the race. Now, Silver pitches King as the potential difference maker in the Senate:

Currently, we project the most likely outcome to be Republicans winning 50 seats, Democrats 49, and Mr. King the seat in Maine. Under those circumstances, the Democrats would retain control of the Senate if Mr. King caucused with them and President Obama won re-election, making Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. the tiebreaking vote. Otherwise, Republicans would control the chamber.

The problem of course, is that King seems to be a bit unclear about who he'd caucus with, and how this whole "caucusing with people" thing works. A few weeks ago, Jonathan Weisman attempted to divine where King stood, politically, and it's pretty clear that he's basically a left-leaning centrist:

Which side Mr. King leans toward is not so obscure. He thinks the health care law was not ambitious enough. He would have voted for the stimulus and has no qualms about benefiting from it.

He will vote for Mr. Obama’s re-election, and he offers serious doubts about Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee.

[...]

He opposes the prescription for Medicare in the House Republicans’ budget as 'a recipe for a tremendous shift to the elderly of their health care costs.' And after a long conversation with Erskine B. Bowles, a chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, he said he was 'dating' -- but not marrying -- the deficit-reduction plan put forward by Mr. Bowles and former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Republican. Taming the deficit without revenue increases 'isn’t realistic,' he said.

Of course, as Weisman reports, King also said he "might have voted against the Wall Street regulatory overhaul," which is the only place he really gets close to the Senate GOP caucus.

Addressing this complicated matter of which side to take, King has offered a high-toned paean to individualism, saying: "We could send down a combination of Pericles and Thomas Jefferson, and if that person’s reporting to Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell, he’s going to be ineffective. Every vote is a test vote. Every vote is party loyalty. We’re sunk if it keeps up this way."

Of course, as Alex Pareene points out: "'Caucusing' with a party in the Senate does not mean 'always voting in lockstep with.' Caucusing with the Democrats does not force you take take marching orders from Harry Reid, as anyone who has paid attention to the news over the last five years or so should know by now. But not caucusing with anyone means you don’t get any committee assignments, or any say over legislative priorities."

In the end, I think David Dayen put it well when he said, "Angus King is about to become the most insufferable man in America." Have fun wooing this guy, everybody.

___________________________

Bring Me The Heads Of All The Social Media Gurus!: Patrick Ruffini, who knows the intersection of politics and technology like the back of his hand, takes a preliminary look at Team Obama Re-Elect's "Dashboard," and advises: "Want to Win in 2012? Hire Engineers and Data Scientists, Not Social Media Experts." This is 100 percent correct. [The Playbook @ EngageDC]

Jon Huntsman's Daughters Are Still Trying To Make 'Jon Huntsman' Happen: Should Jon Huntsman run for Mayor of New York City? Should Jon Huntsman start a strawberry farm? Should Jon Huntsman count how many angels can dance on the head of Jon Huntsman? Can Jon Huntsman catch hold of Emptiness? If a tree falls on Jon Huntsman and there is no one around to hear it, does the tree say, "Well, at least my death had a purpose?" We may never know the answers to these questions. [Salon]

Veep Vetter Comes Clean: A.B. Culvahouse has done everything short of searching the body cavities of vice presidential prospects. Of Sarah Palin, Culvahouse says, "I summed up her selection as 'high risk, high reward.' I stand by that advice." [Wall Street Journal]

What, This Again? And we can dial back the "It's been [X] days since someone had the bright idea that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden should swap jobs" sign back to zero. [Chicago Sun-Times]

This Day In Repeal And Replacishness: Jonathan Bernstein has the skinny on the GOP's ever-continuing evolution of what they plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with. The options include: 1) a lot of what's in the Affordable Care Act anyway, except the stuff that holds down the deficit, 2) pretending to want to do that, and 3) replacing it with the Paul Ryan "Hunger Games" scenario. Regardless, they'll keep on straight up leading Politico reporters on, for funsies! [The Plum Line @ WaPo]

Well, after a couple days of fretting behind the scenes with the members of its "online community" (at least those few members who managed to discover the secret link by which they could communicate their feelings), Americans Elect has decided to give up on dreams of changing the way America elects presidents forever, through some unwanted third party candidate who would do some undefined stuff for some undefined reason. The organization's national press secretary Ileana Wachtel Thursday afternoon released a statement that essentially admits defeat without actually admitting defeat.

"There is a desire among delegates and millions of Americans who have supported Americans Elect to see a credible candidate emerge from this process," wrote Wachtel, against evidence to the contrary. This includes the fact that their best possible nominee, Buddy Roemer, only obtained 6,293 support clicks, far short of the level of support he needed to earn the group's nomination. None of this is Buddy Roemer's fault. By means of comparison, he earned 16,309 votes during the time he was actively participating in the GOP's primary process.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that Americans Elect opted to not pursue what would have been its best option -- to just overthrow the selection standards that never threatened to work in the first place:

However, the rules, as developed in consultation with the Americans Elect delegates, are clear. As of this week, no candidate achieved the national support threshold required to enter the Americans Elect Online Convention in June. The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end. Americans Elect, from the outset, has been a rules-based process, with the rules publicly available and open to debate by the delegates. Our key priorities have been to: 1) honor the trust Americans Elect has built with the delegates and American public; 2) require candidates to earn the nomination by building support among the Americans Elect delegate community and American voters; and 3) create a basis for a solid future for the Americans Elect movement. This decision honors these priorities.

Wachtel went on to list Americans Elect's accomplishments. One of those, the organizations ability to secure ballot access, is definitely worth noting. The rest, however, are dubious. When it comes to "building the technological platform for the first nonpartisan secure national online primary at AmericansElect.org," this was clearly a $9 million bust. The group's boast of attracting "a significant base of more than 4 million supporters," falls flat because it's pretty clear that this "base" failed the test of "significance." "Educating the national and local media on the Americans Elect mission," was something the organization did constantly. Convincing the national and local media to take the effort seriously was harder, for the obvious reasons. (I'll never get tired of pointing out that Bill Belichick was a "candidate.")

"Let's make history!" concluded Wachtel (in the emailed version of the statement). You know ... maybe someday! As long as there are people foolish enough to throw millions of dollars at a weird group that has a zazzy solution that's in search of a problem, Americans Elect is a light that will never go out. In the meantime, the 2012 election cycle will continue with perfectly credible third party candidates, like Gary Johnson, the end.

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At some point today, the folks behind Americans Elect -- the super whiz-bang effort to get an anthropomorphic Thomas Friedman column elected president -- will announce what they are going to do now that the big run-up effort to get people to sufficiently support one or more of a thousand possible candidates has ended in failure. Because they probably have to do something. As Dave Weigel notes, Americans Elect has secured ballot access in over half of all states (even post-failure, the organization touted its success getting on the ballot in Maryland), and those ballot lines are not going anywhere.

The easy speculation is that AE will either roll back some variety of the "support click" standard it initially set or dispense with the whole illusion of millions of people "choosing" the candidate online entirely. But the plan was for the organization's leadership to have a dialogue with the "community" of supporters to determine the path ahead. Of course, the obvious problem with this is that Americans Elect has not yet demonstrated that it actually understands the internet well enough to use it as a tool for creating and activating a community. That's why it's no surprise to read this report from Jonathan Tilove, who says that the "process by which Americans Elect conferred with its "community" in advance of the decision due later today was ... typically odd, obscure and limiting":

Americans Elect did not e-mail its registered delegates to solicit their input, or in any evident way advertise on its website that it was interested in their ideas as part of what Byrd had characterized as a fateful discussion that would determine the future of the ambitious $35 million effort to put an independent presidential candidate on all 50 state ballots

In order to join the on-line discussion, a member of the AE community had to stumble upon a link about 200 words into a piece titled "Stepping Up Means Stepping into the Line of Fire", posted on the AE site Wednesday by Mark McKinnon, a member of its Board of Advisors, which led to a page at which visitors were solicited to "tell us how you think we should move forward."

And once you get to that page, it's a disaster. Atop the page, there's a banner that reads, "Due to volume, only the 15 most recent replies are being displayed." That doesn't do much to allow this "community" to hear one another out.

Some users are pressing on and making positive suggestions, from limiting the field of candidates -- which should have been done months ago -- to pushing back all the deadlines again. But others are disgruntled.

One user, Charlton Holmes, writes: "From my experience and what I am reading above, u have to come up with a website that is user friendly, simple and works. To be honest, yours is aweful [sic]. I own several small businesses and every one of our websites puts yours to shame. If people get frustrated by your website they lose respect for your organization."

Josh Green adds: "Very disappointed, but not surprised, that you did not get enough participants. I think you failed because you can't start a movement based on nothing but centrist politics and the desire for bipartisanship."

And David K. notes: "Less than FOUR HUNDRED of your alleged 400,000 delegates have provided feedback here."

So Americans Elect continues to struggle with basic online community-building. Of course, that's the charitable explanation for why users have to work so hard to find out where they can find this space to vent. The other explanation is that Americans Elect isn't really all that interested in what its membership has to say about anything. Transparency has never exactly been its thing, after all.

But hey, from what I gather, Americans Elect seems pretty convinced that it's everyone else who's failed them.

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You probably haven't been paying much attention to the Nebraska GOP Senate primary (there is one, and it's tonight), because feh, Nebraska. But over at the Plum Line, Jonathan Bernstein has a good take on how the campaign finance orgy unleashed by the Citizens United ruling could bite back on the GOP's hopes of picking up Ben Nelson's old seat.

Right now, there's a three-way race brewing among Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, state treasurer Don Stenberg, and the previously unheralded Deb Fischer, who represents the 43rd District in the Nebraska State Senate. As Bernstein noted, the x-factor in the race is a cool $200,000 that Fischer received from Joe Ricketts, who owns the Chicago Cubs. Cubs money isn't traditionally associated with the concept of "people winning things," but in this case, the most recent polls have Fischer up on Jon and Don.

Per Bernstein:

This is exactly the kind of contest that people concerned about the wide-open spending associated with the Citizens United decision should be worried about. Big money isn’t apt to make much of a difference in presidential campaigns, because of diminishing returns and the large amounts of money and press coverage that those races receive. Nor is it likely that big money will matter a lot in congressional races this November; while it could sway some votes on the margins, party identification, and not advertising, drives most votes in November.

But a Senate primary is exactly where someone should theoretically be able to show up, write a check, and buy himself or herself a Senator.

Whoever wins this primary will go up against former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey. Overall, it's a tough environment for Kerrey to run in, but you can bet that the Nebraska GOP would probably prefer that Bruning prevails.

______________________

Eric Griego Goes There: Griego, a Democrat running for the U.S. House of Representatives in New Mexico's First Congressional District, minces no words in his new ad: "I'm Eric Griego and I approve this message because I won't stop until Wall Street bankers who broke the law go to jail." As Greg Sargent notes, Griego's is "perhaps the first to campaign on a call for jailing bankers." [The Plum Line]

Seems Like An Awful Lot Of Effort To Just Interview Nancy Pelosi: Nancy Pelosi is so confident that the Democrats will take back the House that she agreed to be interviewed by Jonathan Karl whilst "power-walking" with ABC News' Jonathan Karl, behind a camera-laden pedicab. [ABC/Yahoo News]

Can The Government Be Run Like A Business?: No: “The presidency’s unique requirements mean that everyone who holds the office needs some on-the-job training, something Romney has done before. Still, the White House would bring unfamiliar constraints. There’s no equivalent in the corporate world to the separation of powers that often thwarts a president’s will. And the job demands political savvy more than managerial excellence." That's from Bloomberg News, who I hear have considerable expertise in the business world.

Listicles Aren't All Bad, Part One: Brad Phillips, otherwise known as Mr. Media Training, gives us 10 questions that all candidates should be able to answer at all times. And yes, he says it's OK to not know the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan. [Mr. Media Training]

Listicles Aren't All Bad, Part Two: And Buzzfeed's Rebecca Elliot gives us "7 Very Bad Predictions About Americans Elect." These are mostly LOL-worthy conjectures that Americans Elect would be the Amazon or iTunes of politics. The only genuinely risible statement comes from John Avlon, who insists that critics of AE are just "people trying to defend the status quo." No, John, some critics just didn't think the solution to the two-party system is some dopey Internet thought exercise ran by shady weirdos. [Buzzfeed]

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Yesterday, Politico reported that the Romney campaign had come to an important strategic decision that basically boiled down to, "Let's take all the really stupid things the McCain campaign did in 2008 and not do them. Not do them HARD!" To wit, rather than pick some untested non-white or non-male running mate, they were going to look for an “incredibly boring white guy.” Well, one person who was included in that intensely ecru mix of possibilities, Tim Pawlenty, says that he won't be that incredibly boring white guy.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger of the Star-Tribune has the news:

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who once had his sights set on the White House, said Monday that he absolutely is not vying to be vice president.

"I'm going to take my name off the list, so if ... you're a journalist, an observer, remove my name from the list," Pawlenty said. "I went through it before with McCain."

Yes, there was a time when Pawlenty thought he was actually going to be tapped as McCain's Veep, but McCain went with Sarah Palin, and four years later, Pawlenty still needs some time to heal from that heartbreak.

Stassen-Berger continues:

This time around, Pawlenty has been mentioned as a possible contender for Mitt Romney's second-in-command, often followed by a one-word assessment from pundits: "boring."

Actually, I didn't realize that anyone had "mentioned" this until his name showed up in the Politico article, but we'll go with that. I do find it curious to hear that "pundits" had dismissed Pawlenty as "boring" when the other names that have come up as running-mate possibilities -- and we remind you, we're on the hunt for "incredibly boring" people! -- include Rob Portman and Mitch Daniels. I'm left to assume that Pawlenty is the bad kind of "boring," while Portman and Daniels are some sort of awesome version of boring.

At any rate, Pawlenty has officially declined to serve, which is interesting. Perhaps too interesting!

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Today's big campaign take-out from Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei involves the Mitt Romney campaign's strategy in the wake of lessons learned from 2008: "Whatever [John] McCain did, do the opposite." Right away, you're thinking, "Well, sure. Doesn't that basically boil down to not picking Sarah Palin as your running mate, and not getting so freaked out at the economy that you start doing irrational things?"

Yes, that's precisely what it boils down to!

Many of the current strategy discussions are centered on not falling into the traps McCain did: looking wobbly as a leader and weak on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign. The private discussions include ruling out any vice presidential possibilities who could be seen as even remotely risky or unprepared; wrapping the entire campaign around economic issues, knowing this topic alone will swing undecided voters in the final days; and, slowly but steadily, building up Romney as a safe and competent alternative to President Barack Obama.

I might add: do not pointlessly antagonize Spain. But, you know, season for taste.

As McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt said about 2008, McCain ran during "the worst political environment any Republican presidential candidate had every [sic] faced." Romney is running in a more favorable electoral climate, and so there's less need to take a bunch of crazy risks. Of course, in Romney, you have a candidate that's much less inclined toward campaign stunts. As Alex Pareene notes in his "Rude Guide To Mitt," Romney is famously risk-averse:

Here's an odd thing about Mitt Romney, hugely successful capitalist: He's incredibly risk-averse. He is not at all tempted by high-risk, high-reward opportunities. Mitt Romney likes to have all the available data and then take his time making the safest decision possible. So when [Bill] Bain asked him to run Bain Capital, Romney said no, because it was a new venture, and it might not work. So Bain had to promise Romney that if Bain Capital went bust, Romney could have his old job back -- with any raises and bonuses he missed -- and that an elaborate cover story would be invented to protect Romney from the blame. It was only then, once there was never any possibility of a less-than-comfortable end result, that Romney decided to embark on this new adventure.

So don't expect Romney to do something like "suspend his campaign" to go into faux crisis-management mode. (I'm not ruling out the possibility that he will proclaim us all to be Georgians.)

And expect someone very beige in terms of his running mate as well. In fact, one of the more intriguing bits of speculation contained in the Allen/VandeHei treatise is that former Minnesota governor and sometimes-reluctant Romney surrogate Tim Pawlenty is sitting pretty solidly on the V.P. shortlist. As you know, my favorite retcon exercise is imagining what might have happened if McCain had opted for Pawlenty instead of Palin. (McCain still would have lost, but America would have been spared a couple of reality television shows and a Game Change movie.)

READ THE WHOLE THING:
Mitt Romney's mantra: Avoid John McCain's mistakes [Politico]

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On Tuesday, North Carolinians voted in favor of an amendment that bans same-sex marriage and civil unions. North Carolina is the last southern state without such legislation, and some gay-rights advocates described the bill as an attack not just against gays but against all unmarried couples and their children. Yet some high-profile activists chose to sit out the fight, underscoring deep divisions in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights movement.

North Carolinians voted in large numbers in favor of Amendment 1, which formally defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. This came as a huge blow to a coalition of civil-rights groups in North Carolina, who have been fighting the legislation since it first appeared on the ballot last September and who, together with their opponents, have spent a combined $3 million on the fight. These critics of the bill have blamed the loss on a wide variety of culprits, from the Republican lawmakers who introduced the ballot to religious leaders who threw their weight behind it.

But while most of these opponents are familiar foes of gay-rights legislation, the activists also pointed to a lack of support from members of their own community.

"I think the movement is fragmented," said Pam Spaulding, a blogger and one of the most prominent gay-rights activists in the state.

Spaulding, whose website calls attention to gay-rights philanthropists that haven't contributed time and resources to the fight against the amendment, is among many activists who have expressed disappointment in the lackluster show of support by traditional allies of gay-rights legislation. One such ally is Freedom To Marry, the nation's leading organization advocating for same-sex marriage.

Freedom to Marry initially tried to keep the bill off the ballot, but after that effort failed they withdrew their support. It's not a strategic investment, the organization says. It would rather spend its money in states where same-sex marriage is a tenable possibility.

"There are many battles underway this year," said Evan Wolfson, the founder and director of Freedom to Marry, adding that it has put people on the ground in states like Maine, Minnesota and Washington, where same-sex marriage is either on the ballot or up for a possible referendum.

North Carolina hardly presents such an opportunity. After all, same-sex marriage is already illegal there, and this law goes even further, making it unconstitutional. If gays ever win the right to marry in the South, says Wolfson and others, it will be when the Supreme Court rules on the issue or the federal government steps in.

Even if advocates were to beat back the North Carolina amendment this year, he said, it would merely mean "waking up alive." And while waking up alive is a good thing, he went on, Freedom to Marry has its "eyes on the prize of winning marriage nation wide."

Another ally that has incurred criticism is the furniture magnate Mitchell Gold, a gay businessman who has given substantially to other efforts. He lives in North Carolina, but doesn't like the way that the activists who opposed the amendment framed the debate. For example, on the website of The Coalition to Protect NC Families, the group leading the battle against the law, a banner warns that the amendment could harm women, children and domestic violence victims. But it makes no explicit reference to gay rights at all.

The group wanted to "de-gay" the cause, said Gold.

"They didn't want to talk about the fact that this is hurting gay people," he said.

"Part of their whole thing was we're going to do this campaign and even if we lose we're going to educate people," Gold added. "So what did you teach people in the state? What you taught people in the state is that this law might hurt heterosexuals in a domestic relationship. What did this campaign teach the North Carolina community about gay people?"

Gold thinks that groups should teach people about religious opposition to gay rights, or as he put it, "religious bigotry," and he plans to donate money to that effort.

Jeremy Kennedy, the campaign manager for The Coalition to Protect NC Families, suggested that it would be a bad strategy to focus on gay marriage and religion. "We're not asking you to make a religious or moral decision about marriage," Kennedy said. "We're asking you to make a decision about whether this amendment will hurt people, and it will."

Gold said he's contributed to other groups opposing the amendment, and Freedom To Marry says they've supported the cause, at least in principle, and they've written emails "rejecting this cruel and discriminatory amendment."

But some activists think that isn't enough. Adam Bink, the director of online programs at the Courage Campaign, a group that has been working to get voters to the polls in recent weeks, says that the movement can't afford to give up on gay couples who don't have the relatively good fortune to live in Minnesota or Maine.

Said Bink, "I think it's really important that we don't leave any state behind."