Late Afternoonish/Early Eveningish Open Thread

... the truth of the matter is that mass opinion often bears rather little connection to the tidy ideological landscape that political elites take for granted. Thus, while ideological debate among elected officials and public intellectuals does seem to have shifted significantly to the right over the past 30 years, it is far from obvious the political views of ordinary citizens have become noticeably more conservative....

--Larry Bartels, in Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, due out May 2008.

This thread is .... wide open!