Matt Taibbi:
It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.
"We're shaking up the good ol' boys," Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. "Buck up," she says, "or stay in the truck."
Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?
This is one good read.
Greg Sargent:
"It is my understanding that Sharron Angle believes that there is a hoax, under the guise of autism, where you would include requests for treatments that may not even be required," said Sebelius, who was in Nevada promoting health care reform with Harry Reid.
Sebelius pounded Angle's comments as "insulting" to parents and kids, adding: "I don't know if there is anyplace in the country where the differences in the candidates are more stark than here."
Gallup:
Americans are much more likely to believe the Republicans rather than the Democrats will win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in this fall's midterm elections. More than 8 in 10 Republicans believe their party will win, while 62% of Democrats think their party will win. Independents by almost 2 to 1 (50% to 28%) think Republicans will win.
Chris Cillizza:
Stepping back from the micro to the macro, Democratic pollsters also argue that there is some evidence of a rallying effect from the Democratic base although the enthusiasm gap -- at least according to Gallup data -- is still very much in place.
"Democratic voters are finally getting energized -- mainly because the focus on the tea party and the possibility that the Republicans could actually win Congress have raised the stakes on the election for Democrats," said Geoff Garin, a senior Democratic pollster.
David Leonhardt:
In their Pledge to America, Congressional Republicans have used the old trick of promising specific tax cuts and vague spending cuts. It’s the politically easy approach, and it is likely to be as bad for the budget as when George W. Bush tried it.
WaPo:
President Obama delivered an impassioned argument to young voters Tuesday night, declaring that the changes he promised in 2008 are underway and that "now is not the time to give up."
Harold Meyerson:
On Saturday, the season's lone march on Washington not convened by a television personality will unfold in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. Sponsored by One Nation Working Together -- a coalition of black, Latino, feminist, gay and lesbian civil rights groups; unions; and environmental organizations -- the march is clearly intended as a counterweight to Glenn Beck's religious-right extravaganza of August. It also has become something between a counterpoint and a complement to the Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert comedic shriek scheduled for late October.