So, Dana Milbank, on his way to a new contract with CNN, made a flip comment about wanting to go to a place that "holds both parties accountable."

A little arrow on the way out the door directed at Keith Olbermann, but I wonder what Mr. Milbank would have to say about this headline, which as of right now (7:44 AM PT) is on the front page of CNN.com.

OBAMA FACES UPHILL POLLING BATTLE

I shit you not.

As has been reported elsewhere, Quinnipiac is out with new numbers in three battleground states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. In all three states, Barack Obama holds a lead over John McCain.

PA: Obama 49%, McCain 42%
OH: Obama 46%, McCain 44%
FL: Obama 46%, McCain 44%

However, like many other pollsters lately (Gallup and their "trying out new scenarios" comes to mind), Quinnipiac seems to be going well out of its way to try to prop up the Republican nominee. Their headline for this set of polls is as follows: "July 31, 2008 - Obama Tour Doesn't Help In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll Finds."

The shooting in Knoxville has made me both sad...and angry. Sad because it is a natural reaction to such a horrific and tragic event. Angry because of the motive of the shooter, and the fact that the media (at least on websites, I have to confess I have not watched TV today) seems eager to bury that motive. The cynic in me believes that if this were an avowed atheist shooting up some fundamentalist megachurch, we'd see wall-to-wall coverage of the "religious hatred" in America, or some such nonsense.

Given that the shooting occurred in a church known for its progressive and tolerant worldview, many of us suspected a shooter with political motivations. We were right. But it is worth noting that the beloved late journalist Molly Ivins had us beat to the story, by a bit over thirteen years.

I don't know if I meant the "stunning" in the title to be sarcastic or not, by the way.

Fox News, as most of us know, sees it as an integral part of its mission to be the semi-official media outlet of the Republican Party. But, in this election season with so much at stake, Fox News is taking it one step beyond. They just polled the Presidential Race (Obama 41-40, if you care what Fox News thinks about anything). In so doing, they used some polling techniques that are PURE push polling.

As often is the case, TPM ElectionCentral has the goods.

Today, I thought I'd share something I have noticed, and something I found quite amusing. There are a variety of political websites on the left that have made a regular habit of chronicling the more absurd statements made by Republican politicians.

Last year, it seemed that a lot of them came from a single Congressman: Jack Kingston of Georgia. He was the one responsible for (1) complaining that the new schedule of Congress working five days a week was anti-family; (2) placing a resolution in Congress praising Rush "Phony Troops" Limbaugh for his support of the military; and (3) praising a potential African-American GOP candidate for being so "articulate" and "presentable."

This year's chief contributor? None other than freshman Republican Michele Bachman of Minnesota.

This is classic stuff.

According to Halperin at Time, the Prince of Darkness was on Fox News (Ed. Note: Where Else, of Course??!!??) saying that he now believes that the McCain team deceived him, and that they were never really planning on launching their VP pick this week.

Furthermore, Novak gives us a compelling motive: Obama is getting boffo press for his overseas trip, and the McCain people needed a way to horn in on the coverage.

And Novak is mad. Very, very mad.

This will be fairly quick, because I am only on a ten-minute break teaching my summer school economics class.

Rasmussen just released a new poll on the Oregon Senate race.

Jeff Merkley now LEADS incumbent Republican Senator Gordon Smith, 43%--41%. If leaners are factored in, the race is all even at 46%.

They also polled the presidential race, giving Barack Obama a nine-point edge in the state (46-37, 49-40 with leaners).

This is one of those news items where the lede makes you want to scroll up and confirm the date is not April 1st.

A church in Oklahoma regrets to inform the teenagers coming to its youth faith conference that it won't be giving away that assault rifle after all.

Let me try to piece this together: Church Retreat. Kids. Assault Rifle.

I shit you not.

This, in a nutshell is what absolutely burns me up about the traditional media.

So, as has been well documented here at D-Kos and other left-of-center online outlets, top McCain adviser Phil Gramm tells the Washington Times today that the recession is all in our minds, and that we are a bunch of whiners who have been duped by the media into not knowing how bountiful and wonderful the economy is.

The expectation was that the week of the July 4th holiday would be a slow polling week. As it turned out, it was a fairly busy week, with over 30 polls released during the week. While some polls (the Connecticut polls, for example) have seen a lot of attention on D-Kos, others have not.

Follow me for the cavalcade of numbers....

TPM Election Central has a rather disturbing story online this morning.

Trying to turn a two-day story into a three-day story, the McCain campaign held a conference call on the issue of the Wes Clark comments. In so doing, they committed a real offense--IF the media has the balls to hurt the feelings of their favorite Republican by reporting on it.

Orson Swindle, who first rose to political prominence as one of the chief pooh-bahs of the Perot campaign in 1992, and himself a Vietnam P.O.W. criticized Clark by--you guessed it--demeaning his military service.

The media site TV Newser had an interesting story today about a new attack piece on Keith Olbermann, this one from Jed Babbin from Human Events Magazine.

Most of the article gives us the now-hackneyed right-wing boilerplate against Olbermann--NBC has become a cesspool of secular liberalism because of him, they are so mean to the president, blah blah blah.

But, Babbin then tries to draw a business comparison, and winds up looking like a buffoon in the bargain.

AUTHORS NOTE: I had written this to post it yesterday afternoon. For some reason, it would not let me publish, saying I had already written a diary (it had been deleted). I chose not to edit it, so some of the references ("today", "yesterday") are a bit off. Apologies...

There was another bevy of polls this week, both on the presidential race and downstream, as well. Unfortunately, I do not have all of them at my disposal, as I put them in a notebook which I cannot, at present, find.

Nevertheless, I do have numbers on 22 separate contests, so let's head past the jump for the numerical goodness, which includes two polls just released in the past few hours!

Yep, so at this point the sheer mass of polling data is such that it is time for me to tiptoe back into the water. The fact that school has let out for the summer (though I am teaching summer school) helps out, as well.

So today, the Following the Polls series that I began back in 2006 makes its permanent return. It will start as a weekly series (Friday seems to be the logical day), and then it will become daily once we get past Labor Day.

And, week one of the series sees a big polling week, as there are 35 separate races that were polled this week. Head past the flip for all the numerical goodness.

Rasmussen just released a new poll, and the bad news for the GOP continues virtually unabated:

SUSAN COLLINS (R-INC) 49%, TOM ALLEN (D) 42%

The poll, conducted on Monday of this week, is the latest in a series of polls this week which have been rosy for the Democrats, and (by and large) depressing for the GOP.

TPM Election Central has uplifting news for Democrats, and another dollop of grim electoral news for the GOP.

In a rather extraordinary admission, NRSC head John Ensign has already conceded two Republican-held Senate seats to the Democrats--John Warner's seat in Virginia, and Pete Domenici's seat in New Mexico.

The money quote, and some analysis, on the flip.

Greg Sargent over at TPM Election Central has the scoop on a story that makes Joe Lieberman's recent apostasy on the subject of the presidential race even more disturbing.

Sargent is reporting on the revelation, courtesy of a top staffer on Lieberman's 2006 Senate race, that the Lieberman camp made a very specific and very sincere plea for Obama to endorse Lieberman shortly after Ned Lamont entered the Democratic Primary, and that Obama agreed to come to the aid of his politically embattled colleague.

Given recent events, it makes Lieberman out to be an even bigger backstabbing little weasel than we might have believed.

I never voted for Hillary Clinton. She was my third choice from day one. When John Edwards left the stage in January, I switched over to Obama.

That said, I had no great rancor for Clinton. Indeed, I donated to all three candidates. I have been a pretty vocal Obama guy, but I have not joined in much of the antipathy towards Clinton that has emanated from both this site and elsewhere.

Well, mea culpa, folks. You were right, and I was far too charitable. What we just heard was one of the most graceless, classless moments in American politics.