So Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak are going to hold a forum at Netroots Nation next month. Greg Sargent had this to say:

Specter's willingness to brave the precincts of Netroots Nation with netroots hero Sestak underscores how seriously Specter takes Specter's underdog challenge. Given that Specter has the backing of the White House and the Democratic establishment, his scheduled appearance is also a sign that even the most established incumbent can no longer risk taking netroots-backed challengers for granted.

I think it also shows that Specter isn't getting the sincere support of the White House. He's getting "support" but he's not having people from the Obama Administration out in rural Pennsylvania talking up the many merits of keeping Arlen Specter in the senate. Well, there aren't many merits so might as well save on air fare.

I'm really not surprised that Robert Gibbs is cleaning up President Obama's statement last night about Henry Louis Gates being arrested by the Cambridge Police Department or that the GOP is attacking President Obama in a way that twists his words. That's what happens when you weigh into a situation like this.

I'm not saying that President Obama shouldn't have been allowed to say that or that what he said was untrue, I'm saying that if he's going to say that the Cambridge Police Department acted "stupidly" he should expect a less than positive reaction.

Again let me stress that I'm not saying what Obama said was factually wrong but I do think it was strategically wrong because it leaves Obama's opposition open to criticizing him, especially when he says he doesn't know all the facts which I assume is meant as a precaution if something else comes out of the case.

I'm happy to have a discussion on race --more than happy in fact, especially one which involves President Obama who I think, like me, as a biracial American, has a deep and rare view on race and racial relations (which he expressed in the press conference last night but nobody is focusing on that. Surprise.). But that's not what calling the Cambridge Police Department stupid does. It just encourages talking points and a smear campaign.

On the otherhand, this may turn out advantageous and perhaps even tactically astute. As Greg Sargent points out in the post I linked to above, Obama is siding with the black guy who was arrested, and the GOP is siding with the white guy who arrested him. It's not a helpful split for the right but I'm pessimistic that anyone will pick up on that.

Eric Kleefield has a post up about recent polls for the Pennsylvania senate race which I think are rather significant. In a Specter-Toomey matchup it's basically a dead heat. A little while back, that same matchup had Specter with a 9% margin with a fair amount of undecideds (which isn't huge but it isn't tiny either).

Meanwhile, Sestak versus Toomey is much closer with Toomey leading Sestak 39% to 35%. Kleefield notes that a big factor in those results is that Toomey and Sestak both could earn considerably more name recognition. So on the nominate-who-could-win argument --which I don't like-- perhaps Sestak would be the right choice.

To make matters worse, in the Specter-Sestak matchup Specter leads Sestak 55% to 23%. Sestak probably doesn't have a lot of name recognition there either but that's still a huge margin to fill.

Over all, I think things don't look good for Sestak or Specter. Sestak seems unlikely to beat Specter in the primary and Specter seems increasingly unlikely to beat Toomey in the general election. Toomey must be pretty happy.

I want to also note that Sestak's name recognition problem is very serious. A few days ago I met a girl from rural Pennsylvania, a Democrat, who hadn't heard of Sestak. She's the exact kind of voter that Sestak needs and that she had never heard of him is a big problem.

UPDATE: Nate Silver writes: Ultimately, I'd still rate either Democrat as about a 2:1 favorite over Toomey, this poll not withstanding. But Pennsylvania will certainly be moving up in next month's Senate race rankings.

Illinois Dems aren't giving Republican Congressman and Senate hopeful Mark Kirk any breathing time. He announced his candidacy for office and the Dems, who must be inspired by a recent viewing of the new Transformers movie, are already flaunting a new aggressive ad. Kirk has quite a hill to climb and the Dems don't even have a decided candidate yet! 

So Carolyn Maloney used the N-word. She wasn't using it to express her disgust with black people, she was quoting someone. I don't think she should have done that but she hardly deserves the fate of a racist politician that uses the n-word to denounce black people. I'd still rather have her than Gillibrand and thankfully, New Yorkers seem to agree with me. 

Robert Farley, in a post about Kentucky politics:

Apart for the electoral stupidity, the notion that Louisville isn't the "real Kentucky" rankles in the same way as Sarah Palin's assertions about "Real America." Dividing the country between the pure heartland and the decadent urban cesspools has been a Republican electoral tactic since at least the 1960s, and it still carries a heavy stench of exclusion. One out of every six citizens of Kentucky lives in Louisville, and they're just as real as anyone else in the state. More importantly, their votes count just as much; there is no Electoral College for the US Senate in Kentucky. I detest the notion that rural voters are somehow more authentic than urban voters, and this seems to be what the Mongiardo folks are pushing in order to explain away a weak fundraising quarter.

The thing is, that tactic is less effective than it used to be as there seems to be an inverse ration between the power of divisive politics and the size of cities: as cities get bigger (which they are doing) the power of trying to get people to come together against the urbanites becomes weaker. It once made sense to rally the various suburbs together by creating a common foe but not anymore. A successful politician has to look toward unity instead of division to get elected. 

He deserves props for this. Many a politician might've "diplomatically" implied something to appease the crowd. Good for Mike.