REUTERS/Jeff Haynes
–Obama will sign financial regulatory reform into law today. Not pictured: Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein. Now begins the post-passage PR campaign to sell the bill to voters.
–Tom Vilsack will review the Shirley Sherrod firing.
–The irony of her unseemly ouster is that what she actually said is reminiscent of the Obama ethos; using a deeply personal narrative to highlight the tension — and eventual transcendence — of cultural disparity. Ben Smith rightly points out how far the dialogue has fallen.
—Josh Green sees questions Andrew Breitbart’s motives. Erick Erickson questions Andrew Breitbart’s judgment. But the real story may be how and why the White House allowed itself to be manipulated.
–Harry Reid unveiled a scaled-back energy bill to his caucus yesterday. Afterward he sounded unsure whether Democrats would move forward.
–Blanche Lincoln’s re-election effort is in very bad shape. Nate Silver crunches the latest poll numbers and writes she is somewhere between a 20:1 and 500:1 longshot.
–Speaking of sober numbers for Dems: A new SurveyUSA poll out of marquee VA-05 suggests Rep. Tom Perriello is trailing Republican Robert Hurt by roughly 20 points. If there’s a way out of that hole, it’s money, effective advertising and hoping that third-party Tea Partier Jeff Clark makes some gains.
–Joe Manchin’s path to a West Virginia Senate seat looks pretty clear.
–Karen Handel and Nathan Deal head to a run-off in Georgia.
–As a young denizen of this particular glass house, I try to avoid casting amateur media observations willy-nilly. But I will say this post by Marc Ambinder, which is actually one piece of a larger dialogue with journalism professor Jay Rosen, is a thoughtful and worthwhile read for both producers and consumers of journalism.
–And trendlines that make Obama polls not look so bad: M. Night Shyamalan’s critical reception over time.
What did I miss?