Update: Gov. Bill Ritter and Sen. Mark Udall are with Sen. Bennet at the Bennet celebration. Sen. Bennet made some gracious comments about Andrew Romanoff. At his election party, Romanoff expressed his support for Bennet and asked his supporters to do the same.

Ken Buck said voters will have a clear choice in November: "between conservative Ken Buck and Liberal Michael Bennet." He said the differences between Buck and Jane Norton were miniscule by comparison. Norton asked her supporters tonight to support Buck.

The Republican gubernatorial primary is still too close to call, between Scott McInnis, recently beset by plagiarism issues, and Dan Maes, the Tea Party-supported candidate. If McInnis wins, Tom Tancredo is waiting in the wings. The Democratic candidate, popular Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, should be shoo-in, particularly if McInnnis and Tancredo are both in the race, splitting Republican voters.

Update: Sen. Bennet's statement to supporters (received by e-mail):[More...]

Sen. Ted Stevens was not one of the surviors of last night's plane crash in Alaska that killed five persons.

Ex-NASA chief Sean O'Keefe and his teenage son were among the four survivors. More details on survivors and the crash here.

Stevens, 86, was the longest serving Republican senator in history. R.I.P., Sen. Stevens.

Among his legacies: Bringing to public attention the issue of the Government concealing exculpatory evidence in criminal trials.

This is my view only.

I am a big Charlie Rangel fan. And I do not believe for a second that Rangel's situation has any effect on any race in the country. I do not think Rangel should resign. He did nothing that was corrupt. And I think that Rangel's demand for a trial in the House Ethics Committee is completely appropriate. Let the chips fall. Anyway, here's what Rangel said today on the House floor.

I repeat, this is my view only and I do not speak for TalkLeft.

Yesterday I commented on a Nate Silver post in which Nate posited productivity losses due to raising the marginal rate on top income earners. Today Paul Krugman explains the issue and answers the questions:

[T]he way I see it, even quite high marginal tax rates on high earners — even rates in, say, the 70 percent range that prevailed pre-Reagan — are unlikely to put us on the wrong side of the Laffer curve by discouraging effort. High earners won’t work much less; they might even work harder, because it takes more effort to make enough to buy that fourth home.

That's the conclusion to the question - in short, Nate Silver is wrong to worry about productivity loss due to raising marginal tax rates. For the full explanation, please read Krugman's post.

Speaking for me only

The Fed:

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months. Household spending is increasing gradually, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment and software is rising; however, investment in nonresidential structures continues to be weak and employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls. Housing starts remain at a depressed level. Bank lending has continued to contract. Nonetheless, the Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated.

Measures of underlying inflation have trended lower in recent quarters and, with substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to be subdued for some time.

Snarky title reflects my views only

Hot Fun In The Summertime:

Open Thread.

Paul Krugman:

I think people are missing an important point: what’s good for Obama is not necessarily good for his aides.

Think about it: Complaints that the administration should have pursued a bigger stimulus, or fought harder for the public option, or taken a different position on Afghanistan aren’t going to matter in the midterms. But they might hurt White House aides who argued against a bigger stimulus (to the point of not even passing the option on to the president), or argued against a harder push on health reform (perhaps even calling for retreat after Scott Brown), or have argued that continuation of Bush foreign policy is a political winner. The point is that the president might actually take those criticisms to heart, and rethink who he listens to.

Things that make you go hmmmm . . . If only the Czar knew?!?

Speaking for me only

Lambert writes about the silly rumor running around that President Obama might tap the Secretary of State to be his running mate in 2012.

This is ridiculous for 8 million reasons (most of all Biden really has not mattered), but it got me to thinking about my own pet theory - that the Democratic Party needs Hillary as its Presidential candidate in 2016.

Some folks have taken the Secretary of State's discouraging statements about running in 2016 as the end of the story. I do not. After Hillary leaves the Secretary of State job in early 2013 (yes, she will), she'll be 64 years old. She won't be going back to the Senate and of course she could ride off into the political sunset. But she will know that the 2016 nomination is hers for the asking. But more than that, Dems will need Clinton to have the best chance to hold the White House in 2016. After 8 years of a Dem President, "change" won't be a card Dems can play (Brian Schweitzer could do it if change would be a viable theme for Dems, but it won't be.) Assuming that President Obama is reasonably popular in 2016, Biden will be 74, too old and frankly, he is not good enough of a pol to win. In the Dem stable, only Hillary can do it. Consider the stakes with me on the flip.

Here's an Open Thread for commenting until the next Obama Administration insult of "the Left."

Open Thread.

Charlie Rangel on the floor. Going out swinging.

Sam Stein has Gibbs saying the following:

[W]e should all, me included, stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies, and instead work together to make sure everyone knows what is at stake because we've come too far to turn back now.

Kumbaya!

By now, we are all familiar with the almost certainly apocryphal story about FDR -- ""I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." And indeed, President Obama himself said "hold me accountable" just a few weeks ago in a video to Netroots Nation.

Obviously, Robert Gibbs disagrees with this approach. Matt Yglesias writes:

[W]e’re seeing a serious confusion here on the role of political activists in the system. [. . . I]t’s not the job of activists to be “satisfied” with compromises premised on the current boundaries of political feasibility.

Whatever your view of how the Obama Administration and Dems have performed, it seems to me that Yglesias' point is inarguable - surely it is not the role of activists to be satisfied with half loaves or crumbs. The role of the activist is, in the words of Frederick Douglass, to "agitate, agitate, agitate." On this issue, I think the wisdom of Frederick Douglass exceeds that of Robert Gibbs.

Speaking for me only

Via Atrios, Robert Gibbs thinks he is still working for Dick Gephardt's 2004 campaign:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough. [. . .] The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Talk about adopting Right Wing memes. So the President is going to be out there "politicking," trying to energize the base, and his Press Secretary is going to be taking right wing potshots at the base? Does anyone know how to play this game? Gibbs was a great campaign spokesman for the Obama campaign, but he's been a pretty lousy Press Secretary. No discipline. FTR, my reference to Gibbs and the 2004 Gephardt campaign is about this: