While Lugar says he's in I'm not so convinced.  He's getting up there in years.  If anything, he's trying to win one more so he can resign and give Mitch Daniels the pleasure of selecting his replacement.

We just need SOMEONE for Maine and Indiana ever if they are not to win.  Just make the GOP spend some cash.

I really am starting to get worried on Claire in Missouri though.  How can we have candidates in Texas, Utah, and Mississippi but not in the winnable areas?

Any Democrat who runs statewide wins NW Indiana... even if they lose badly everywhere else in the state.  It's pretty sad because the Democratic bench isn't very deep in Indiana anymore.  The only statewide elected Democrat is Evan Bayh; only 2 out of 9 Representatives are Dems; both houses of the state legislature are controlled by Reps.

Oh, and before you smear me as an anti-choicer, I'll have you know I was a member of Planned Parenthood when I was in high school and have supported them ever since (and that was a rather conservative CATHOLIC school for that matter).

Environment
Iraq
Education
Health Care
Preserving other supreme court decisions
Gun control
equal rights (races, gender, and sexuality)

Just because someone breaks on one issue it does not mean we should abandon them if they agree with the party on over 80% of the other issues.

I'm pro choice, but people have a right to feel the way they want on issues, we just get to choose whether we support them.  If you want to break one on or two issues from the platform, fine.  It's wen you start breaking on most things that stuff gets a little weird.  After Ryan's draft speech I would be fine with him.

Snowe scores higher with Democrats that she does with Republicans. Still higher than I would have expected with Republicans.

All of the scores are too high. It says Lieberman scores 66% with liberals.

Trent Lott scores 47% with liberals.

So it has something to do with being a tracking poll, instead of a popularity poll.

The cynical answer would be that residents of these various states respond favorably to those senators who zealously represent their states' narrowly-drawn economic interests. Carper does a great job of representing the interests of Delaware's credit card industry, maybe even more so than Biden (see bankruptcy reform). Insurance is the big industry in Connecticut and Lieberman does their bidding (see class action reform). And the farmers of North Dakota love Conrad's pro-ethanol stance.

Look at the numbers on them and you'll see that they're popular.  This is a gauge of approval, not a poll asking "How liberal do you think Senator [name] is?"  Don't like it?  Move to CT or DE, or wherever you have a problem and run against them in a primary and see how you do!

1.  My sources in the state are pretty involved in Democratic politics, and they tell me that rumors are swirling that she is in.  What they're saying is this: she saw what happened to Nancy Farmer, and it has made her wary that the DSCC will dump her at crunch time like they did to Farmer.  However, it is pretty common knowledge that the DSCC has been on full court press to get her to run as they're dying to heave cash at her.  According to the buzz, they convinced her earlier this summer and she is currently doing behind the scenes work to get ready for announcement which will likely be in the next few weeks.

2.  Her auditor reelection account (which cannot be used for a potential senate run) is a paltry $70,000.  Claire is a great fundraiser, and this can only mean that she hasn't been pushing for cash.  This is really probably the strongest indicator.

3.  There are strategic reasons to keep the media guessing in a situation like this.  Claire understands this, because she did it when she ran for governor.  In fact, she announced very late.  Interestingly enough, I've heard eyewitness accounts from MO dem activists that she was letting it be known she was running at a county dem meeting at least a month before she announced to the media.  She likes her campaigns to come roaring out of the gate, and that means getting everything in place before the announcement.

4.  She may have crossed Holden, but she is a party soldier.  She knows that the longer she dawdles, the harder it will be for someone else to put together a campaign if she does bow out.  Hence, I suspect the dawdle is an act.

I expect you know a lot more about this than I do, but I haven't heard of many times when someone got to be confident of getting their seat back.  I'd like to hear more.

Portune's fellow commissioner is DeWine's son who got trounced by Schmidt in the OH-02 primary. Portune is a Democrat who has been elected in this Republican area repeatedly. I don't know how he stands on issues and he probably has next-to-zero statewide name ID but isn't that why we have netroots?