EJ Dionne:
I am starting to wonder if the real story -- the one we are making too little of -- is that the primaries are showing much more ideological change in the GOP than among Democrats.
Mollahan was beaten by a more conservative Democrat. Democrat Mark Critz, who won the special House election in Pennsylania a few weeks ago, ran as a conservative on pretty much everything except economics, where he was a populist. Perhaps Joe Sestak, who won the Senate primary in Pennsylvania, can be rated as being to Arlen Specter’s left -- Sestak did have netroots support -- but I still don’t think that race was about ideology. And Lincoln beat back a challenge from the left, though Halter himself was hardly a lefty.
The GOP, on the other hand, is moving steadily to the right. When we know more from out West later tonight, I suspect we’ll see two themes: right-wing victories, and wins by more moderate conservatives in California who were forced to move right to win primaries.
Joshua A. Tucker:
Now of course not all members of the House are running for re-election, but most of them are. According to my colleague John Sides at The Monkey Cage, 395 members of the House are currently seeking re-election. How many of these would we actually need to be defeated in primaries before we could legitimately state that there was a real effect of all this "anti-establishment" sentiment at the primary level. 5%? 10%? If it stays at 3, we’re under 1%.
John Krosnick:
On Thursday, the Senate will vote on a resolution proposed by Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, that would scuttle the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to limit emissions of greenhouse gases by American businesses.
Passing the resolution might seem to be exactly what Americans want. After all, national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people.
But a closer look at these polls and a new survey by my Political Psychology Research Group show just the opposite: huge majorities of Americans still believe the earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it.
Brad DeLong:
We need bigger deficits.
As the disappointing May job numbers confirm, this is still an exceptional time—a time in which many of the normal rules of the Dismal Science are changed and transformed. It is a time for not normal economics but rather "depression economics." The terms on which the U.S. government can borrow now are exceptionally advantageous. And because of high unemployment the benefits of boosting government purchases and cutting taxes right now are exceptionally large.
AP:
WHO: Pharma Interests Didn't Influence Flu Verdict
The head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday that her decisions about swine flu were not influenced by advisers' links to pharmaceutical companies, which were pointed out in a critical journal article this month.
Nature:
Flu experts rebut conflict claims
Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, says that the WHO's advice on the pandemic has been sound, and has reflected the state of scientific opinion. Comparing the situation with the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Lipsitch says that "it is ironic, as we watch for the second time in five years the catastrophic results of 'best-case scenario planning' in the Gulf of Mexico, to have the WHO coming under criticism for planning for, and raising awareness of, the possibility of a severe pandemic. That is what public-health agencies should do, and what most did in this instance, and they should be commended for it."