Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford (D) has announced that he will not challenge appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) this year. The news is a second dose of good news for Empire State Democrats, meaning the party will likely avoid a Senate primary and a gubernatorial primary following David Paterson's (D) announcement on Friday.

In a New York Times op ed, Ford explains his decision, offering some tough words for the party he says bullied him out:

WHEN it was reported two months ago that I was thinking seriously about running for the United States Senate from New York, Democratic Party insiders started their own campaign to bully me out of the race — just as they had done with Representatives Carolyn Maloney, Steve Israel and others.

But as I traveled around New York, I began to understand why the party bosses felt the need to use such heavy-handed tactics: They're nervous. New Yorkers are clamoring for change. Our political system — so bogged down in partisan fighting — is sapping the morale of New Yorkers and preventing government at every level from fulfilling its duty.

The cruel twist, of course, is that the party bosses who tried to intimidate me so that I wouldn't even think about running against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who had been appointed to the seat by Gov. David A. Paterson, are the same people responsible for putting Democratic control of the Senate at risk.

[snip]

I've examined this race in every possible way, and I keep returning to the same fundamental conclusion: If I run, the likely result would be a brutal and highly negative Democratic primary — a primary where the winner emerges weakened and the Republican strengthened.

I refuse to do anything that would help Republicans win a Senate seat in New York, and give the Senate majority to the Republicans.

You can read the rest here.

From the most recent Fox News poll:

To gauge voters' moods, the latest Fox News poll asked respondents if they were "fed up with and tired of" several issues.

An overwhelming majority — 82 percent — says they are fed up with partisan bickering in Washington, up from 77 percent in 2005.

Almost as many voters are annoyed with the growing federal budget deficit — 81 percent say they are fed up with that.

This helps explain why Congress' job approval is down to 14 percent. Only once before in the Fox News poll has it been lower, when lawmakers received a 13 percent approval rating in October 2008.

The public is also losing patience with government spending: 73 percent say they are fed up with Uncle Sam's spending spree.

Even before the all-day health care summit on Thursday, nearly 7 in 10 voters said they were fed up with the health care reform debate (67 percent).

The results of the Fox poll are part of a bigger trend regarding Congress. If you go back and trace Congress' job approval ratings in the RCP Average over the last year, you can see five distinct periods:

Period 1: The Renaissance (January 19, 2009 - March 13, 2009)
Right about the time Barack Obama was sworn into office, Congress's job approval rating was in the toilet. Only 21.7% approved of the job Congress was doing while 70.7% disapproved - but since the new Congress had just been sworn in two weeks before and the president hadn't even been inaugurated yet,  this essentially amounted to a holdover of the public's sour mood from the 2008 election. Over the next three months, however, Congress made significant headway in improving its public image. By mid-March, Congress' job approval rating was up to 37% and disapproval was down to 52% - a net improvement of 34 points in roughly ninety days.

Period 2: The Fluctuation (March 13, 2009 - June 20, 2009)
For the next three months, Congress' job approval bounced down and then back up, demonstrating that public attitudes were very fluid regarding its view of the legislative body. After holding steady through the end of March, by the end of April/beginning of May Congress' job approval rating dipped into the low 30's while disapproval bulged upward to 60%.  But May and June brought a recovery of sorts: by June 21, 2009, Congress' job approval rating was back to 36.0% and disapproval was at 53.7% - less than two points off its beginning high point in mid-March.

Period 3: The Slide (June 22, 2009 - October 2, 2009)
Over the three month span of this period, the public's negative image of Congress began to harden. Congress lost nearly 10 points in its approval rating (from 36% to 26.8%) and gained 10.3% in disapproval (from 53.7% to 64.0%).  This was, of course, the summer of Tea Parties and townhall meetings that gave expression to some of the public's frustration with Washington DC and clearly took its toll on Congress' ratings.  As you can see from the graph, it was a remarkably steady slide, with each month bringing a new low in approval and a new high in disapproval.

Period 4: The Status Quo (October 7, 2009 - February 3, 2010)
Over the next four months, the public's low opinion of Congress remained basically fixed. On October 7, Congress approval was at 25.8%, disapproval was at 66.5%. Roughly one hundred and twenty days later there was a net change of less than one percent: approval was half a point higher at 26.3%, and disapproval was two-tenths of a percent lower at 66.3%.

Period 5: The Crash (February 3, 2010 - Current)
This brings us back to the results from the latest Fox poll (and in other polls as well). What we've seen in the last two weeks is remarkable: the bottom has fallen out of Congress' already low approval ratings. On February 3, Congress' job approval rating was at 26.3% and disapproval was at 66.3%. Today, Congress' approval rating is down to just 18.8% and disapproval rating is up to 75.6%. That's an additional 14.8% decline in support for Congress in just the last three weeks. The public appears to have indeed reached a "fed up to here" level of frustration with a Congress it already held in fairly low esteem.

Former Sen. Dan Coats (R) gets most of the press in the Indiana Senate race, as the presumed GOP frontrunner seeks his old seat after 12 years away. But former Rep. John Hostettler (R), who is also running, has outpolled Coats in the first two surveys released since Sen. Evan Bayh's (D) retirement announcement.

The latest comes today from DailyKos/Research 2000, which -- like the Rasmussen survey a week earlier -- finds Hostettler polling 5 points better than Coats against Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D). Hostettler leads Ellsworth by 6 points, while Coats leads by 1 point. He led by 19 points in the Rasmussen poll and Coats led by 14 points.

Hostettler 40
Ellsworth 34
Und 26

Coats 37
Ellsworth 36
Und 27

Check out all the Indiana Senate polling here. This survey was conducted Feb. 22-24 of 600 LV with a margin of error of +/- 4%.

A new EPIC-MRA poll for various Michigan outlets finds that Rep. Peter Hoekstra has surged ahead of the Republican field in the race for Michigan governor, leapfrogging the better-known state Attorney General Mike Cox. Rick Snyder has seen the biggest growth, owing perhaps to his "One Tough Nerd" ad launched during the Super Bowl broadcast.

GOP Primary Election Matchup
Hoekstra 27 (+5 vs. last poll, 1/24-25)
Cox 21 (-5)
Snyder 12 (+9)
Bouchard 10 (-3)
George 1 (unch)
Und 26 (-6)

Democrats, meanwhile, still have no clear frontrunner in the August 3 primary. The field was shaken up with the decision of Lt. Gov. John Cherry (D) not to run. Denise Ilitch, included in the last survey, also announced she would not run despite the entreaties of national Democrats. State House Speaker Andy Dillon has just officially entered.

Democratic Primary Election Matchup
Dillon 17 (+11)
Kildee 12 (+7)
Bernero 7 (+2)
Wheeler Smith 7 (+5)
Und 45 (-6)

General Election Matchups
Cox 46 -- Kildee 37 -- Und 17
Cox 43 -- Dillon 36 -- Und 21

Hoekstra 41 -- Kildee 37 -- Und 22
Hoekstra 41 -- Dillon 37 -- Und 21

President Obama has a 45 percent job approval rating, up four points from the last survey. His disapproval stands at 54, down from 58. Outgoing Gov. Jennifer Granholm has just a 33 percent approval rating, up from 32 percent.

The survey of 600 likely voters was conducted February 22-25, and had a margin of error of +/- 4 percent. The Democratic and Republican primary subsamples of 400 likely voters had a 4.9 percent margin of error.

As the Democrats head toward attempting to use reconciliation in the Senate to pass some "fixes" to the health care bill with a simple majority, some in the party have fretted that the fate of health care could rest in the hands of Alan Frumin, the Senate parliamentarian. It is Frumin who would determine whether those fixes meet the so-called Byrd rule which forbids reconciliation from being used on items not related to the budget.

But that may not be the end of the story, based on this fascinating revelation from MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" -- former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove said that while the Senate parliamentarian does advise the chamber on such matters, Vice President Biden could hold the power.

"The parliamentarian only can advise. It is the vice president who rules," Dove said. "It is the decision of the vice president whether to play a role here. And I have seen other vice presidents play that role in very important situations."

No vice president has done so since Hubert Humphrey, he added. And Biden, a Senate veteran of more than 36 years, may want to do so. That would seem to open one more escape hatch for Democrats by spelling out the protocol.

The test for whether measures can be passed through reconciliation is whether those provisions are "purely budgetary," Dove said. He referred to a decision he made as parliamentarian in 1995 to strike a provision that would have banned federal funding of abortions from a reconciliation bill. While it would have unarguably impacted the budget, Dove said the provision was included "not for its budgetary effect but for its policy effect."

UPDATE: National Review wrote about this scenario last month, with this caveat from Dove:

"This process is not designed to do a lot of policy making and it would be very difficult to achieve a number of things that people want to achieve" in the healthcare reform legislation, Dove said. "This could be a very long, exhausting process."

As a follow on to Kyle's post below, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has a story today about President Obama's low ratings in Nevada.  To wit, his favorable rating is just 39% while those Nevadans who hold an "unfavorable" view of the President now stand at 46%.  Those numbers, which come in the wake of his recent visit/fundraiser for Harry Reid, are actually a slight improvement from last month.

Two other results from the poll that don't augur well for the President: Nearly half (47%) say Obama's actions in office have "hurt Nevada's economic situation," while another 33% say his actions have had no effect.  Only 15% believe Obama has taken action since he's been in office that has helped their state economically.

Lastly, a majority (51%) say President Obama has "relied too much" on "the federal government to solve the nation's problems." Nineteen percent say he has used the "right amount" of government involvement and another 15% say he "has not used enough government resources." Sixteen percent were undecided on the question.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trails all three Republicans in a new Las Vegas Review-Journal survey and doesn't win even 40% support against the leading Republican. In the GOP primary, former state party chair Sue Lowden has surged into the lead, garnering nearly 50% support against Danny Tarkanian and Sharron Angle.

General Election
Lowden 52 (+2 vs. last poll, Jan. 9)
Reid 39 (-1)
Und 9

Lowden leads Reid by 9.5 points in the RCP Average

Tarkanian 51 (+2 vs. last poll, Jan. 9)
Reid 40 (-1)
Und 9

Tarkanian leads by 8.7 points in the RCP Average

Angle 44
Reid 42
Und 14

GOP Primary
Lowden 47 (+21 vs. last poll, Jan. 9)
Tarkanian 29 (+1)
Angle 8 (-5)
Und 15

The survey was conducted by Mason-Dixon Feb. 22-24 of 625 RV with a margin of error of +/- 4%.