A new Rasmussen poll (June 22, 500 LV, MoE +/- 4.5%) finds the Senate race in Washington state even between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R). Rossi's recent entrance to the race immediately put Murray's seat in jeopardy -- in Rasmussen polling since February, the two have polled within the margin of error every month.

Murray 47 (-1 vs. last poll, May 26)
Rossi 47 (nc)
Und 3

Murray leads the other two Republicans in the race, former NFLer Clint Didier and businessman Paul Akers, but still polls below 50%.

Murray 48 (+1)
Didier 40 (+3)
Und 6

Murray 48 (+1)
Akers 38 (+6)
Und 10

RCP rates this race a Toss Up.

The focus of the open Missouri Senate race is Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan, two establishment candidates long expected to be the nominees. But one primary challenger to Blunt is hoping to pick up on the anti-establishment fervor that's swept through several states' primaries already.

As the AP reports, state Sen. Chuck Purgason is airing a radio ad that discusses some of the earlier races:

"To be perfectly blunt, the Washington insiders want you to believe I can't win, bless their little hearts," Purgason says in the ad, which he said was recorded in his kitchen.

He then cites the defeat of Utah's Republican Sen. Bob Bennett and the GOP primary victories of tea party favorites Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky.

"Rand Paul took their version of Washington insider Roy Blunt to the cleaners," Purgason says in the commercial. He later adds: "Now it's our turn. If you want a choice in November, you've gotta help me win in the Republican primary on Aug. 3."

With practically no money, however, it will be difficult for Purgason to build much support in the next month. Purgason had about $1,000 in the bank through the end of March; Blunt had some $3.5 million.

House and Senate negotiators came to a final agreement early this morning on a single Wall Street reform bill, which the conference committee decided to call the Dodd-Frank bill. The two chambers will vote on the legislation next week, with President Obama likely to sign it by the Fourth of July weekend.

Here's an excerpt of CNN's write-up:

Washington (CNNMoney.com) - After a grueling 20-hour session, lawmakers early Friday finished melding the House and Senate Wall Street reform bills, bringing Congress closer to passing the most sweeping changes to the financial system since the New Deal.

Finishing at 5:39 a.m. ET, 43 lawmakers agreed to send to their respective chambers a final bill that aims to strengthen consumer protection, shine a light on complex financial products, create a new process for taking down giant, failing financial firms, and make them stronger to prevent such failure.

The votes were 20-11 among House negotiators and 7-5 among Senate negotiators, strictly along party lines. The room erupted into claps and hugs when it was all done, with staffers shaking hands and saying, "big bill."

This is an important bill for Democrats, and one the party will be pointing to extensively on the campaign trail.

UPDATE: Before departing for Toronto, President Obama gave brief remarks on the legislation from the South Lawn. Here is an excerpt:

Because of the incredibly hard work of Chairman Dodd and Chairman Frank, and the strong leadership of Chairwoman Lincoln and Chairman Peterson, and the great efforts of the conferees and members of both parties -- who were up very late last night -- we are poised to pass the toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Early this morning, the House and Senate reached an agreement on a set of Wall Street reforms that represents 90 percent of what I proposed when I took up this fight.

Now, let me be clear. Our economic growth and prosperity depend on a strong, robust financial sector, and I will continue to do what I can to foster and support a dynamic private sector. But we've all seen what happens when there's inadequate oversight and insufficient transparency on Wall Street.

The reforms making their way through Congress will hold Wall Street accountable so we can help prevent another financial crisis like the one that we're still recovering from.

The Las Vegas Sun's Jon Ralston writes today that the Nevada Senate race looks like it will be close. Following yesterday's Rasmussen poll showing Sharron Angle up 7 points and a Wall Street Journal/NBC News national poll, both Angle and Sen. Harry Reid have strengths and weaknesses that Ralston says will tighten the race:

Two polls out Thursday compellingly make the case that Sharron Angle is in serious trouble in the U.S. Senate race while simultaneously arguing that the majority leader is in massive jeopardy. Instead of being contradictory, though, the results perfectly frame the Nevada U.S. Senate race, reflecting exactly what conventional wisdom (that is the omniscience we pundits possess until we are proven wrong, which hardly ever happens) has told us.
...
So these polls neatly frame the contest: If the election is about Reid the congressional leader who helped pass health care reform, presided over the failing economy and rubber-stamped the president's agenda, Angle likely will win. If the election is about Angle and her manifestly unpopular positions, the majority leader will be re-elected.

Either way, all other things being equal (and they rarely are in campaigns), it should be close.

RCP rates this race a Toss Up.

It has been a crazy year in the Republican primaries, and many analysts looking for the next upset have cast their eyes toward Arizona's August 24 Senate primary, where John McCain will face off against conservative firebrand J.D. Hayworth.  The boisterous Hayworth, who represented Arizona's Sixth Congressional District (renumbered the Fifth in 2002) from 1994 until losing to Democrat Harry Mitchell in 2006, is aiming to make McCain the next Bob Bennett.

I think that's unlikely.  Unlike many GOP incumbents, McCain seemed to see this coming.  Almost immediately after his loss in 2008 he veered rightward, criticizing the stimulus, leading the charge against the Democrats' health care bill, and, perhaps more importantly for the Arizona GOP electorate, becoming more of a hardliner on immigration reform.

Hayworth, by contrast, has things that set him apart from other Tea Party winners.  Unlike Mike Lee in Utah, he has to face a primary electorate immediately, rather than a convention filled with the party's most conservative activists.  And unlike Sharron Angle, he doesn't benefit from a three-way race, which allows a candidate who can win 40% of the state's primary vote to win handily.

Plus Hayworth certainly has problems unique to his own candidacy.  McCain has been hammering him on his connections to "birtherism," and other odd views (I am guessing an awful lot of Republicans are wondering where these ad men were during McCain's 2008 campaign . . .).  Making matters worse for the former Congressman, a video has now resurfaced where Hayworth appeared in an infomercial explaining how Americans can get billions of dollars from the government to help build a better America.   Methinks this is unlikely to sit well with his Tea Party base.

So it isn't entirely surprising that a recent Magellan Strategies (R) poll shows McCain leading Hayworth 52%-29%.  Magellan is kind of a new kid on the block, but they've had some polling successes recently in Republican primaries.  They pretty well nailed the Republican primaries in California, and came awfully close in the Kentucky Republican primary as well.  So we give a fair amount of weight to their findings here.   Perhaps the key result:  McCain has succeeded in pushing Hayworth's favorables into negative territory, as the former Congressman is 38/50 unfavorable (compared to 60/37 favorable for McCain). And looking at the rest of the polls in the RCP Average, we find Hayworth pretty consistently in a range between 28 and 36 points, while McCain is somewhere between 46 and 54 points.  In other words, when you figure in error margins, all of these polls are pretty well telling us the same thing.

It's still two months until August 24, so there is time for things to move.  But for now, McCain looks like an unlikely victim of an upset.

The North Carolina Senate race is statistically tied, according to a new Rasmussen survey (June 23, 500 LV, MoE +/- 3%). Sen. Richard Burr (R), running for a second term, leads Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (D) by 1 point, well within the margin of error.

Burr 44 (-6 vs. last poll, June 3)
Marshall 43 (+7)
Und 6

Marshall is coming off a six-week runoff campaign, defeating Cal Cunningham by 20 points in Tuesday's election. Burr is one of just two Republican incumbents polling under 50%, and, as I wrote about this morning, Democrats see North Carolina as perhaps the party's best chance to pick up a seat in November.

RCP currently rates this race Leans Republican.

A new Rasmussen poll (June 22, 500 LV, MoE +/- 4.5%) finds Republican Sharron Angle leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid by 7 points. That margin is 4 points less than it was June 9, the day after Angle won the Republican nomination.

Angle 48 (-2 vs. last poll, June 9)
Reid 41 (+2)
Other 8
Und 2

RCP rates this race a Toss Up.

On Politics Nation, Kyle Trygstad writes that even in a favorable year for Republicans, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr is vulnerable.

On RCW, Daniel McGroarty argues that the Western world could soon find itself completely reliant on countries such as China and South Korea for vital raw materials.

On RCM, Diana Furchtgott-Roth details Congress' inability to deal with the serious problems facing Medicare, and John Tamny explains why falling prices are not a sign of deflation.

Tim Joyce and Jeff Neuman, both writing on RCS, marvel at the epic John Isner-Nicolas Mahut match at Wimbledon.

Jon Chait cites the latest Gallup data and summarizes over at TNR that "[o]ldsters hate [the March, 2010 health care law], everybody else loves it." Ezra Klein agrees.

We'll set aside the debatable categorization of 30-64 year olds as "loving it" based upon their narrow support for the law (or even liking it; their support for the bill is almost certainly within the error margin for the subsamples).  The bigger problem here is the sole reliance upon Gallup.  Gallup is a fine pollster, but the question wording they've chosen on this issue has typically resulted in pretty good results for ObamaCare.

If you look at the pollsters in the RCP Average who have polled since Congress passed the health care bill in March, Gallup gives the most favorable results for the bill.  It's not really close; the average results by pollster are as follows:

Gallup: Favorable +1
AP/GfK: -4
WaPo: -4
Resurgent Republic (R): -5
PPP (D): -6
Democracy Corps (D): -7
GWU/Battleground: -8
CBS News: -9.7
Quinnipiac: -11.3
CNN/Op Rsrch: -13
Fox News: -15
Rasmussen: -18.42

You get the same result if you look over the course of the entire year (here I'm just using pollsters who polled at least twice, to save room):

Gallup: -2.375
AP/GfK: -2.5
ABC/WaPo: -5
PPP (D): -9
Democracy Corps (D): -9.5
CBS News: -10
Ipsos/McClatchy: -10
Pew: -10.3
NBC News/WSJ: -13.3
Quinnipiac: -15.16667
Fox News: -15.66667
Rasmussen: -16.45
CNN/Op Rsrch: -17.5

To put it differently, of the 78 polls conducted this year, four have shown net favorable results for the PPACA.  Gallup conducted three of them.

Now, this is not to hurl an accusation of intentional bias at Gallup -- at all.  Every different question wording actually gives us insight into a different aspect of a law and how it is perceived by the public (or, in the case of Rasmussen, the likely electorate).  But you nevertheless always have to bear in mind that Gallup's question choice tends to produce something akin to the best-case scenario for the health care bill, and by a fairly substantial amount.   Likewise, I'm not suggesting that we should rely only upon Rasmussen's results (which are in part moved against ObamaCare by their reliance on LVs).

But let's say that we instead normalized the Gallup results to the RCP Average, which presently has the health care plan at -6.8 on average.  That would be a net shift of ten points against the President's plan.  Under this scenario, the young would narrowly favor the plan 52-45%, while everyone else would be opposed by varying margins.

At the very least, we should at least bear in mind that, on the same day that Gallup released a poll showing that adults favor the bill by a 3-point margin, they released a second poll showing that adults favor repeal of the bill by a 5-point margin.  So an awful lot of people who supposedly love the bill would also like to see it repealed!

Here are excerpts from President Obama's Rose Garden statement on Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation:

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today I accepted General Stanley McChrystal's resignation as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. I did so with considerable regret, but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military, and for our country.

I'm also pleased to nominate General David Petraeus to take command in Afghanistan, which will allow us to maintain the momentum and leadership that we need to succeed.

I don't make this decision based on any difference in policy with General McChrystal, as we are in full agreement about our strategy. Nor do I make this decision out of any sense of personal insult. Stan McChrystal has always shown great courtesy and carried out my orders faithfully. I've got great admiration for him and for his long record of service in uniform.
...

The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan.
...
Let me say to the American people, this is a change in personnel but it is not a change in policy. General Petraeus fully participated in our review last fall, and he both supported and helped design the strategy that we have in place. In his current post at Central Command, he has worked closely with our forces in Afghanistan. He has worked closely with Congress. He has worked closely with the Afghan and Pakistan governments and with all our partners in the region. He has my full confidence, and I am urging the Senate to confirm him for this new assignment as swiftly as possible.