We’re in the heat of the mid-term campaign season now. So in addition to the regular posts we do on everything to do with the campaign, there are a lot of quick updates, new polls, outside articles we think you should read, events we want to call to your attention. So with all that in mind we’re rolling out our new live-updating TPM Midterms Wire. Like our other live-updating news wires, it’ll be a profusion of every detail you’d want to know about what’s happening in the campaign, one-stop shopping for the political news junkie who needs their fix. In addition to its own page, you can also find it every day down to the right of our front page, just below the feature section.

Let us know what you think about how we can improve it. We’ve got a long 30+ days ahead of us.

We’ve been looking a lot recently at the congressional generic ballot measure. One of the reasons that measure is so important is that there are simply so many House races that it’s impossible to look at them individually. And all but a very few of them are either not polled, or polled so infrequently, that it’s very hard to get any clear sense of trends. But that’s not the case on the Senate side of the ledger where most of the competitive races are being polled quite closely. After the jump, trend charts and the latest poll averages of all the key Senate races that are going to determine who’s in the majority in January. Read More

You’ve got to get a load of this new TV ad that Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA) is running against Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). It’s a trimmed-down version of the web ad Melancon had done earlier that echos that godawful syndicated show Cheaters and goes directly after Vitter for the prostitution scandal. But even the edited-down version is a whopping two minutes long. Take a look.

It’s an election year for the House Ethics Committee, too. Democrats on the committee were completely blindsided yesterday when committee Republicans released a statement demanding the ethics cases of Reps. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) be heard before the midterm elections. A senior Democratic aide accuses the Republicans of timing the announcement for when committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) was on a flight from DC back home to her district.

Fresh off appearing yesterday in a Tennessee courtroom as an expert witness on the dangers of Sharia law, new fangled Shariologist Frank Gaffney appeared on CNN last night to explain how mosques are here in the US “to destroy Western Civilization from within.” See the video.

Gaffney was in court to testify on behalf of plaintiffs trying to halt the construction of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which is being built by a local mosque. Gaffney explained that while he is no expert on Sharia Law he has repeatedly spoken out about the threat it poses to America. The construction site was torched last month.

Louisiana’s Democratic senator has put a hold on the nomination of Jacob Lew to be the new director of the President’s Office of Management and Budget, even though Lew sailed through committee on a 22-1 vote, is supremely qualified for the post (he held it under Bill Clinton), and we’re in the midst of ongoing economic and fiscal crises. To her (sorta) credit, Mary Landrieu has been very upfront about why she’s holding him up: The oil state senator wants the Obama Administration to end the moratorium on deepwater drilling. Period. Read More

Ambush ‘filmmaker’ O’Keefe, the guy behind the ACORN vids and the one who got arrested for trying to break into Sen. Landreiu’s office, has now been caught trying to ‘punk’ and ‘seduce’ a CNN reporter.

Truly a Must-Read.

In the first poll of Florida’s 8th Congressional District, Rep. Alan Grayson is down seven points to Republican former state Sen. Dan Webster, with an unfavorable rating above 50 percent.

Colbert, on the Republican “Pledge To America”: “Yes, everything’s going to be different — except anything.” Watch.