PM Gordon Brown is now at Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation; soon to be followed by David Cameron who the Queen will ask to form a government. It’s a Conservative-LibDem coalition government.
We’ve gotten more information now on Beau Biden’s condition. He apparently suffered a stroke that his doctor describes as “mild.” The vice president’s son and Delaware attorney general is expected to make a complete recovery, his doctor says.
The big news from Britain, according to Fox News, is that Queen Elizabeth herself has agreed to become prime minister:
Queen Elizabeth accepted the invitation of Conservative Party leader David Cameron to become Britain’s new prime minister Tuesday night after Gordon Brown resigned following his failure to form a coalition government with another liberal party.
That was awful nice of Cameron to extend the invitation.
(Special thanks to TPM Reader TW for the catch.)
Big news tonight out of West Virginia, where 14-term incumbent Rep. Alan Mollohan has been defeated in the Democratic primary. That seat has been held by a Mollohan for 45 of the last 57 years. Mollohan’s father, Bob, served a combined 18 years in two separate stints before his son succeeded him in 1983. The Mollohan era comes to an end at the hands of state Sen. Mike Oliverio, who outflanked Mollohan from the right — and has declined to say whether he would vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
The new daily tracking poll of the Pennsylvania Democratic senate primary is out from Muhlenberg. And it has Arlen Specter scraping back to a tie with Rep. Joe Sestak — 45% to 45%.
As we always note, tracking polls are inevitably wobbly and no one reading should be counted with too much weight. But perhaps the momentum has shifted or is shifting a bit. The current TPM Poll Average stands at Specter 44.7% to Sestak 40.8%.
And tomorrow there at least one and perhaps two major polls coming out on this race. The first, from Quinnipiac, should be out first thing in the morning.
I’m actually a fan of Eliot Spitzer. And I don’t think Elana Kagan is too shabby either. But I couldn’t help finding some degree of humor in this passage from Politico’s piece on the innuendo campaign in which the shaggiferous former governor vouches for Kagan’s heterosexuality.
Another friend, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a member of Kagan’s social circle at Princeton University, wanted to make the same point as Walzer. “I did not go out with her, but other guys did,” he said in an email Tuesday night. “I don’t think it is my place to say more.”
Two new polls of the Democratic Senate race in Pennsylvania are out this morning. Unlike the Muhlenberg poll that Josh mentioned last night, the two new polls aren’t tracking polls. Here’s what they show:
Quinnipiac: Specter 44, Sestak 42 (Undecided 14).
Franklin and Marshall: Sestak 38, Specter 36 (Undecided 15). Read More
Orrin Hatch has one really big thing going for him. He’s not up for reelection until 2012. If he was, it looks like he’d probably getting the axe like his senate colleague Bob Bennett did over the weekend. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that among this year’s delegates to the state Republican convention, fully 71% would have backed a candidate other than Hatch. And among the state’s voters generally only 35% support him. Read More
Democrats have their work cut out for them this year. But things could be even worse if there weren’t so many GOP direct mail groups raising tons of money but spending little if any of it on GOP campaigns.
Justin Elliott has unearthed the latest example: AmeriPac. So far in this cycle they’ve raised $1.3 million and spent thirteen hundred on campaign related spending.