Got a question about the campaign? Or a question about TPM? I’m doing a live Twitter chat at 3 PM eastern. I’m @joshtpm and we’re using the hashtag #asktpm.

Scott Walker leaves the door open to state-based Health Care mandates if Supreme Court overturns the Health Care Reform law.

We all probably figure that race played some significant role in the 2008 election. But a doctoral student at Harvard has used Google search data to put a number on it. His result? Racial hostility cost President Obama 3% to 5% of the popular vote.

A Romney campaign bus is reportedly circling and honking around the site of President Obama’s speech today.

This is rich on a number of levels. It should really make you marvel at all the time, money, and histrionics conservatives have dedicated to attacking, delegitimizing, and otherwise undermining the Affordable Care Act. At the same time, it adds to the growing body of evidence that even if the Supreme Court tosses the law, or a Republican Congress and administration repeal it, it’s already generated enough expectations and genuine reforms, that it’ll serve as something like the national connective tissue for a patchwork of ‘Obamacare’-based statewide programs.

Here’s the story. Read More

Just read it.

Today is the day of the dueling mega-speeches on the presidential campaign trail. And reporters waiting around the venue of President Obama’s event were greeted by a Romney campaign bus circling the venue and volubly honking its horn, something you’d expect a rival wrestling team to do to disrupt the other team’s pep talk. On its face it seems somewhere between juvenile and just weird. But this is actually a core part of the Romney camp’s election strategy. Read More

Pentagon plans first ever Gay Pride event.

FreedomWorks: We’re sure Scott Walker didn’t really mean he’s for health insurance mandates.

Conservatives like Michelle Malkin are starting to catch on to the Republican leadership’s slow embrace of some of the key components of Obamacare — and they do NOT like it.