Shocking.

Thomas Ferguson is a professor of politics and economics at University of Massachusetts at Boston. The author of the “Investment Theory of Party Competition,” he believes that business elites, not voters, are the dominant force in political systems. Together with Joi Chen, he has released an analysis of the Brown/Coakley election, and concludes that the Brown vote correlates strongly with the decline in housing values.

I’ve put the blame on the “veal pen” in the past, who largely abandoned their Wall Street critiques when the bankers told Obama they didn’t want their bonuses criticized any more. Without the normal liberal validators driving the economic argument from the left, the media is left with little to cover and the danger has always been that all of that discontent would accrue to the right — which is exactly what happened. But credit where credit is due, Fox’s constant “Obama is a socialist” drumbeat has played a huge part in the ridiculously inadequate economic conversation that has driven pissed off old people with declining mortgage values to the right.

Despite the introduction of thousands of new chemicals into the products we use every day, the Toxic Substances Control Act has undergone no revisions since 1976.

This would be the second high-profile recruiting failure in two days for the GOP, and it all but assures that Feingold will be able to win re-election; the two candidates currently in the race against him are running well behind. This also allows the Democrats to breathe a little easier about retaining the majority in the Senate; there’s still a path to victory for the Republicans, but they would have to win just about everything out there.

Ted Deutch had plenty of money along with name ID in the deep-blue FL-19 district; it was more than enough to win easily over inadequately-funded Republican Ed Lynch. It’s a cautionary note to those who may try to make a narrative out of a race in advance of an election.

WSJ gets Pataki’s drop-out and this race completely wrong. Gillibrand was never vulnerable – and that’s why nobody wanted to challenge her. People like George Pataki don’t drop out of winnable Senate races to run some quixotic repeal organization. They decline to run because they know that their first day in the race would represent the high-water mark of their candidacy.

So, the Republicans don’t want anything to do with Obama’s proposal. No one could’ve predicted…

Michael Steele, most popular with the de-base.

Lucia Micarelli and Jethro Tull — Kashmir.

On Monday, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Hank Williams a Pulitzer Special Citation for his lifetime achievement as a songwriter, praising his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.