Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Ludacris, 35.

On to the good stuff:

1. Excellent summary of some of the public opinion literature from Dylan Matthews, using as a hook a new poll finding many Republican voters were willing to tell a pollster that Mitt Romney got bin Laden.

2. Larry Bartels follows up. Very nice.

3. I'll link to this one by Jennifer Victor because she has some interesting comments and findings about party platforms, but I have a big complaint with her post: I strongly disagree that "Candidates run candidate-centered campaigns, where the candidate is free to mold policy positions to the shape (s)he believe is consistent with constituents’ preferences." On two scores. One is that the nomination process does an excellent job of pushing candidates to accept the party's positions (which aren't equivalent to the planks of the platform; there's overlap, but it's not quite the same thing). The other is that candidates aren't free to do what they want because they become just one part of candidacies which are, certainly in presidential races but also at the Congressional level, well-integrated into their party's network.

4. And speaking of platforms...the history of God in the party platforms, from Tobin Grant (via John).