Obama the ‘Clear Favorite,’ Clinton Aide Goes Rogue, and More

Good News for Obama:

Here’s one strong indicator that President Obama will be re-elected in November: Number cruncher Nate Silver looked at the past 19 candidates who have led at this stage of the presidential race and found that 18 ended up winning the race, while 17 of the candidates won the Electoral College (Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but lost the Electoral College — and ultimately the election — to George W. Bush). (Read more)

Putting Romney in the Spot: President Obama’s re-election campaign is using Mitt Romney’s controversial “47 percent” remark in a newly released campaign ad. What a shocker. (Read more)

Clinton Aide Loses It: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal spokesman Phillipe Reines lost his cool during an email exchange with BuzzFeed’s Michael Hastings about the department’s handling of the situation in Benghazi. In one particularly volatile email, Reines called Hastings an “unmitigated asshole” before telling him to “have a good day. And by good day, I mean Fuck Off.” As Mitt Romney would probably say, that wasn’t elegantly stated. (Read more)

Birth Control Access Increased: While Republicans work to make contraceptives less accessible in the U.S., one Democratic-controlled state is trying to make them more easily available. California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed legislation over the weekend that would allow registered nurses to hand out birth control. The Los Angeles-area event at which Brown signed the measure was billed as reaffirming “every woman’s basic constitutional rights.” (Read more)

Marriage Equality Under Fire: Minnesota state Rep. Mary Franson wants to prevent gay couples from marrying because she “personally does not believe” that homosexuality is “normal behavior.” “My concerns are that our children in our schools could be taught some liberal agendas because of the marriage amendment,” she said. As Think Progress noted: “There is no evidence that exposure to LGBT adults and issues hurts children, and including LGBT-friendly content in school curricula has been shown to make schools safer for LGBT students.” And that evidence, by the way, is based on something other than personal beliefs (like research and studies). (Read more)

Perry “Oops!” Explained: A new book about Rick Perry’s ill-fated presidential campaign says the Texas governor’s “series of terrible debate performances” was due to an undiagnosed sleep disorder. The gaffes eventually forced the Republican out of the White House race. In “Oops! A Diary from the 2012 Campaign Trail,” Jay Root writes that the candidate suffered from a “severe lack of sleep,” which ultimately led to sleep tests that revealed Perry had sleep apnea. (Read more)

Fooled by The Onion?: Apparently some Floridians do not understand that The Onion is not actually a real news source. The back story: The Onion printed a piece about President Obama’s 19-year-old son “Luther” attending the Democratic National Convention. (As you correctly guessed, “Luther” does not exist. This is, after all, The Onion we’re talking about.) Clearly there are some, however, who do not understand the concept of satire. How else to explain why readers of the Florida Times-Union wanted to know whether the article was real or not? The paper obliged with a fact check of The Onion article and came to the following conclusion: “It’s meant to be funny, not factual.” Duh. (Read more)

Video of the Day: “Saturday Night Live” looks at some of the “unanswered questions” some undecided voters surely have. Like, for example, “Who is the president now? Is he or she running” and “Can women vote?”