As an avid consumer of Missouri political campaign coverage for 40 years, let me be among the first to declare that it has never been better than it was in 2010: more content, additional outlets, sophisticated analysis.
Labor Day marks the time to get more serious about predicting the outcome of the November national elections. Political scientists—including this one—have recently returned from the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. In even-numbered years, there is invariably one or more sessions on projecting the outcome based on past trends and mid-to-late summer poll results.
I know a journalist freshly graduated from a midwestern University who, in these times of a somewhat floundering media world, eagerly accepted a position as a reporter at a small five-day weekly paper in Missouri.