Last night, closing his assertive speech on the American Jobs Act, President Obama made a promise. “This plan is the right thing to do right now, and you should pass it,” he said to the joint session of Congress, “And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country.”

Remember Glenn Beck? For a while there he was the most talked-about media figure in the country, his mug shouting from magazine covers as he channeled the particular brand of crazy that had seized the Republican party. His unhinged conspiracy theories and venomous hatred for Barack Obama were perfectly in tune with what a significant portion of the country was feeling; his books shot up the best-seller list, his Fox News show got great ratings, and everyone was talking about him.

As Patrick Caldwell mentioned already, of all eight candidates at last night’s GOP debate, it was Rick Perry who sickened many progressives when he defended his record on the death penalty:

“In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed.”

At the moment, many liberals are looking at the abysmal economy and saying to themselves, "It'll be OK. Rick Perry is an extremist nut, and once people learn that, he'll never win a majority." He'll be the next Barry Goldwater or George McGovern, nominees just too far out of the mainstream for the American electorate to stomach. Jonathan Bernstein says don't be so sure:

The Bachmann campaign announced over the weekend that campaign manager Ed Rollins would be vacating that role and assume the more auxiliary position of "senior advisor." Rollins' health was cited as the explanation for the move. Though it does seem possible that the daily grind of a campaign could get to a 68-year-old, it looks like there was more going on in this case, as Rollins' deputy and ally David Polyansky left the campaign on the same day.

We'd all agree that our politics would function better if conservatives and progressives could understand each other's point of view better, instead of simply vilifying one another. In that spirit, I'd like to offer a window into the way we on the left think on one particular issue -- and particularly, what we think about what you think -- in the hopes that it will give our conservative readers (and I know you're there, since some of you take to the comments to tell me that I'm a stupid lying despicable America-hater) some perspective.

Before we get into this post about polling in the presidential race, please understand that I'm not saying that anything we're seeing today predicts what will happen next November. With that out of the way, let me point out something interesting.