It’s unlikely that same-sex marriage is going to push the economy out of the dominant role in this election. Indeed, short of a major international incident, it is unlikely that any other issue will displace the economic ones. But gay marriage was the most discussed issue last week. The most remarkable thing was not President Obama’s announcement that he would embrace same-sex marriage, even if it wasn’t exactly premeditated. Instead, it was a memo from a very prominent and well-respected Republican pollster suggesting that his party should treat the issue with considerably more caution than it has in the past.

If the presidential race were a football game, we would be at halftime. Admittedly, that metaphor comes up short. Having avoided a nomination challenge, President Obama’s team effectively got a bye and goes straight to the finals starting in September. Nonetheless, halftime is when coaches huddle, first with each other and then with players, to talk about what needs to happen next and what they need do differently to win the second half and the game.

When speaking with me about politics, one of my good friends will sometimes follow up with the question, “OK, now, Charlie, if you are wrong, why are you wrong?” For well over 40 years, this friend has been involved in markets, politics, and policy on Wall Street and inside presidential administrations. This individual knows that no matter how closely anyone watches Washington and politics, and no matter how objective one tries to be, anyone can be and is occasionally wrong. Call it a professional hazard.

The Republican presidential nomination is essentially settled. A wave of polls, focus groups, and other survey research is taking the temperature of the race, with certain clear themes emerging.

The pace of the exceedingly fragile economic recovery over the 204 days between now and the Nov. 6 election is a lot more important than anything that either President Obama or Mitt Romney says over the course of the campaign. How fast the economy grows—measured by change in gross domestic product, in the unemployment rate, and in real personal disposable income, as well as in oil and gasoline prices—will be far more influential than rhetoric in determining whether voters renew Obama’s contract for another four years.  

With the election less than seven months away one outcome is likely: whichever party ends up controlling the House will have a smaller majority than the 242-193 one Republicans enjoy now (just under 56 percent); and the Senate's will be closer than Democrats' 53-47.

Count me among the few who don’t believe that this week’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” and whatever ruling the justices announce, will be pivotal in determining President Obama’s fate in November. Notwithstanding the natural tendency for journalists to breathlessly cite everything (and every primary night!) as hugely consequential, some issues have already run their course with the public. President Obama’s two-year-old health care law has already been fully litigated in the court of public opinion, with a split and very close decision: A plurality think it and the individual mandate were bad, a handful of points ahead of those who approved of both.

Call me old-fashioned and a soft-touch, but I loved the 17-minute “The Road We’ve Traveled” campaign ad that the Obama campaign released last week.  

The most-tracked economic indicator, the unemployment rate, doesn’t tell the entire economic picture.

The results of the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Monday confirm previous survey data that show the Republican Party has suffered brand damage over the past few months. The GOP’s self-absorption and obsession with pleasing its conservative base in presidential candidates’ rhetoric and in policy initiatives at the congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative levels have taken a toll. While tea party folks like to boast that they provided the GOP with its majority in 2010, I didn’t notice many of them voting to put Nancy Pelosi in as House speaker in 2006 or to elect Barack Obama president in 2008. In the Bible, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. In politics, it is pretty much independents who giveth and taketh away.