Joe Klein: “We are sure to be smothered by Hillary (or hillary!, as an old campaign button had it) well past the summer solstice… I approach the coming spectacle with a combination of obsession, exhaustion, dread and exhilaration. This is going to be horrible fun – and crucial, as the Clintons always are… Some presidential campaigns are about inevitability. Others are about energy. The best have both, but it’s rare: inevitability tends to crush energy.”

“I’ve seen her candor more than once, but always off the record. That will have to change. If Hillary Clinton hopes to succeed, she’s going to have to drop the veil – spontaneously, quite possibly in a crucial moment, like a debate – and trust the public to accept who she really is. Absent that, there is no such thing as inevitability.”

“You can’t be the candidate that shakes down more money on Wall Street than anybody since I don’t know, Woodrow Wilson, and be the populist. You can’t be the one to say we’re going to focus on rebuilding America if you voted to go to the Iraq war.”

— Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), quoted by Time, on a possible presidential bid by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) needs a large, broad turnout in a June 24 runoff — a steep hill, since runoffs are typically parochial with low turnout. Challenger Chris McDaniel needs his blue collar and tea party base of voters in his strongholds to turn out strong again. They still appear fired up and ready. Both Republican U.S. Senate campaigns need money, lots of it fast, or outside groups willing to spend on their behalf.”

“As the two campaigns analyzed Tuesday’s voting — in which they fought to nearly a draw — and plotted strategy moving forward, most prognoses had the runoff tilted in McDaniel’s favor.”

However, Harry Enten
says “we should be cautious in speculating how the Mississippi runoff
will go. There hasn’t been a GOP primary for Senate or governor in the
past 26 years in which an incumbent didn’t get the most votes but still
made a runoff. We’re in mostly uncharted territory.”

Nate Cohn says Democrats shouldn’t get their hopes up about winning a U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi — even if tea partier Chris McDaniel (R) prevails in a runoff against Sen. Thad Cochran (R).

“There is no state more polarized than Mississippi. Eighty percent of voters are black or white evangelical Christian. And the problem for Democrats is that they’re on the wrong side of the ledger. In 2012, 50 percent of voters were white evangelical Christians, and they voted 95 percent for Mitt Romney. They form a nearly unbreakable bloc, and they’re augmented by the state’s deeply conservative non-evangelical white voters. Over all, Mr. Obama barely exceeded 10 percent of white voters, if at all… There just might not be a road to victory for Democrats in Mississippi.”

“As he gears up for a possible second presidential run, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is crisscrossing the country extolling a business-first philosophy he says made his state’s economy white-hot — and can work for the rest of America too,” the AP reports.

“But back home, members of Perry’s own party seem poised to dismantle key parts of his legacy. The longest-serving governor in state history isn’t seeking re-election and may see two of his achievements — distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to attract top employers to Texas and stockpiling a rainy day fund robust enough to bankroll infrastructure projects — swept away not long after he moves out of the governor’s mansion.”

TPM: “A Mississippi tea party official with close ties to U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel apparently ended up inside a locked and empty county courthouse late Tuesday night after primary election results had come in.”

South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Annette Bosworth (R) turned herself in following the issuance of a warrant for her arrest just after she lost the election, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports.

Keloland: “Bosworth confirms that she has been charged with six counts of perjury and six counts of offering a false or forged instrument for filing… Concerns were raised during her campaign that she had submitted nominating petitions where she was listed as the petition circulator but was allegedly not in the country at the time the petition was circulated.”

According to Business Insider, Bosworth’s Facebook and Twitter accounts provided evidence against her.

A new Clemson University Palmetto poll in South Carolina finds Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) leading the GOP primary for Senate with 49%, followed by Lee Bright (R) at 9% and five other candidates in the low single digits. Another 35% of respondents said they were still undecided.

Graham needs 50% support to avoid a runoff.

Oregon U.S. Senate candidate Monica Wehby (R) spoke to the Oregonian about the police reports which said she stalked an ex-boyfriend and harassed her ex-husband.

Said Wehby: “I think these are personal matters that have been put to rest by the fact that both of these guys are close friends of mine and very supportive of my candidacy. I don’t think any of us – man or woman – would like to answer out in the public square for things that we say to our spouses in the heat of an argument. I find this to be a despicable attack by Merkley and his band of bullies.”

“Merkley has said he didn’t know anything about the report before it became public and said he doesn’t intend to make an issue of her personal life.”

The Cook Political Report has learned that American Crossroads is staying out of the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff, denying Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) “a major source of outside spending.”

The Fix: “We looked at six times since 2000 in which an incumbent has faced a primary runoff, and then compared the primary vote totals to the runoff totals in each race. In all but one case, the challenger took at least 75 percent off the votes that were ‘up for grabs’ in the runoff, and in two of those cases, the incumbent actually lost votes in the runoff.”