First Read: “So when you step back and think about it, June has been a crazy month. It started with the monthly jobs report showing that just 69,000 jobs were created in May; then came the drumbeat of bad and uncertain news on the economy, both domestically and in Europe; then there was Wisconsin; then President Obama’s immigration announcement; and now we’re about to get the big SCOTUS health-care ruling (as well as the immigration one).”

“Yet despite it all, the Obama-Romney race has remained incredibly stable. Look no farther than the recent Pew poll and AP national poll showing Obama narrowly leading Romney (50%-46% and 47%-44%, respectively) — which is essentially where this race was after the former Massachusetts governor became the presumptive GOP nominee back in April.”

“What explains this stability, even if much of the media perception has been that Romney has the momentum while Obama is struggling? For starters, you could argue that given this nation’s political polarization, this tight race has always been locked in and perhaps is even more locked in than anyone appreciates. Then there’s the “demographics is destiny” argument that feeds the polarization; and finally, don’t overlook the Obama campaign’s heavy anti-Romney TV blitz have contributed to the stability. Bottom line: It’s probably a little of all three.”

First Read: “Ever since the Obama campaign began its Bain hit, there has been near universal agreement among elites that the hits were either “not working,” or “unfair,” or both. But as we’ve said before and we’ll say again: The Bain attacks aren’t meant to sway folks in NY and DC, but folks in three crucial battleground states: Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The whole point of this campaign by the Obama folks is to paint Romney as an out-of-touch Wall Street CEO…”

“And while the Romney campaign has comforted itself with the criticism of the Obama attacks by other Democrats (Booker, Rendell etc.), the campaign has done little to fix the larger image issue. So far, the Romney campaign has made this argument: Any attack on Bain is an attack on America’s free enterprise system. But how does it explain that Bain and its partners often made money, even if the firms they took over went belly up? And how do they now explain this Milken association? Does it keep using the “free enterprise” line? Or does it need to do something else?”

Wall Street Journal: “Once again, the Obama high command is making a big bet on their ground operation. The aim is to flood the zone: open up offices in battleground states, call undecided voters, and swarm the shopping malls to register as many people as possible. In this way, Democrats hope to neutralize the Republican super PAC advantage by out-registering and out-working the GOP on the streets.”

A new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll finds Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) leads challenger Dan Liljenquist (R) in the Republican U.S. Senate primary, 60% to 32%.

The primary is on Tuesday.

Paul Begala: “Let’s posit that the point of politics is to get more votes than the other side — so everything a politician does is by definition political. Shocking. But there is, frequently, also an element of principle, a dash of ideology, and maybe even a hint of idealism. To analyze every act in terms of motive, and to reduce every motive to its basest level, is just dumb.”

“You can drive yourself crazy trying to peer into a person’s soul–or you can do the sensible thing: ask not what inner motives drive a politician’s policy choices but instead whether those choices are good for the country. ”

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds half of Americans say it won’t matter much whether President Obama or Mitt Romney wins the presidential election “even though the presidential candidates have staked their chances on which would be better at fixing the economic mess.”

“People are especially pessimistic about the future president’s influence over jobs… Asked how much impact the November winner will have on unemployment, 6 in 10 gave answers ranging from slim to none.”

Meanwhile, a majority of those surveyed — 55% — say the winner will have from “just some impact” to “no impact” on the nation’s huge budget deficits.

The Boston Globe probes Mitt Romney’s business dealings with “junk bond king” Michael Milken.

“What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy.”

“But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as ‘junk bonds.'”

“I don’t want to be vice president.”

— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), quoted by Roll Call.