Don't want to miss out on the latest in politics? Start each day with The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m. as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and Congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news.

Washington Post national political reporter Alec MacGillis was online Thursday, June 26 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest in political news.

The transcript follows.

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washingtonpost.com: Post reporter Alec MacGillis will be filling in on Post Politics Hour this morning. Here are some of his recent articles:

AFL-CIO Outlines Major Election Effort

Obama's Evolving Ethanol Rhetoric

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Washington: I mean .even gun haters can't somehow argue a total ban was constitutional, can they? If somehow privacy gets interpreted to include abortion, then certainly arms means the right to own guns?

washingtonpost.com: Court Rules in Favor of Second Amendment Gun Right (AP, June 26)

Alec MacGillis: Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us here today at washingtonpost.com. Seems like this question is a good one to start with, as the gun ban ruling is clearly going to be the story of the day. It will be interesting to see how it plays out on the campaign trail, because Barack Obama has been walking a fine line on this issue all year -- making it clear he's in favor of local governments being able to pass reasonable restraints as they see fit for their local needs, while not wanting to be tagged as too strongly anti-gun. Ever since 2000, when many believe Al Gore was badly hurt by the gun issue in states like West Virginia, Democrats have walked very carefully on this one. John McCain's troops are already trying hard today to use this ruling against Obama.

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Franconia, Va.: Do the Supreme Court's decisions on the gun ban or the death penalty for child rapists either help or hurt either presidential candidate?

Alec MacGillis: A follow-up on the Supreme Court rulings: it really depends on how Obama is able to finesse the issue in the coming days. All year, he has said he supported reasonable local gun laws, while stopping short of endorsing the D.C. laws too strongly, saying he was waiting to see how broadly the Supremes would rule on the case. As for the child rapist case, it was interesting to see that Obama sided with the minority and criticized the ruling that the death penalty couldn't be used against child rapists. That upset many of his supporters on the left, but this apparently was an issue that he didn't feel it was worth picking a fight over.

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Maryland: Just on observation. Bill Clinton is taking a lot of heat from bloggers about his lukewarm endorsement of Obama, but I sensed the Obama campaign was running on an anti-Clinton bandwagon from the beginning. I'm a huge fan of Bill Clinton's presidency, and when I started to hear the Obama camp make subtle attacks against Clinton's time in office, I decided right then not to support Obama. Why should Clinton feel he needs to endorse a man who spent the past year playing the subtle "gender" card against his wife and trashing his presidency?!

Alec MacGillis: This question gets at the other big story of the day on the trail, the make-up between Obama and Clinton, which will continue with a fundraiser this evening at the Mayflower Hotel here in Washington, and then a happy photo-op in the appropriately named town of Unity, N.H., where each of them got 107 votes in the New Hampshire primary.

So far, it does seem as if Hillary is more interested in a reconciliation than Bill. Who knows just what Bill is thinking, but this question gets at something that can't be overlooked in the rush for a make-up: the fact is, much of Obama's primary campaign message was geared against the Clintons -- not just his call for getting done everything that was left undone in the '90s (health care, etc.) but his broader call for a new politics, with less game-playing and spinning and more candor. That message very clearly was meant as a contrast to the Clintons. How he pivots that message now for the general election, in a way that the Clintons can get on board with, will be interesting to watch.

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Portland, Ore.: Your thoughts on the Gordon Smith ad -- possibly linking the Republican senator to Obama? I can't imagine the Republican National Committee is happy with this. Obama is only up by three in Oregon, and quite a few people thought it would be a legitimate swing state. It looks like Smith unilaterally is conceding it to Obama. I think it will make it much harder for the RNC to demonize Obama there. I could see them tolerating this in Vermont or Rhode Island, but Oregon?

washingtonpost.com: The Fix: Gordon Smith Throws In With Obama (washingtonpost.com, June 25)

Alec MacGillis: My colleague Jonathan Weisman wrote about this today. It's pretty remarkable, as you note, for Smith to be running an ad like this in a state where Obama is up only a handful of points in most polls. And you're right, I can't imagine that the RNC is happy about it, though perhaps at this point they are so set on limiting their losses in Congress that they'll let candidates do whatever they feel they need to in order to keep their seats. The fact is, while Obama is not up that much in the state right now, it's hard to believe that the Republicans really think they have that great a shot there. I was covering Obama on one swing through there, and one definitely got the sense that it was a state that he was a good fit for. (It doesn't hurt that his brother-in-law is the new basketball coach at Oregon State...) And that wasn't even the trip with the 75,000-person rally in Portland. The odds of Smith keeping his seat likely are better than the odds of Obama losing the state, so perhaps Smith becomes the priority there for the Republicans.

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Fairfax, Va.: In Bob Novak's Evans-Novak Political Report, he has made repeated references to Joe Biden being a hot commodity in the veepstakes, but nowhere else have I read anywhere near that level of enthusiasm. Does Novak know something everyone else doesn't?

Alec MacGillis: Actually, I've seen Biden's name popping up quite a bit. Who knows where he stands on the real list, but Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, made an interesting remark yesterday about the veep search that certainly did not rule out a guy with Biden's profile. Plouffe said the campaign wasn't really thinking about finding a veep who could win a specific state, as often has been done in the past; instead, it was looking for someone who would be a good match with the campaign's message, and someone who would be a good partner in governing. That only can help the chances of someone like Biden, who would not be bringing much to the table with his home state of Delaware, a small state with (it seems) more toll booths than voters.

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Clifton, Va.: So Obama wants a top tax rate of approximately 60 percent on the earners, after one figures in his tax increase on federal income tax, plus Medicaid and Social Security. Great way to get the economy moving, bubba. Top earners create jobs; us middle-class folks don't. Then you want to raise the rate on capital gains -- that's a sure winner for the treasury and the economy, as folks will hold assets. Lowering the tax rate on capital gains actually will bring revenues into the Treasury. I hate to say this, but it worked for the Clinton administration.

Who cares what Charlie Black said or if Obama understands his Bible. What is boils down to is, do you want to let Obama's no-growth policies turn a recession into a the worst Depression in the past 150 years, or do you give the economy a chance with a pro growth/pro main street McCain plan? Anyone making over $80,000 probably will see a federal income tax increase under Obama. Not good! And yeah, I know what Obama says about couples making more than $250,000, etc., but come on, do you believe him? I don't!

Alec MacGillis: This is an issue that hasn't gotten too much attention yet beyond the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, where the writers are warning that Obama will be a return to the days of Jimmy Carter. It' ha been interesting watching Obama make some tweaks in these plans in the past month -- for much of the campaign, he made it sound like he might be for raising the cap on payroll taxes from $100,000 up, period, but now he has made clear that he'd have a "donut hole" with no income taxed between $100,000 and $250,000, but then income above that taxed. This would spare a fair number of upper-middle class voters, but also would raise much less than a simple cap-lifting would. It would provide a lot more revenue for the program, but it also fundamentally would change the nature of the program -- from one where people's inputs are correlated (to some degree) with what they get out of it, to one where the most wealthy very clearly are carrying more of the load, more akin to our income tax policies. It should make for a good debate.

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Reading, Pa.: Alec, why are some in the media buying into this ruse that supposes Hillary has some mystical control over 18 million supporters? If that were the case, let each of them pitch in fifty cents, and she'll pay that campaign debt off in no time...

Alec MacGillis: Nicely put. You're right, it has been somewhat amusing to see her voting totals described that way -- almost like some kind of feudal army in sworn allegiance to its lord. The truth is, of course, that while many of those 18 million voters are very committed to her and upset that she lost, there are surely many others who voted for her in a much more routine way, and are more than willing to move behind Obama. In fact, there are probably even some who voted for her early in the primary season, but after watching the campaign go on changed their mind (just as the reverse is true of some Obama voters from early in the campaign).

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Pennsylvania: Re: The Gordon Smith ad in Oregon favorably linking the Republican incumbent to Obama, here in Pennsylvania, John McCain's running an ad touting how he stood up to the Bush administration on climate change and environmental issues. Go figure!

Alec MacGillis: That ad is running in a lot of states for McCain. Notably, it went up the same day that he came out for offshore drilling, only to be followed immediately by Bush also coming out for the drilling. Depending on how you look at it, that timing either showed McCain as refreshingly unorthodox, or of suffering from a mixed message when it comes to energy and the Bush record.

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Southwest Nebraska: So, the mainstream media seems to be buying into the tale that Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate -- any pushback against that by journalists without a horse to flog?

Alec MacGillis: You're right, there've been a lot of reports of that one survey by National Journal that showed Obama with the most liberal record last year. But in defense of my colleagues, quite a few of us have pointed out that the survey was based on flawed data, because Obama missed so many votes. In fact -- if you excuse the self promotion -- here's a link to a story I wrote on this subject, looking at whether the Republicans would be able to paint Obama as an old-line liberal, given that in some ways his thinking and make-up do seem to move beyond some of the old definitions. Here it is.

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Stone Harbor, N.J. Wonder why the Imus "racial" flap was reported on but very little was reported on Nader's remarks? Seems to me that, with Nader being a liberal darling for years, it should have made big news. Could it be that his "white guilt" comment hits too close to the bone?

washingtonpost.com: Ralph's Race Card (Post, June 26)

Alec MacGillis: In fact, as another questioner noted, Nader's comments about Obama sounding and acting "white" probably has gotten more attention than anything else Nader has said this campaign, and probably was intended as such. I doubt there's any liberal media conspiracy to protect Nader in not making more of the comments, given that attention is precisely what Nader wants and is not getting much of. A colleague of mine at The Post actually wrote a nice long profile of Nader this week, before the white comments broke. But the media's not doing more with him, I imagine, given that he drew only 500,000 votes or so in 2004 and seems unlikely to draw much more this time around. He drew only a small crowd at a recent appearance in Cambridge, Mass., the "People's Republic of Cambridge." Not a good sign. Here's the profile.

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Re: Clifton, Va.: "Top earners create jobs; us middle-class folks don't." But middle-class folks are the ones buying the stuff those top earners make; they can't make money if we aren't buying. And if I recall correctly, the Congressional Budget Office already has said that McCain's plan only will create a larger income disparity. Wow, anti-Obama sentiment is on the rise.

Alec MacGillis: Well, here's your debate. This reader is correct -- McCain's tax plan definitely is skewed more to the wealthy than is Obama's. In fact, one reason Obama is trying to raise so much revenue from the wealthy is that he wants to cut some taxes on the middle and working classes, which has gotten him some criticism on the left from those who think the country can't afford any more tax cuts beyond the Bush ones. The other argument against the McCain plan, of course, is that it leaves a big budget hole. He says he can make that up with budget cuts, but most evaluations so far say that simply can't be done without draconian cuts far beyond what McCain is talking about.

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Vienna, Va.: For all the Obama campaign's bravado, I noticed that they aren't running ads in three traditional swing states: Tennessee, Arkansas and West Virginia. Does that mean that Obama is writing off the rural white South? Remember that their model for winning Virginia and North Carolina and Georgia relies on heavy black turnout and young suburban whites, not on bubbas.

Alec MacGillis: Good point. When the Obama campaign talks about raiding red territory, it actually is talking about certain states and not others. They see themselves having a chance in Southern states with large African-American populations, like Georgia and North Carolina. And they see a chance in lily-white Western states like North Dakota and Montana where Obama seems to have an unusual rapport as a Democrat. But they acknowledge that they have little shot in border and Appalachian states where he did poorly in the primary.

It's worth noting that the Democrats' weakness in those states go beyond Obama, and is not just a racial matter: Gore couldn't win his home state of Tennessee, and Gore and Kerry both lost West Virginia, which previously had been reliably Democratic. There's a shift here that goes beyond Obama. Hillary Clinton would have had better prospects in these states, but then also would have been weaker elsewhere on the map than Obama.

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Baltimore: Re: The 5-4 vote overturning the gun ban, this result is one reason why Hillary Clinton supporters would need a complete disconnect from reality to vote for John McCain. Had Al Gore won the presidency in 2000, John Roberts and Samuel Alito would not be sitting on the bench today. As I kept telling people in 2000 when they said they saw no difference between Gore and Bush, the difference lies entirely with the Supreme Court, which may have Roberts, Alito and Clarence Thomas on it for the next 20 years. Lord know who McCain might name to replace John Paul Stevens.

Alec MacGillis: Many other Obama supporters will be making this same argument in the months ahead, and it looks like it may already be taking hold with many voters -- polls so far suggest that Obama is doing quite well with many in Clinton's constituency, including white women.

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Silver Spring, Md.: I read that Sen. Clinton hired Robert Bennett to represent her in negotiations with the Obama campaign. Bringing in Bennett represents a lot of what Obama has been running against -- he is the ultimate Washington insider, representing President Clinton in the Paula Jones case and then helping McCain in his dust-up with the New York Times about his lobbyists "friend." The Clintons' instinct is to turn to K Street, just as John McCain's is. This type of thing should keep Clinton off the Obama ticket.

Alec MacGillis: That was a eye-catching detail, that the Obama-Clinton unification is still thorny enough that they need a lawyer to help smooth it out. I'm not sure that having an insider in this role, though, is the same thing as having an insider helping vet veep candidates -- like Jim Johnson, who had to step down after his mortgage dealings surfaced. Bennett's role seems more personal than that, almost like a mediator or counselor brought in to settle a personal dispute. Hard to see a better candidate for that than someone who has represented both Obama and Clinton in the past.

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St. Paul, Minn.: Alec, thanks for taking my question today. The McCain campaign is crying foul at a couple of recent polls showing Obama with a significant lead (low double digits). Is that a good strategy for them? Doesn't it risk betraying a certain fear on their part that McCain's campaign hasn't yet really taken off as they would like? Wouldn't they be better focusing on their differences with Obama?

Alec MacGillis: I was actually a bit surprised as well that McCain pushed back so hard at those polls. Sure, the polls may well have overstated Obama's strength -- they're early polls, after all -- but it seems as if McCain could use his standing in the polls to his advantage, to build up an underdog aura of the sort that he seems to thrive on. Especially if the Obama campaign keeps showing flashes of overconfidence, as it did when it made up that ill-conceived campaign logo that looked like a presidential seal last week (which it since has admitted was a silly thing to do.)

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Washington: Clifton, Va., may want to watch the CNBC program tonight on the rise of the "super rich," which profiles -- no surprise -- mostly hedge fund managers, one of whom brags about how it cost him $22,000 to repair a tire (!) on his $1.8 million Bugatti, one of 70 cars he owns. At least the Carnegies and the Pullmans created something of value (steel mills, railroads). These guys move electrons. I don't give a damn if they are taxed at 99 percent.

Alec MacGillis: I'm going to throw this one out there for its color value. Nice details. Another fact about these hedge-fund managers: A lot of them have given a lot of money to Barack Obama, the candidate most likely to raise their taxes.

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Fairfax, Va.: Although Obama preaches that this is the time for Change, he refused to fight against the FISA bill with retroactive immunity for telecom corporations. Is there any example this year where Obama has taken a leadership role fighting corporate special interests, or is Obama the "empty suit" the Republicans say he is?

Alec MacGillis: This is one of the emerging McCain arguments against Obama -- that for all his reform talk he actually hasn't done as much in that arena as McCain. Obama's agreement on the FISA bill got him a lot of heat on the left, but this may have been an issue that he did not see value in sticking himself out on, particularly once the congressional leadership came out for the compromise. Maybe he figures he can ratchet it back once he gets in the White House. It is worth noting here that Obama is not as reflexively anti-corporate as other liberal Democrats, such as John Edwards, so don't be surprised if there are more compromises like this one. Obama did, for instance, vote for a Republican tort reform bill a couple years ago.

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Fairfax County, Va.: When did Bob Bennett represent Obama before? That is, interesting but the rest of us didn't know it, so it would help if you spelled that out. Thanks in advance.

Alec MacGillis: Sorry, I should have been more specific. Bennett was Obama's agent for his second book, "The Audacity of Hope." He doubles as a literary agent for a lot of D.C. politicians.

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Bethesda, Md.: I don't really have an opinion one way or the other on the gun ban ruling, but I am bothered when I hear something in the vein of "D.C. citizens need the right to protect themselves." This was a handgun ban, correct? Washington residents still could own a rifle or shotgun big enough to blow the living room into the front yard, if they so desired.

Alec MacGillis: Correct -- but the shotguns and rifles needed to be locked up.

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Bremerton, Wash.: I see the Court has now struck down the "Millionaires Amendment" to Campaign Finance Reform. Should I just make my tax payments directly to Halliburton and Exxon now?

Alec MacGillis: Yes, that's the other big court story of the day. One thing that's pretty clear is that by the time this election's over, the existing campaign finance structure is going to lie more or less in tatters, between rulings like this and Obama's decision to reject public financing for the general election. Ironic, in a way, that this should happen amid a campaign between two men who genuinely have shown themselves quite interested in reforming the political throughover the years.

All right, guys, that's it for today. Thanks very much for the great questions, and please join us again soon.

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