The trendlines are all favorable, too. Until recently Toomey’s leads had been in the neighborhood of six points, but he’s now had three straight polls where it’s eight or better. In California, meanwhile, Whitman’s turned a 43/41 deficit into a 48/40 lead — in just three weeks (51/43 if you include leaners).

As for Florida, well, alternate headline: “Kendrick Meek now officially blogger’s favorite Democrat ever.”

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Florida shows Marco Rubio attracting 40% of the vote, while Charlie Crist picks up 30% in the race to become the state’s next U.S. senator. The new Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek earns 21% support…

In the last survey before the primary, it was Rubio at 38%, Crist at 33% and Meek 21%…

Meek supporters who might switch their vote are overwhelmingly considering Crist as their option. Among Crist supporters, most would consider changing to Meek. However, more than a third say they might switch to Rubio. This is not surprising given that 37% of current Crist supporters disapprove of the way President Obama is doing his job.

Yeah, Sunshine Charlie’s problem is that even if things go relatively well for him and Meek starts to fade, the further left he tacks to pander to Meek’s voters, the greater the risk that his own Republican supporters will bail for Rubio. And no matter what happens, some Dem base voters will stay with Meek; unless he drops out entirely, which is unthinkable now that he’s won a contested primary, the Democratic vote’s going to end up split to some greater or lesser extent.

I don’t know if I can deal with this much optimism for another two months. I feel like a fish flopping around on the deck of a boat. Throw me back into the sea of despair so that I can breathe!

Update: Some comfort at last for lefties: Sure, they trail among likely voters on all 10 key issues — and on only three is it even close — but it’s a Rasmussen poll, so they’ll automatically discredit it.

Special thanks to Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters for this one:

The GOP has consistently been trusted on most issues for months now, but in July they held the lead on only nine of the key issues.

Republicans lead Democrats 47% to 39% on the economy, which remains the most important issue to voters. Those numbers are nearly identical to those found in June. Republicans have held the advantage on the economy since May of last year.

But for the first time in months, Republicans now hold a slight edge on the issues of government ethics and corruption, 40% to 38%. Voters have been mostly undecided for the past several months on which party to trust more on this issue, but Democrats have held small leads since February. Still, more than one-in-five voters (22%) are still not sure which party to trust more on ethics issues.