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Barack Obama leads John McCain 51 percent to 39 percent in the first national poll by Research 2000.

Libertarian Bob Barr receives 3 percent and independent candidate Ralph Nader gets 2 percent in the survey.

kos notes that Obama leads McCain in three of the four regions, the East, West and Midwest. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), the Democrats' presidential nominee, lost the Midwest in addition to the South.

Mark Whitaker, former editor of Newsweek, has been named NBC News's D.C. Bureau Chief, filling the position vacant since the death of Tim Russert.

After leaving Newsweek in 2006, he has served as a Senior Vice President at NBC News, where he has overseen reporting for "NBC Nightly News," "Today" and MSNBC. As head of the Washington, D.C. bureau, Whitaker will be in charge of "Meet the Press" and the 2008 election coverage.

"I am honored and humbled to succeed Tim, whose commitment to journalism without fear or favor is a beacon for us all," Whitaker said in a statement.

John McCain, who has previously been treated for skin cancer, had a spot removed from his face Monday during a checkup by his doctor in Phoenix.

"At this point it was just a precautionary removal," a campaign spokesman told reporters on McCain's plane.

Robert Novak has been hospitalized with a brain tumor.

The 77-year-old conservative columnist said he received the diagnosis Sunday.

Here's his statement to his publisher:

On Sunday, July 27, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I have been admitted to Brigham and Women

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (D) has yet to endorse Barack Obama for president.

"I'm unhappy with the current presidential race, so much so that I haven't endorsed Obama or Hillary (Clinton), though I'm well-known to be a Democrat," Cuomo said at a banquet Saturday, according to the Albany Times-Union. "I am not endorsing because I don't think they've been specific enough. We have these big, big issues, and the political theory is: 'I don't want to get into the specifics, because if I do I'm going to get into trouble.'"

Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign, thinks that if Barack Obama picks Clinton as his running mate it would trigger a "50-state sweep."

"How do you not ask Hillary Clinton?" McAuliffe asked Monday morning on MSNBC. "We would sweep all across the country."

"If Senator Obama picks Hillary Clinton, we will win this White House, I believe, in a cakewalk. And I think we'd control this White House for 16 years, which is what it will take to offset the 8 years of the Bush Administration," McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe said the Obama campaign has "an extensive travel schedule" planned for Clinton that will begin this week. The New York Democrat has not appeared on the campaign trail with Obama since their joint event in Unity, N.H.

Last week, McAuliffe seemed to throw his support behind Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D), telling a group that Kaine would be Obama's best choice. McAuliffe again brought up Kaine's name as a possible running mate, but made clear that Clinton is the obvious choice. "It's not even a close call," McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe added that Clinton will "probably" be speaking on the second night of the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she'll be campaigning for Barack Obama this week on the West Coast.

She told the New York Observer and she and Obama's campaign have been planning the appearance.

"We have had a very constant, close communication," she said. "I will be traveling out to the West Coast, I guess, Thursday, to speak before another union that endorsed me to rev them up and get them behind Senator Obama. So it

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) again threw cold water over the thought of Barack Obama choosing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as his running mate.

Pelosi said during the primaries that Obama shouldn't have to choose his former rival. Pelosi, in an interview on NBC Monday, again said that Obama has earned the right to make his own veep pick and that it's not likely to be Clinton.

"What I said was the following, is that -- that we didn't know at the time which person would be the nominee," Pelosi told Meredith Vieira on "Today." "And it has always been the prerogative of the nominee to choose his or her vice presidential candidate. And I didn't think we should be dictating to Hillary Clinton, the first woman, whom she should choose -- remember, because it was Hillary -- it was one way or another -- whom she should choose, nor dictating to the first African-American presidential nominee whom he should choose. I think that -- I don't think that it will happen."

Pelosi repeated her remark that Clinton emerged from the nomination fight with Obama as "probably the most respected political figure in America.

"By her -- dint of her intellect, her eloquence, her stamina, her political will, she showed that a woman can compete to be president of the United States," said Pelosi, the author of a new book, "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters."

She added that she believes sexism is still pervasive, though it is becoming less so with newer generations.

"I don't make a big issue of it because I could either deal with that -- I just deal with it by outperforming or outworking or just succeeding in what I'm doing and hoping to gain the respect of my colleagues for what I do," she said. "And if they still have a problem with sexism, that's their problem; I can't make it be my problem. I won't be held up by it."

A firm that makes campaign memorabilia accidentally put the wrong Larry on a pin with Barack Obama.

The pin was supposed to place Larry Larocco, the Democrat running for Senate in Idaho, next to Obama. Instead, current Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) appears with Obama in a way that makes the two senators look much closer than either would probably want. Craig is not running for reelection.

As conservative rumbling continues about Barack Obama's canceled visit with wounded U.S. troops while in Germany, John McCain jumped this weekend with an ad blasting Obama and furthered his criticism Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

"Well, I know this: those troops would have loved to have seen him. And I know of no Pentagon regulation that would have prevented him from going there without the media and the press and all of the associated people. Nothing that I know of would have kept him from visiting those wounded troops," McCain said when Stephanopoulos asked him about the flap.

Obama has taken some heat for canceling a visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center during his trip abroad. Obama said the Pentagon warned him that he could not bring campaign staff or media with him--as the Pentagon would prohibit a campaign-related event at the facility--but that he was welcome to visit the wounded troops in his capacity as U.S. senator. That, Obama said, sparked concerns that a visit would be viewed as politicking, and the campaign scrapped the visit for fear of controversy.

Some, however, have suggested that egos got in the way: NBC's Mark Murray reported that Obama foreign policy adviser and retired military man Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Ret.) "got torqued" at being told he couldn't go, implying Gration's bristling led the campaign to cancel the visit.

"If I had been told by the Pentagon that I couldn't visit those troops, and I was there and wanted to be there, I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event," McCain told Stephanopoulos.

"I think people make a judgment by what we do and what we don't do," McCain added. "He certainly found time to do other things."