The Beat Goes On

The very first indicator is very positive: President Obama's approval rating in the Gallup poll jumped to 52%, a seven to nine point surge, depending on when you start measuring.  The data covers only part of the Dem convention week.

Overnights show President Obama's speech was watched by about 36 million (Romney 30 million).  Bill Clinton's speech on Tuesday got around 25 million, and even beat out the tense second half of the opening NFL Giants-Cowboys game.

A lot of people were pushing back against lukewarm pundits on Obama's speech, and there's this highly interesting--and very positive-- roundup of newspaper front pages in swing states. 

Speaking of swing states, both the Romney campaign and their key (but of course un-coordinated, because that would be illegal) superpacs have pulled ads from PA, Michigan and Wisconsin.  Jonathan Chiat reads a lot into this in terms of Romney strategy--noting that Romney has to win every one of the swing states he's targeting to get enough electoral votes--but it's way early to divine that a campaign has definitively abandoned certain states.  Especially with the millions that Romneyryanrove have amassed.

The Labor Dept. Jobs report showed 96,000 jobs added and unemployment dropping from 8.3 to 8.1.  This is less than half of what a private outfit reported in new hiring for August.  I don't know what that means, except possibly that there was a surge towards the end of the month that the Labor Dept. didn't count.  At this point, however, only a very bad report or a very good one is likely to break out as big news.  Wall Street is expected the Fed to do some more stimulus next week--what could be interesting about that is if Bernake says loudly that they had to do it because Congress wouldn't.

On the stump, President Obama is pointing out that the GOPer strangling Congress has failed to pass or even consider the American Jobs Act.  It's a year now since President Obama proposed it.  

The Obama campaign received more than half a million grassroots donations during the Dem convention, and is going for 600,000 by midnight.

Update: By late Friday another two polls, including Reuters/Ipsos daily tracker, showed movement in Obama's direction of from 2 to 4 points.  And the Obama campaign zoomed past 600,000 on its way to 7.