What A Week

Has there even been a week like this in presidential politics?  When more than a month from the final vote tally, one candidate seems to be going down in flames?  According to prominent members of his own party?

New poll numbers tell the continuing story.  The National Journal poll has President Obama up 50-43.  Reason/Rupe (whoever they are) has Obama at 52% to Romney at 45.  There's some cognitive dissonance in the blizzard of polls done by different methods, including Internet only, while some of the tracking polls (like Gallup) are diverging possibly because they don't call cell phones.  But the consensus on the polls in general is that the Obama bounce is remaining bouyant--it's no longer a bounce, it's a trend.  Moreover, undecideds are breaking for Obama.  And the full polling effect of the Romney video has yet to be felt.

Prudence suggests waiting to see what else happens, but when GOPers themselves are treating Romney as dead man walking, it's hard not to buy into the conclusion  Alex Koppleman looks at the math in the New Yorker and concludes:

 Yes, there’s still a decent amount of time left before Election Day—but only in theory. In all the time he’s had so far, Romney’s been almost entirely unable to get much momentum going in the swing states, and has basically failed to expand his map to traditionally Democratic states. And now, to make matters worse, we find out that he doesn’t seem to have the financial or airtime advantage over Obama that we all thought he would. Plus, early voting has already begun in many states; it will start in plenty more soon. Considered in that light, six and a half weeks starts looking like nothing more than just enough time to go through the motions of the end of a losing campaign.

In the midst of this there was this moment on the Romney campaign, on the tarmac near the candidate's plane, when a pool reporter asked Romney if he planned to campaign harder from now to the end.  Here's Romney's reply: "Ha ha. We’re in the stretch aren’t we? Look at those clouds. It’s beautiful,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Look at those things.”

Meanwhile, President Obama was integrating a little more from the infamous Romney video into his stump speech every day.  In Virginia he said, "I don't see a lot of victims in this crowd today," and gave a shout out to all those who do get tax breaks but for good reason and to good effect for their lives and future--students, single mothers, retraining workers, retirees.  Romney's "47%" comments have provided him with the opportunity not only to knock them down directly, but to pivot to his signature theme of we're all in this together--including the 47% who didn't vote for him last time.  The Obama campaign pledges to stay aggressive.

Meanwhile, his vp running mate got some surprising news.  With the media attributing the Dems post-convention success to Bill Clinton's speech, it turns out not to have been the most watched speech of the conventions.  Nor was President Obama's.

The highest TV rating for any speaker in either convention was Joe Biden (14.7)  President Obama was second, Mitt Romney third, and Bill Clinton was fourth.

A percentage point below Clinton was Clint Eastwood.  Michelle Obama came in 7th, and Ann Romney 10th (just behind Paul Ryan.)


The major remaining victory strategy for Romney and the GOPers remains state voter suppression.  It's the subject of a New York Review of Books essay by veteran reporter Elizabeth Drew.  She concludes:

"Having covered Watergate and the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and more recently written a biography of Nixon, I believe that the wrongdoing we are seeing in this election is more menacing even than what went on then. Watergate was a struggle over the Constitutional powers and accountability of a president, and, alarmingly, the president and his aides attempted to interfere with the nominating process of the opposition party. But the current voting rights issue is even more serious: it’s a coordinated attempt by a political party to fix the result of a presidential election by restricting the opportunities of members of the opposition party’s constituency—most notably blacks—to exercise a Constitutional right.

This is the worst thing that has happened to our democratic election system since the late nineteenth century, when legislatures in southern states systematically negated the voting rights blacks had won in the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution."