Finally, Forward: The Song

Finally there's a 2012 song.  I'm so old that the only voice I recognize in this is Obama, but I'm liking it.

Lie, Hide and Spend: GOP Strategy

It's the Romneyryan strategy for the rest of the campaign: lie, hide and spend.

Lie: Romney can barely open his mouth without lying.  They are tactical lies, as when he said in Ohio on Friday that Jeep was thinking of sending all its American production jobs to China.  It's a lie.  Jeep is actually hiring more Ohio workers, and is exploring opening production plants in China for cars to be bought in China. 

The Romney campaign strategy is to lie, and later "correct" the lie by an officially issued campaign statement that nobody but the media sees.  In the above case, the lie hasn't been corrected, because Romney prefaced it with "I read someplace..." and indeed he might have.  Some right wing blog misinterpreted another report and made this allegation, which Chrysler (owner of the Jeep brand) immediately denied, calling it a fantasy.  As Rachel pointed out, if Romney believed what he read in a right wing blog without further checking, that's even scarier for a potential president than a deliberate lie.

The second part of the strategy is to hide.  Vp candidate Ryan, the most extreme and least qualified vp candidate since--well, Sarah Palin-- is being hidden in fundraisers and rabble-raising in the deep South.  Romney does an event or two a day, and hides from media interviews.  That way he gets to sound his packaged themes without explaining or defending them, or aspects of his campaign, or anything about his policies, and certainly nothing about his lies.

Spend is the third element.  The Romney campaign and its superpacs are finally going to unleash their unprecedented ad barrage in the final week.

Their conceptual strategy from the beginning was to make President Obama the issue, and Romney as the empty suit alternative.  Thanks to a poll that showed a large percentage in favor of major change, they've found a theme: big change.  They're banking on people wanting  a new product without caring very much what it is.  And this at least isn't a lie.  Romney would be a big change.  A change back to Bush, and beyond.

So there are two questions out there now.  First, can Romney sway enough undecided voters--enough low-information white and largely women voters--to win enough states to win?  Second, will enough of the much larger potential Obama support translate into actual votes, and sweep him to reelection?

We won't know until after election day, because we won't know the effect of this Romneyryan strategy, which is all carefully calibrated to peak on November 6.  Right now it is pretty clear that President Obama is ahead.  Swing state polls released on Friday are favorable.  And there's this:

  [E]xperts predict that at least 35% of those who vote in this election will cast an early vote this year, up from 30% in 2008. And in crucial swing states like Florida, Colorado, Iowa and Ohio, that number might be much higher. "Colorado is one where 85% of the votes are going to be cast prior to election day," says Michael McDonald, an associate professor of government and politics at George Mason University. "Florida is going to be close to two-thirds. In Ohio, they're on pace for 40-45% early voting."

Ezra Klein is more blunt:

Absolutely everything I’ve heard suggests the Obama campaign is meeting and exceeding its early voting targets. You can see some on-the-ground evidence of this from Jon Ralston’s look at early voting in Nevada, which is showing huge numbers for the Democrats, and the Time poll of Ohio, which showed a huge lead for Democrats among early voters. Democrats also appear to lead in early voting in North Carolina.

 

 Nate Silver has increased President Obama's likelihood of winning to about 75%.  President Obama is campaigning feverishly, I think mostly to reignite the enthusiasm of his voters as well as to remind those previously for him but tempted by Romney, why they were right in the first place.

Apart from all this, there are the decisions to make on the better candidate to be President of the United States, and why.  The Chicago Tribune has endorsed only one Democrat in its long history: Barack Obama in 2008.  And it does so again in 2012:

 Bolstered by his steadiness in office, cognizant of the vast unfinished business before him, we endorse the re-election of Barack Obama.

Haters

It was always going to come down to this.  Much of the GOP is full of hate.  Much of their hate is racial. 

The top GOPers may not express it directly--they just play to it.  Like top Romney surrogate and former Bushie John Sununu, who has made racially tinged remarks in the past, (Obama is lazy, was the latest) said Thursday that Colin Powell endorsed President Obama because they are both black.   Or Sarah Palin saying that President Obama was shucking and jiving on Libya. 

But the real hate breaks through all too often.  Like the Ohio state rep that introduced Romney at an event Thursday who called President Obama "disgusting."  Or this guy, at a Romney rally last week.

The haters are going to be in their most malicious frenzy from now until election day.  I hope fair minded undecided voters are listening.

Take Two Giant Steps

The San Francisco Giants won the second game of the World Series 2-0 with the return of Madison Bumgarner to epic form in a two-hitter.  The Giants played classic baseball on offense, getting their two runs on a double play and a sacrifice fly, excelling again in fielding and base running.

Here's a good story on the game and what's been involved in the Giants peaking at this moment.   It's on to Detroit Saturday for the third game with the Giants leading the best of 7 series, 2 games to none.  

The Shoe Drops

On Monday I wrote: The shoe that hasn't dropped: Apart from the primary endorsements of the Kennedys, probably the most important endorsement in 2008 for Obama was Colin Powell. It's not clear he has the influence four years later that he did then, but he has not endorsed this year. He's criticized Romney's foreign policy statements. He could be waiting until after the foreign policy debate tonight. But in a race perceived to be this close, a Colin Powell endorsement of President Obama could help."

I'm not aware of anyone else who noted this.  But today, it happened:

"Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell endorsed President Obama’s re-election campaign this morning on CBS This Morning. Powell — who served as the top U.S. diplomat during the Bush administration — said the president would be better on the economy but he also had harsh criticism of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy, reiterating his concern about Romney’s neocon advisers and that the GOP presidential nominee essentially threw out all his past hawkish positions and played a moderate during this week’s foreign policy debate.

POWELL: Not only am I uncomfortable with what Governor Romney is proposing for his economic plan, I have concerns about his views on foreign policy. The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier so I’m not quite sure which governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy.

As several analysts have pointed out, the big news would have been if Powell had endorsed Romney, and that might have echoed.  But at this point in the campaign any good story for Obama is good for Obama, and any bad story for Romney--like the continuing Mourdock story, as the GOP flails around it--is bad for Romney.  None of it may be calculable, but sometimes it is what it is.  As a very respected centrist Republican, Colin Powell still can sway voters, especially older ones.  Maybe that's why the right is reacting so rabidly to this endorsement.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief deputy, also endorsed President Obama today.  On Hardball he pointed out that the GOPer neocons, with all their bureaucratic and political experience, could push an inexperienced President into war--they did it with GW, they could easily do it with Romney.  "If you liked Iraq, you'll love Romney."  Pretty powerful, and needs to be said.

Meanwhile, Romney's momentum has officially stopped, and President Obama holds on to leads in most swing states, and has leads in the others in some polls.  There's a BIG Obama rally in Cleveland today.

GOTV

It's Get Out the Vote time, especially in the swing states--early voting, mail-in, absentee, etc.  The Obama campaign has been through this before and in places where it counts most--like Ohio--there's reason for optimism.  The new Time poll which shows Obama ahead in Ohio by 5 points also shows the spread in early voting is 30%: Obama 60 Romney 30.  These assessments--and this one--suggest the Obama ground game is superior.

But except for the early voting already banked (only 17% nationwide, and Obama's lead there is only about 11 points) none of it counts until the ballots get counted.  So a little history lesson for those who have forgotten--or weren't old enough--the catastrophic year 2000.  Some of us of course have that seared on our synapses, which is making for a couple of more weeks of nightmares and general sleep deprivation.  

Panda-Monium!

Here's the beauty of cable--they're still replaying pre-game predictions for game 1 of the World Series.  And they were all the same: Justin Verlander is a dominant pitcher, the Detroit lineup is loaded with heavy hitters, the Giants don't have a chance.

Verlander didn't make it to the fifth.  The Giants sparkled, the Giants shined in every way: Barry Zito and Lincecum pitching, great fielding, smart managing and base-running, timely hitting.  Scutaro continues his incredible hitting, and in a great sign for future games in the series, Buster Posey was 2 for 4.  But of course, it's Pablo.  It's the Panda.

Once upon a time I was having dinner with a friend in the music biz in some New York City restaurant--probably the record company was picking up the tab.  It was typically crowded, especially because the bar was right behind the restaurant area, it was to my back.  The World Series was on TV, I wasn't much interested that year.  The Yankees were in it.  I kept hearing cheers and the announcer talking about Reggie Jackson's home run.  I thought--enough about his home run.  I know these are the Yankees but come on, can't you find something else in the game to talk about?

Well, as it turned out that was the night that Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in a World Series game.  It's only been done once since.  Until tonight.

Pablo Sandoval hit a home run in each of his first three at-bats. He hit 2 homers in the previous series.  And all of 12 homers in the regular season.  He hit a quarter of his season total in one World Series game!   He kind of blew the fourth at bat, just a sharp single.  He gave the Giants fans there something to talk about the rest of their lives.  And the San Francisco Giants remain a joy to watch.  They are officially a magic team.     

Mr. Slick Goes to Washington?

Who is this guy?  The one that almost half of likely voters say they want to be President.  Who in the world are they voting for?

Is it Newt Mitt, the severe conservative?  Is it Mr. Slick, the Etch-a-Sketchy man?  David Brooks, a conservative (though perhaps not severely conservative) columnist for the New York Times offers this opinion in his Wednesday conversation with Gail Collins:

 There are 37 different Mitt Romneys. Once in the White House, they are scheduled to appear sequentially, day-by-day, depending on the lunar calendar, with adjustments made for leap years, months that begin with the letter “M,” and the forthcoming primary schedule.

There will be rotating White House staffs to go with each different Mitt. For example, Treasury Secretary Robert Zoellick will alternate with Treasury Secretaries Donald Trump and Ralph Reed.

It's funny, but it's not.  He has changed position on almost everything, and often enough changed back, usually denying that he's changed at all.  Much of what he has specifically promised to do, he can't do.  He can't get rid of Obamacare on Day One--it can't be done.  His tax plan is a joke.  It's all smoke and mirrors. 

Who is he?  How would he respond in a crisis?  We don't know.  What will he do on issues of church and state separation?  We don't know--we certainly don't know what the effect of his religion will be on him--and its discrimination and other questionable doctrines.

So what will he do?  Will he bomb Iran or won't he?  Will he be Cheney Lite?  Will he kill Medicare--that's pretty likely--and functionally destroy Medicaid--even more likely.  But he'll do it in a nice way.  With a saleman's smile.

Just about the only thing we know for sure is that he will appoint a Supreme Court Justice who will be the vote necessary to criminalize abortion in the United States. 

Something else we know: he doesn't care about the Climate Crisis.  He's just not interested.  He's not much interested in green energy, which is the same as saying he's not much interested in the American economic future or more particularly, the future of civilization.

This is not a reality show anymore, you voters at home.  This is about the most powerful office in the world.  And way too many voters seem to be flirting with hiring an empty suit for the job.  And ditching a President who, if not already among the great Presidents, easily could be. 

And what a message that would be.  Keep your promises, save Detroit, stop bin Laden and cripple al queda, save the American economy and probably the world economy in the process, re-set America's role in the world after the Bush-Cheney disaster, end one war and start ending the other, end torture, enact something very close to universal healthcare that will saves lives and boost the economy,  provide more to jumpstart green energy than in all the presidencies of the past combined while still increasing domestic oil production, reduce the debt, and in many other ways start turning this huge ship of state around in a better direction--and for all that get turned out of office because somebody new showed up who lies with every breath, and every nod of his spray-tanned hair-dyed head.  A good example for future candidates.

Another Day After--and the Beginning

The day after the third debate, the preliminary numbers confirm that the audience was down, about 5 million from the second debate, but still more watched than the third debate last time around.  And it's still 59 million people.

The foreign policy debate probably only confirmed the puzzlement in the rest of the world that Romney isn't seen as the clown candidate.  From many on and off record statements, it's clear he is unliked and not respected, even (or especially) among allies.  And this BBC poll confirms that if he were on the ballot anywhere else in the world (except Pakistan) he would lose very very badly to President Obama.  The average in the 21 countries surveyed is Obama 50 Romney 9.

Bob Schieffer is getting generally good reviews for how he moderated the debate.  But apart from the scandalous overlooking of the actual world crisis--the climate crisis--he failed to ask a very key question: who are your foreign policy advisors?  So Romney got away without noting that most of his are Bush's.  And in fact another debate goes by with Bush not being mentioned except in passing.

On the campaign trail the day after, President Obama diagnosed new attacks of Romnesia at the debate (which others call myths and lies)  but also started the last phase of his campaign by introducing a new summary of his second term agenda.  He's been talking about these items all along, but now they're packaged for this final push emphasis.  The ad posted above is a 60 second summary.

Tuesday's polls show a slight Obama trend.  The Obama campaign pushed back on the talk that it was conceding North Carolina or any other swing state, and backed that up with cash.  But there was this interesting and much noticed post by Jonathan Chiat headlined:   Romney Says He’s Winning — It’s a Bluff:

 In recent days, the vibe emanating from Mitt Romney’s campaign has grown downright giddy. Despite a lack of any evident positive momentum over the last week — indeed, in the face of a slight decline from its post-Denver high — the Romney camp is suddenly bursting with talk that it will not only win but win handily. (“We’re going to win,” said one of the former Massachusetts governor’s closest advisers. “Seriously, 305 electoral votes.”)

This is a bluff. Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Not only is it a bluff, it is backed up by deliberately deceptive evidence, as Chiat shows.  And as he says, it's a classic Karl Rove tactic.

The polls tell a different story.  And this poll tells a very different story:

The latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll finds President Obama moving slightly ahead of Mitt Romney, 47% to 46%. However, Obama "maintains a larger advantage in the state-by-state battle that will determine the outcome of the election. Ipsos projects that Obama holds an edge in the most hotly contested states, including Florida, Virginia and Ohio, and is likely to win by a relatively comfortable margin of 322 electoral votes to 206 electoral votes."

And this, which continues the smart money is on Obama.  Nate Silver has upped President Obama's chances of winning to over 70%.  Two weeks to go.

The Winners!

Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants, National League champions! ( won 4 of 7)

Congratulations to President Obama, presidential debate champion! (won 2 of 3)

For the third debate, President Obama won all the instant polls.  Perhaps the most significant was the CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 53%  Romney 23%  This 30 point margin was 10 points more than this poll gave to Romney for the first debate.

The PPP swing state poll of those who watched the debate: Obama 53%  Romney 42.  Although both men and women agreed on Obama, women by a much larger margin.  Women also said the debate made it less likely they would vote for Romney.

The pundits:

Taegan Goddard:

The third and final presidential debate was President Obama's best moment in the campaign so far. He was prepared on every issue and knew Mitt Romney's record of past statements just as well.
Obama succeeded because he conveyed his unique view of the world from the Oval Office. For undecided voters watching, all they probably heard was that he's the commander-in-chief. And that's what Team Obama wanted.

For the most part, Romney made an effort to look presidential by not attacking. He was exceedingly careful and desperately tried not to make a mistake. In fact, despite his rhetoric for the last two years, he now apparently agrees with most of the Obama administration's foreign policy.

As a result, Romney's biggest opponent was not the president, it was his own words. Obama did a brilliant job of bringing up past Romney statements -- on Iraq, on the nation's biggest adversary, on Afghanistan, on Osama bin Laden -- to make him look unprepared for the presidency.
As the debate went on, Romney tried many times to move the international affairs discussion back to the economy where he was more comfortable. It was as if he had only 30 minutes of foreign policy talking points for a 90 minute debate. As a result he seemed to string together random thoughts which often made him sound incoherent.

Obama won the debate hands down.

Joe Klein, who wrote he didn't know who has won the second debate, this time wrote:

President Obama won the foreign policy debate, cleanly and decisively, on both style and substance. .. Obama didn’t have a single weak or unconvincing moment.

Josh Marshall:

"The first half hour was a draw, though President Obama scored by default when Romney either didn’t or couldn’t attack on Libya. After that though Romney began to falter as Obama became more direct, organized and declarative. Romney seemed increasingly lost. Obama seemed comfortable, happy. The visuals told the story. Romney was sweating a lot and looked like he was in pain. Into the second half of the debate Romney’s answers seemed more jumbled and unfocused. There was even that rambling and generally uncontroversial digression on Pakistan. Why? He seemed lost.
Translated into Romney visuals he had what President Obama had in the first debate: that look of someone who wanted to be anywhere but on that stage."

James Fallows wrote a reaction echoed elsewhere: " Obama did very well this evening, and Romney put up his worst showing."

Ambinder agree that the Romney strategy was to do no harm, seem harmless, but he isn't sure it turned out to be such a good idea:

"Deciding to let Obama once again be the aggressor carries real risks, because of the large audience, and because the contrasts in tone between the two candidates could be large enough that some voters who initially thought Romney crossed the credibility threshold might have second thoughts."

The New York Times

"Mitt Romney has nothing really coherent or substantive to say about domestic policy, but at least he can sound energetic and confident about it. On foreign policy, the subject of Monday night’s final presidential debate, he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost. That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues, including Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.

During the debate, on issue after issue, Mr. Romney sounded as if he had read the boldfaced headings in a briefing book — or a freshman global history textbook — and had not gone much further than that."

My summary argument: I'll be interested in the viewing numbers for the third debate, especially after the first half hour.  It was up against the NCLS 7th game (though it lacked actual drama after the 3rd inning) and Monday Night Football.  But the audience for this particular debate may be less important than the stories about it, and about Romney's latest lies, reversals and expressions of ignorance.  People probably still defer to informed opinion on foreign affairs more than they do on domestic issues. So the size of the audience for the debate may not matter as much as the stories about it over the next few days.  As for overall impressions for viewers who aren't policy experts, President Obama has come across very well in two debates in a week now.   

Pre-Debate

A few nervous late afternoon notes before the debate...

Reports out of CNN say the Romney camp is forecasting what I suggested Romney should do if he's smart: be bland.  Or in their words, presidential.  He may be playing for a draw.  So it's going to be up to the questions and to President Obama to make the differences clear. 

The debate is the last event on the campaign schedule.  Apparently President Obama did not get a bump out of the second debate, which polls show that he won comfortably. So what's driving us nuts is that the tightening of the polls has no real world reason to it. The Romney campaign now seems predicated on a national move towards Romney that has no event or rhyme or reason behind it.  He continues to change positions to muddy the waters and appear more electable.  It's a sales job, and I'm sure the money is being poured into those swing states.

Today's polls show a popular vote race that is essentially tied, and it's below 50-50, so some4- 6% of the electorate that intends to vote, doesn't know yet who they are voting for, according to these polls.  The polls are tightening in the swing states, too, including Ohio, though President Obama still leads there.  The NBC poll that shows a 47-47 tie (the 47% indeed!)with likely voters also shows President Obama with an electoral vote lead sufficient to retain the presidency. Nate Silver is still giving President Obama a 67% chance.  But the key for everybody remains Ohio.  Today's standard pundit line is that if the polls remain this close they aren't going to tell us much anymore, and it's going to be a very long election night.

The shoe that hasn't dropped:  Apart from the primary endorsements of the Kennedys, probably the most important endorsement in 2008 for Obama was Colin Powell.  It's not clear he has the influence four years later that he did then, but he has not endorsed this year.  He's criticized Romney's foreign policy statements.  He could be waiting until after the foreign policy debate tonight.  But in a race perceived to be this close, a Colin Powell endorsement of President Obama could help.

The ABC poll shows Romney drawing even on foreign policy, which is mind-boggling, not to mention highly dangerous.  Even though his Gerald Ford moment on Libya hasn't seemed to hurt him, let's hope it becomes clear tonight just how dangerous he is. 
   

Conflict Monday

Setting up a conflict I suspect will be widespread, the San Francisco Giants forced a seventh game in the NLCS, to be played Monday night, with the crucial innings very likely conflicting with the third presidential debate.  Although the weather may mess with any predictable scenario--for the game, that is.

The debate is on foreign policy, supposedly, but it rarely stays there.  To win this debate President Obama should be able to say only two things: If you liked the Bush foreign policy, you'll love Romney's, and how many wars do you want to start?  But if Romney is smart he'll be as bland as possible, hoping for a tie while the polls show him very close.

The polls still show little or no bounce for President Obama from that much-watched second debate.  I really can't pretend to understand the dynamics of what's going on now.  It almost seems that as consumer confidence rises, people feel more willing to take a chance on Mr. Slick.  It just doesn't make sense, unless it's a lot of shadow chickens coming home to roost.  If so, we're really in for it.  Still, even with these very tight polls, the smart money remains on President Obama.

Nevertheless, the same pundits who were claiming the third debate was meaningless are now hyping its importance.  It does seem the last time to making the closing argument to a national audience.  If not a national league audience.


Meanwhile in matters less important than the fate of the future, Ryan Vogelsong pitched a great game 6 to keep the Giants alive. Now they'll need an equally great game from Matt Cain, and probably Buster Posey to come out of his hitting funk.  All for the privilege of facing an intimidating and well-rested roser of Detroit pitchers in the World Series starting Wednesday.

  Vogelsong unites the Giants and my hometown Pirates--he started his major league career in Pittsburgh, and even got married there.  Here he is. (And to complete Sunday, the Steelers actually looked like the Steelers, after the 1st quarter.)

R.I.P. George McGovern

George McGovern died Sunday at the age of 90.  I remain proud that my first vote for a presidential candidate was for him in 1972.  I covered aspects of his campaign for the Boston Phoenix, and met him briefly.  I've never seen as devastated an election night headquarters as I did in Boston, even though Massachusetts was the only state he won.

During that campaign I wrote about what reporters were digging up about Watergate, and about the Nixon administration which McGovern rightly called "the most corrupt in history."  Not that anybody listened, until later when everyone was forced to listen.  And so for years I proudly carried on my guitar case the bumper sticker, "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts."

In his remembrance of George McGovern at Daily Kos, Meteor Blades (who is one of my touchstones for my generation) quoted this passage from McGovern's last book, which he published when nearing that age of 90:

"During my years in Congress and for the four decades since, I've been labeled a 'bleeding-heart liberal.' It was not meant as a compliment, but I gladly accept it. My heart does sometimes bleed for those who are hurting in my own country and abroad. A bleeding-heart liberal, by definition, is someone who shows enormous sympathy towards others, especially the least fortunate. Well, we ought to be stirred, even to tears, by society's ills. And sympathy is the first step toward action. Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction "Love the neighbor as thyself."
—George S. McGovern, What It Means to Be a Democrat (2011)

This was his faith, the faith of a liberal.  It's always seemed more than ironic to me that the original bleeding-heart liberal was Christ.  That's the source of the phrase--it's the bleeding heart of Christ.

George McGovern, a World War II bomber pilot from South Dakota, ran for president in 1972 to end the war in Vietnam.  Because of the extent of his electoral loss, he became something of a disgraced figure.  Yet he served honorably in the Senate--a stalwart public servant--for decades more.  He continued to represent a flinty goodness--a faith in the better aspects of our nature, which don't really need or depend on the religious imagery.  "You'd do the same for me" is a human faith, regardless of any injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself, which is psychologically dubious anyway. 

The other side of that leads to a vital sternness of principle.  There is nothing mamby-pamby about this 1970 McGovern statement in support of his Senate amendment to end the war, which MB also quotes:

"Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood. Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and all across our land—young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes.

There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure.  It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us."

Only Bobby Kennedy could have been so forthright and eloquent, and McGovern had been forced by his assassination to take up his banner.  It was a terrible time.  But his brave voice spoke for many in my generation, including me.  And for that especially I remember him.

Here's another interesting summation of his career and influence.

Rest in peace, George McGovern.You led an honorable, thoughtful and courageous public life, and this country is better for your service.

Welcome to Romnesia

It was the talk of the political world on Friday--at a rally in Virginia, President Obama rolling out a new riff on Romney and his etch-a-sketchy ways, particularly on women's issues but also on the economy and, well, everything else.

The vid and for the printcentric the quotes are courtesy of Think Progress:


“[H]e’s changing up so much – backtracking and sidestepping. We’ve gotta name this condition that he’s going through, I think it’s called ‘Romnesia,’” Obama announced, referring to Romney’s efforts to abandon the positions he held in the Republican primary in order to appeal to more moderate voters during the general election:

OBAMA: Now, I’m not a medical doctor but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.
If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work – you might have Romnesia. If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care – you might have a case of Romnesia. If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose, but you stand up at a primary debate and said that you’d be “delighted” to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases – man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia. [...]
And if you come down with a case of Romnesia, and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for President, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions.
We can fix you up. We’ve got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease."
 

Apparently the term Romesia has been twittering around for awhile, and has even been in print.  But it's the first time President Obama has used it, and what's interesting about this is how polished it sounds already--suggesting that it's a natural fit for President Obama, who is having fun delivering it.  I think we may be visiting Romnesia for awhile.

Romnesia arrived just in time to echo sentiments showing up in newspaper endorsements, especially in Utah's Salt Lake City Tribune's editorial endorsing President Obama:

[This] is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear, first in his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party’s shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?"

It also reinforces the idea that those who know Romney best--like the citizens of Massachusetts, where he was governor--and Utah, where he managed the Olympics, also like him least. 

But as Andrew Sullivan points out, the other part of his newly refined stump speech is the final argument, the case for re-election:




Chris Matthews has gone back to ethics-free hardball politics in once again seeing Romney as the favorite, so his prescription for what the President must do is lay out a bold vision for an FDR-style second term.

For those of us puzzled by the polls--which by some interpretations are starting to edge back to Obama, though the swing states polls Friday were very mixed--Sullivan also isolates an unbelievable stat, which is that Romney's favorability number has been going up, and is now marginally higher than President Obama's.  If this is so (and it may be as much bullshit as women voters' sudden attraction to Romney), it could be traced to that infamous first debate.  And if that is so--if it is a combination of Romney's energy and Obama's lack of it, that impression would be countered by the second debate, seen by even more viewers.   I just can't believe this new Romney romance (if it exists) will last another 18 days.

President Clinton Thursday kept isolating the main GOPer assumption: "They think we're stupid."   I guess we'll see.

One prediction about the effect of the second debate has come true--the margin by which President Obama won it has increased.  A Gallup poll says he won by 51-38; among Independents it was 54-33.

And something else happened the night of the debate: the next 24 hours constituted the Obama campaign's biggest single fundraising day ever.  Although the total hasn't been released, the previous one-day winner was $50 million in 2008, the day after Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate.  With the big haul in September, it seems that the campaign won't have money problems, and even with the carpet bombing from GOPer billionaire-funded groups, a smart and agile video ad campaign can continue, including a superior ground game, at least in terms of numbers.

Barry's Back

Barry Zito of course.  With their backs against the St. Louis wall, the SF Giants got what brung them: a dominating performance by a starting pitcher.  This has been Zito's year, even with his last brief postseason outing.  He pitched 8 2/3 clutch innings, backed up by clutch fielding and even some hitting. 

It's what's been missing, this Giants trademark of dominant starting pitching, and why they were down to a 3-1 deficit, and in danger of losing it all on the road.  Of course, they did get pitching that was pretty good, if you're hitting, but not lights-out, until Vogelsong in game 2 and now Zito.  And even after more than 100 pitches he was throwing wicked curves in the eighth.  I've never seen balls drop like he threw in that inning.

So they come home, have Vogelsong again and Matt Cain, who is due for a groove.  Just to get back home is a good thing.  Giants baseball.  They've been fun. 

Thursday Recap

The battleground state polls on Thursday continued to show President Obama ahead, except in North Carolina. Romney is moving key staff from North Carolina to Ohio, presumably because they think they've got NC won.  The margin for Obama is thin in Virginia and thinner than before in Colorado, but as people vote and election day gets closer, even 3 point margins start looking big.  One poll had an 8 point margin in Iowa, another a 6 point in Wisconsin.  One even had a 3 point margin in Florida.

The national tracking polls are all basically tied except for Gallup which continues to grow Romney's lead.  Nate Silver sees it as an outlyer, and not inconsistent with Gallup's record of huge (and hugely wrong margins) at this point in 2000 and 2004. 

The internals in one of the state polls--Wisconsin maybe-- suggested that the gender gap is back, big time,with women in favor of President Obama by double digits.  And the poll was taken mostly before the debate.

All the polls on Thursday were taken all or mostly before the debate.  Steve S. at kos says we won't know if there's a debate-related shift until the next debate on Monday. 

I remember hearing about dirty tricks in elections even in the 60s, like the GOPers phoning old people and telling them they can vote by phone, or the age-old tactic of sending voter information to people on the other side with the wrong election date. 

However it does seem to have gotten worse this year, even aside from the blatant voter suppression laws.  It's amazing how open GOPers are about it--especially using their actual public office, their public trust as elected officials of all the people, to mislead voting groups they don't like and discourage them from voting.  This case of a GOP operative caught destroying presumably Dem registrations is probably the tip of the iceberg.   I'm sure it's also being fueled by the amazing amount of raw hate at work in this election.

On Thursday President Obama held a big rally while Bill Clinton and Bruce Springsteen wowed a crowd in Ohio.  Romney apparently did nothing, with but one event Wednesday.  Both President Obama and Romney told jokes at the Al Smith dinner in New York.  Romney's were mostly aimed at the President, and a few were borderline vicious, as well as not funny.  President Obama mostly made fun of himself, though he got some digs in, too.  And he's much better at it.  The dinner of rich Catholics should be Romney country, but the crowd seemed to warm to the President.   

In the realm of it should be relevant, 68 Nobel Laureates in science signed a letter endorsing President Obama.  “President Obama understands the key role science has played in building a prosperous America,” the laureates wrote in a letter that was released on Wednesday. Mr. Obama “has championed investment in science and technology research that is the engine of our economy.” Plus he's also (shhh, don' tell anybody) won a Nobel Prize.  

Not a good day for the SF Giants, a better one for the Niners.  Farewell Yankees and good riddance.

Notes from The Day After

A few notes on the presidential debate, its possible effects, and the state of the race.

At some point in the days and hours before the debate I dreamt up a line for President Obama to say about the Romney economic plan.  "It's a two part plan," President Obama would say (or maybe, v.p. Biden, Bill Clinton, or even Jon Stewart.) "Part one: smoke.  Part two: mirrors."

President Obama actually did a variation on this, which while not quite as funny, is maybe more to the point:

"Governor Romney doesn’t have a five point plan. He has a one point plan, and that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector, that’s been his philosophy as governor, that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate. You can make a lot of money and pay lower tax rates than someone who makes less. You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and you still make money. That’s exactly the philosophy that we have seen in place for the last decade. That’s what’s been squeezing middle class families, and we have fought back for four years to get out of that mess. The last thing we need to do is to go back to the very same policies that got us there. "

Last night and early the day after, the chatter was about several important moments in the debate.  There was the Libya exchange, when a coldly angry President said he found the charge by Romney and the rabid GOP that he and his administration were playing politics with the Bengazi situation "offensive," and Romney had his Gerald Ford moment with his "gotcha" that got only him:



Also about President Obama's closing, in which he took the opportunity Romney presented him in his closing when he mentioned his concern for "the 100%" to skewer Romney on his "47%" comments:



But apart from deconstructing the new batch of Romney lies (which he added to old ones he repeated), the talk on Wednesday was about women's issues that came up in the debate: contraception, abortion, equal pay, etc., which got folded into the viral soundbite of Romney's "binders full of women."



This went viral for the telling awkwardness of the phrase, but went really big when it was revealed to be another lie--it wasn't Romney but an independent group that supplied the names of qualified women that would have been presented to whoever won as governor that year.

But President Obama hammered at Romney on women's issues at his campaign events, including to 2,000 students at a college in Iowa and a huge crowd in Athens, Ohio.  And with good reason, for a survey of women in swing states shows that abortion is far and away at the top of the list of issues they are most concerned about--39% vs. 19% for jobs.

 

Women probably will determine the winner of this election.  But by all accounts, Romney's answers on immigration further alienated him from Latino voters, and may well have made them more determined to vote for Obama. 

So...what about the impact of the debate?  The first poll after the instant polls last night show the perception growing that President Obama won the debate.  Preliminary figures suggest the audience for the debate was larger than for the first debate--possibly the largest in history.  And don't forget what I mentioned yesterday before the debate that Nate Silver noted: second debates move poll numbers just as much as first debates do, historically.  So despite the pundits sort of doubting the poll numbers will now move...I'm saying the poll numbers will start moving, especially in the swing states.

As for current poll numbers, the latest Ohio poll shows a slight increase for President Obama already.  And on the worst poll of the day--the national Gallup tracking poll--kos took a look at the crosstabs and found that Obama is actually ahead in every region of the country except the south.  Obama is ahead in the East and the Midwest 52-48, and in the West by 53-47.  He's fallen further behind in the South--39% to Romney's 61%.  These are mostly states Romney was going to win anyway.

In any case, we're probably at or near the nadir.  Tracking polls will start to pick up some post-debate sentiment.  By next week the swing state polls should reflect post-debate.  Even at Romney's high point, Obama remained ahead in Ohio especially, but also in other swing states, though more narrowly than before. In Ohio, he's banked a lot of votes--early voters.

 There was one disturbing report on Wednesday speculating that the Obama campaign has given up on Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, and maybe Colorado, because they didn't mention they felt confident about them as they do about Ohio, Iowa and Nevada. I don't buy it. Maybe in another ten days, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that they shifted advertising from N.C. or even Florida--though they have well-prepared ground games in both states they are not going to abandon.  But I don't see them ever giving up on Virginia or Colorado. 

photo: Obama in Ohio on Wednesday

What about the external reality?  And that last jobs report the Friday before election day?  When Obama was polling higher, the economic numbers were worse, and they didn't hurt him.  Couple that with some upbeat economic news: Retail sales are up, and the housing market is improving faster than experts anticipated.  So it seems unlikely that a much worse economy will determine the outcome.

The basic question really is whether Romney can lie his way into the White House.  The American people unfortunately have proven susceptible to lies--both Bushes for example proved that.  All any of us can do is be as clear as possible about the truth.  Fight the good fight.  And enjoy the good fight.

Debate Reaction: He Delivered

Taegan Goddard Political Wire:

"Obama won the debate decisively.

The president had a simple formula: Defend and explain his record while insisting that Romney wasn't being truthful. He kept Romney on the defensive and came prepared with counter-punches to nearly every topic. It was devastatingly effective.

The memorandum of understanding setting the rules for the debate -- and the town hall format itself -- went out the window pretty quickly. The debate turned confrontational within the first 20 minutes which probably pleased partisans. Both sides saw fire in their candidate. But it's more likely that undecided voters didn't like the confrontation at all.

In particular, Romney doesn't do testy well. He made a big mistake trying to roll over the moderator. He got away with it in the first debate but he looked mean tonight. His obsession with the rules also came off as petty.

Romney was most effective when pointing out what Obama promised and what actually happened over the last four years. He scored many points But he lost most of them by not knowing his facts on what President Obama said the morning after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Obama acted like a president in the exchange while Romney was much less. It was Romney's Gerald Ford moment."

The excitable Andrew Sullivan:

"To my mind, Obama dominated Romney tonight in every single way: in substance, manner, style, and personal appeal. He came back like a lethal, but restrained predator. He was able to defend his own record, think swiftly on his feet, and his Benghazi answer was superb. He behaved luke a president. He owned the presidency. And Romney? Well, he has no answers on the math question and was exposed. He was vulnerable on every social issue, especially immigration. And he had no real answer to the question of how he'd be different than George W Bush.

I'm excitable - but sometimes politics is about emotion as well as reason. And my view is that Obama halted Romney's momentum in its tracks and his performance will bring women voters in particular flooding back. He's just more persuasive. On watching with the sound off - apart from weird gaps in the CSPAN coverage - Obama did not grin like Biden; he smiled confidently, leaning forward. Within twenty minutes, Romney looked flush and a little schvitzy.

Game, set and match to Obama. He got it; he fought back; he gave us all more than ample reason to carry on the fight."

Alex Altman at Swampland (Time Magazine blog):

"With his presidency on the line, Barack Obama delivered a forceful performance in the second presidential debate Tuesday night, chiding Mitt Romney for failing to provide specifics about his policies and painting the Republican nominee as a more conservative version of George W. Bush."

For Obama, however, it was a performance brimming with the kind of fiery rhetoric his supporters were craving. The President has described himself in the past as a “fourth quarter player.” In crunch time of his last campaign, he sank a very big shot Tuesday night."

CBS instant poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 37%  Romney 30%
PPP Colorado Obama 48  Romney 44   Among Independents:  Obama 58  Romney 36
CNN  Obama 46  Romney 39

Huffington Post headline: BARACK IS BACK


Josh Marshall:

"Romney did well. Obama did better. And increasingly better over the course of the evening. I said earlier this evening that a candidate always has to be really careful getting into fights or going on the attack in a Townhall format. But I think Obama pulled it off. In fact, he managed to effectively balance an unwieldy mix of goals he brought into the debate. Be tough. Be presidential. Connect with the audience. Reengage supporters. Push an effective critique of Mitt Romney. Over the course of 90 minutes the cadence of tension and body language and power slowly arched in Obama’s favor.

I think he made a strong case for persuadable voters... With tonight’s performance, Obama changed that equation dramatically."

From TV I can only paraphrase.  Howard Fineman said that Romney's lack of credibility on the issues was exposed.  Rachel Maddow called it a decisive win for President Obama.  Steve Schmidt complimented Romney's performance but said he screwed up on specific issues, and believes the modest win the first polls are giving Obama will turn into a bigger win as the week goes on.

The moments being talked about: Romney on immigration.  The President's strong answer on Bengazi followed by Romney's attempted gotcha moment on whether President Obama called the Bengazi attack an act of terrorism in his Rose Garden remarks the next day--which readers of this blog know he did, and moderator Candy Crowley also knew he did, and a double Romney smackdown.  On this one of the many wiseass live bloggers noted:

"Obama clearly prepared for his Libya response. Romney makes a dumb mistake: Obama says he spoke in the Rose Garden after the attack and called it an act of terror. Romney says "no you didn't." Obama says "get the transcript." Crowley says "he did." THE AUDIENCE APPLAUDS CROWLEY LIVE FACT-CHECKING ROMNEY. Like, twice. They applaud twice. Romney stutters through the rest of his response, and it doesn't matter what he says: He just got fucking destroyed. By the audience, basically."

And some gleeful twittering on Romney's phrase "a binder full of women."

Reuters is calling the Libya confrontation a smackdown moment for Obama, after which "Romney appeared stunned."

The Guardian (UK): "Barack Obama secured the comeback he desperately needed in the second presidential debate against Mitt Romney, finishing the night on top after a series of fierce clashes in which the two made no attempt to hide the extent of their personal hostility."

Jonathan Chiat at New York Magazine:

"Obama came into this debate having formulated a simple frame for his opponent: Romney believes that people like himself can play by different rules. Into this frame he shoved Romney’s business career, personal income tax rate, and his public policy. And on the very last question, he attacked Romney for his infamous 47% comments – not as fiercely as he could have, but well enough. At times, Romney appeared complicit in Obama’s strategy. Tonally, he seemed nastier, and more like the plutocrat Obama painted him as.

Romney’s message against Obama was that the economy has been bad, something everybody already knows. Obama’s message against Romney is that his opponent is a wealthy, self-interested Republican fully invested in his party’s platform. That’s something that not everybody believed after the first debate."

Dem pollster Stan Greenberg:

"I thought Obama made the determination from the first second to be forward-looking — laying out each element of his economic plan. He repeatedly said, this is what I want to accomplish in a second term. While he clearly sounded confident about what he had done, he didn’t say, give me a second term because of a job well done. He repeatedly said , I would like another term to do this or that — on energy, education and others. I think voters will feel they heard him talking about the changes and progress he wants to achieve."

kos notes this about the debate audience, chosen because they're undecideds (which might account for the fact that there was only one black person):

"After the debate, audience members mobbed President Barack Obama while Mitt Romney was surrounded by just his family. He didn't last long, out of the hall as fast as he could. He has a hard time being around carbon-based life forms, you know?  On the other hand, Obama stuck around 10-15 minutes signing autographs and taking pictures. We saw our real president tonight, and we also saw the real dick Romney. The contrast couldn't be clearer."

Pre-Debate Tuesday

       Will he deliver?

late afternoon update: Tuesday's polls are even weirder than yesterday's but good news for Ohio--the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the GOPer state gov's appeal on early voting, so the final weekend of early voting must happen, or GOPer officials face contempt of court or worse.  Nate Silver notes that the stats show the second debate is potentially just as important as the first in moving poll numbers.  Not that there's any pressure or anything.

After the ABC/Washington Post poll, the many polls issued Monday offered a very mixed bag.  Poll guru Nate Silver essentially threw up his hands and couldn't say what was going on.  Though he upped President Obama's chances for reelection fractionally from yesterday, to about 2 in 3.

Looking at the bright side, several observers agree with Steve S. at DKos:

With about three weeks until election day, and 43 polls in the hopper from this weekend and Monday, we can draw a few very tenuous conclusions about the state of play in the 2012 election cycle: The presidential race has moved clearly back into a very competitive position, although President Obama may have finally stalled the Romney momentum on the polling front over this weekend. Conversely, the GOP's fortunes on the Senate front seem to be getting worse, with it now looking just as likely that the Democrats will gain seats in the upper chamber than they are to lose the Senate altogether.

Adding to the confusion are the polls that show a 4 or 5 point edge for Romney in the swing states, and a 5 point edge for President Obama. 

But here's some news from Florida on absentee and early voting: absentee vote requests, which were dominated by Republicans in 2008 when Obama won the state, are now nearly even, with Dems just a few percentage points down. “It’s not good news for Republicans,” said Brad Gomez, a political science professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee, who studies voter turnout....The Obama campaign has 102 offices, up from 58 in Florida four years ago, and has registered about 320,000 new voters, up from about 200,000 in 2008. Republicans have signed up about 49,000 new voters in Florida, state data show, and have 47 offices for the presidential campaign.

And even those most invested in the "dead heat" thesis are reluctant to conclude that Obama is losing Ohio, even with the extreme barrage of Romney TV ads in that state.  And events like this won't help the Romneyryan ticket: of Ryan's attempted photo op of compassionately helping the poor, the Washington Post reported: "The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall...."

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Ryan had stopped by the soup kitchen for about 15 minutes on his way to the airport after his Saturday morning town hall in Youngstown. By the time he arrived, the food had already been served, the patrons had left, and the hall had been cleaned.

Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty."

That this appeared in the Washington Post made for an amusing story for the politically knowing.  But it's the Ohio newspapers--like this one--that are significant in telling this story:

Juanita Sherba, St. Vincent’s Saturday coordinator for the dining hall, said she gave the Ryan campaign approval that day for the visit by the candidate and his family. Sherba say she now realizes it wasn’t her call to make.

The event “was a photo op,” she said. “It was the phoniest piece of baloney I’ve ever been associated with. In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door.”

When an advance person from the Mitt Romney/Ryan campaign asked about the visit, Sherba said it took her by surprise. “I didn’t know it was my place to say ‘no,’” she said. “I made a mistake.” The event was completely staged by the campaign, she said.

“They couldn’t have cared less,” Sherba said. “The advance man said Paul Ryan wanted to come and talk to our clientele, but he didn’t.”

  People in that part of the world (generally speaking, my original part of the world) do not like phony, and Romneyryan already has a big problem with phony.  With any luck, that will become abundantly clear tonight.

As for the all-important debate strategy, Andy Borowitz reveals:

With his polite and well-mannered performance widely panned in the first Presidential debate, President Barack Obama is under mounting pressure to prove that he can act like an asshole in the second debate tomorrow night, a campaign aide confirmed. “In America, we demand that our President remain cool and calm in a crisis but go batshit in a debate,” the aide said. “Tuesday night is all about that second piece.”

However, success is not assured:

But even as Mr. Obama worked around the clock to practice being a douche, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, doubted his efforts would succeed. “Being an asshole isn’t a skill that you can just pick up overnight,” Mr. Rhoades said. “Mitt Romney’s been working on it all his life.”

Forward Monday

phone-banking in Virginia Sunday, a break from debate prep

ABC/Washington Post poll
nationally, likely voters:  Obama 49  Romney 46
nationally, registered voters: Obama 50  Romney 43
swing states likely voters:  Obama 51  Romney 46

More voters say the country is on the right track than in any poll of the last three years.
President Obama leads in most personal qualities and on most issues--pretty much the same as in polls just before the first debate. 

New York Magazine surveyed Washington campaign professionals--37 from each party--on their true views of the upcoming election.  82% believe President Obama will win re-election.  The margin named by most was 2%.  A majority also believe he will be a better President in every way, on every issue.

Yes We Can

The extent of new information I can find on Friday's shooting into an Obama field office in Denver is that police are investigating surveillance video.

But while the stories on this tend to be very short, the above photo has emerged that appears to be the first one in time after the shooting that I've so far seen. 

Whoever did this--if ever found--this photo is a reminder of the virulence and even hate that is coming to a head in this election.  There is so much racial hatred by GOPers being reported every day that it's almost overwhelming.  Add to that the news of bosses telling their employees they could lose their jobs if they vote for Obama.  Plus the overt and covert voter suppression tactics, the sudden avalanche of TV ads in the swing states paid for by Romney's buds in the 1%.

But Yes We Can has not been shattered.  The stakes are too high.  We can't let them steal the future. We go forward.

Forward

Sunday Updates

President Obama leads in early voting  59% to 31%

Swing state polls:

Colorado: Obama 48  Romney 46 (Gravis)
Florida:  Romney 49  Obama 48 (PPP) 

Saturday Swing state polls:

PPP Ohio poll: President Obama 51  Romney 46
Arizona: Obama 44 Romney 42  (This is supposed to be safe for Romney)

The Obama campaign reports:
4 million donors--that's one out of every 75 Americans

The Obama campaign so far has registered:
More than 40,000 voters in both PA and Colorado
More than 60,000 voters in Florida
More than 75,000 voters in North Carolina

Nearly 800 field offices open; Romney has fewer than 300.



And joining the Obama team: The Boss.  Bruce Springsteen will campaign for Obama in Ohio and Iowa, alongside Bill Clinton.

Just One Little Bullet Doesn't Matter, Right?

A gun shot was fired, apparently from a vehicle, into a field office where Obama volunteers were making phone calls on Friday, and today--as the Denver Post says--the silence is deafening.

Of course it is Colorado, where apparently gunfire isn't news unless it kills people, causes a debilitating injury to a sitting U.S. Member of Congress, or kills, maims terrorizes teenagers in a high school or at a Batman movie.

But gunfire in a presidential campaign should be a very serious story.  We ignore it at our peril.  There are plenty of examples in European history of the danger of such actions, and particularly the danger of dismissing or ignoring them.

Saturday the Denver Post followup begins: "Amid the fierce noise of a presidential campaign, the silence from all parties was deafening Saturday as police continued to investigate a suspected gunshot into the Obama field office near downtown Denver."   

And the story provides no further information that wasn't in Friday's brief story, partly because nobody (police, political parties, etc.) is talking.  But I wonder if it is also because not enough people are asking.

A shot fired into a political office would have been a scandal in Denver in 1892, but apparently not in 2012.  What kind of a country are we becoming?

Gun Shot into Obama Campaign Office

It's not a major news story yet, but shouldn't it be?  On Friday afternoon a bullet shattered a window of an Obama field office in Denver.  There were people working in the office at the time.  No one was reported injured.

As of early Saturday morning there are few details, and apparently little interest in obtaining them.  Here's the Denver Post story.  Nobody else seems to have any more.

The Week in Numbers

So it's been a week since the first debate and the unemployment numbers.  As I ventured in the previous post, the Romney surge in the polls tracks in time with the post-debate consensus, though te poli sci folks don't all agree that's entirely the reason--Romney's numbers started to move up even before that, and the surge seems to be coming from disenchanted GOPers, but more than that as well.  The better than expected unemployment number does not seem to have translated into a counter-wave, so it may take the next debate to change the trajectory in a clear way. 

But apparently President Obama has not held his national lead, though all the polls are within one or two points and several are tied.  Gallup's latest tracking has Romney up 2 points with likely voters, but Obama up by one among registered voters.  So for Obama partisans--and anybody not interested in seeing this country fall apart under rampant injustice etc.--it remains tense. But Romney has not followed up his debate with flawlessness on the campaign trail--he and Ryan continue to provide copious ammunition.  With the second debate on Tuesday, who knows where we will be a week from now. 

Though the state polls were more dour on Friday, it is possible to find a few that are moving back towards Obama.  The Dish plots a trend line in Obama's favor in Virginia.  The latest Florida numbers are worrisome--although I never counted on Florida because of the mischief the GOPers have successfully sowed into the voting process there.  It's worse than Ohio.  The latest polls in Ohio suggest a much tighter race, but I notice that the pros are generally skeptical that Romney is going to be able to pull that one off.  Still, Nate Silver is as unbearish on an Obama victory as he has been in months, noting the fragile state leads.  He pegs Obama's chances all the way down to 61%.

Which leads to the overall electoral college evaluations at this point.  At Daily Kos, Singiser   notes that strictly working with poll numbers the race has become uncertain, though still fundamentally favoring President Obama:

"Taken at their current face value, that would put Obama at 281 electoral votes, and Romney at 257 electoral votes. However, it is not difficult to see how a very small further shift in the electorate could both elevate Romney to the presidency, or consign him to the ash heap. With just a shift of two percentage points in his direction, Romney would gain both Nevada and Ohio, that would push him to 281 electoral votes, and with it, the White House. However, if there is a shift of just 2 points in the president's direction, he gets back a raft of states (Colorado, Florida and Virginia). That would put him at 332 electoral votes, making him a decisive winner for a second term."

But what if you take other factors into consideration?  My old boss (sort of) Paul Solman interviewed economist David Rothchild for PBS--he tracks polling but also economic trends and the predictions market, which has a pretty good track record.  He sees Obama as a heavy favorite, and notes the rationale:

"What I would say is that a state like Ohio has maintained its Obama friendliness but as it gets closer and closer to Election Day, it becomes more and more likely that it will actually vote for Obama come Election Day. So it's not a shifting of opinion as much as it's saying, "Romney is running out of time to shift that opinion." And as that happens, you see very few states cross each other, in essence, and so that ranking holds...

So take that order, start adding up electoral votes until you hit 270. You're going to find a pivot state: a state that if Obama holds he wins and that if Romney can reach he wins, and that state has been Ohio for virtually the entire election cycle. It means that if Romney can get all the states up to that point, he can win this election. But that includes Florida and Virginia on top of Ohio and those are three big hurdles and that means on the flip [side] that all Obama has had to do is hold one of those states. Just one of those main three states, and that's what's been giving him that edge this entire time."

Of course these aren't all the factors--there's the ground game, voter suppression, the weather, etc.  All kinds of things that figure into a close election, if it is that close.  So come election night, if  Obama wins Virginia and North Carolina, it will start to look like a landslide.  But even if he loses both of those and Florida, it will probably still come down to Ohio and secondarily to Iowa.  But even in what now looks like a blowout in 2008, the returns from those eastern states were a long time coming, and it was pretty close to the end (when the Pacific states came in) that the results from Florida and Ohio were known.  Great.  And there's still three weeks + to go even before we get to that long night.

But I also noted that Rothschild stressed economic trend factors, and that the predictions market was on top of the data.  And it was reported that consumer confidence jumped unexpectedly higher. What that means may not be known until the election returns.

 It would be great to see another big move towards Obama to ease the tension these last weeks.  It's possible. Already since the vp debate, it's becoming more accepted that Biden won it. (An Ipso poll out Friday said so.)  Dems and pundits are finding more and more in the debate that works for Obama, if carried on.  No polls yet reflect any influence from the debate--it would be unusual if there were any (but let's fact it--this has been an unusual year.)  One thing is certain:  Biden has injected more energy going into this weekend.