Tonight

The second presidential debate is tonight at Hofstra University and it's very clear that the race has changed since the last debate. If you would have told me before the last debate that the president's chances of re-election went from  347-191 to 281-235 (with Colorado and Virginia being pure tossups), I would have said you were nuts.

But that's what one poor debate performance and a completely new and improved Mitt Romney does for a presidential race. The president has a tough task ahead of him tonight. He has to obviously be more upbeat than he was in the last debate and he also has to challenge Romney on his many about faces on the key issues. Yet he has to do it without seeming belligerent because this is a Town Hall style debate with undecided voters in the audience who would likely frown upon heavy partisan bickering. A tough task, indeed.

What I would do tonight if I were the president is point to his list of accomplishments in office and use them to challenge Romney. The president could say, "Mr Romney says that he is a job creator...well, he's sharing the stage with one right now. I've created 5 million jobs in my four years in office and that was after the greatest economic contraction since the great depression. The stock market is seeing new highs, housing is coming back, and consumer confidence is getting higher everyday. We've cut the deficit by 200 billion. We're on the right track, despite the policies of the past that Governor Romney wants to return us to." This is the way he has to frame it. He can't be the attack dog that the Democrats want him to be.

Another thing he could say to erase the last debate is to say something like, "I was shocked at the last debate to see that Governor Romney has come to my way of thinking on issues like health care and taxes. I'm glad he wants to save social programs and keep most of my health care plan like pre-existing conditions and children being able to be insured by their parents until they are 26. I think it's great that he thinks taxes don't need to be cut for the wealthy. But he still hasn't said how he is going to pay for all of this."

The president can nail Romney on specifics without going negative. He could simply say, "I stand for the wealthy paying more of their fair share of taxes. I want to keep tax cuts permanent for the middle class. I'm looking forward to implementing the rest of my health care plan. Who are you, Governor Romney and what do you stand for?"

This point really has to be driven home because it's enormously aggravating that Romney is now suddenly a moderate who supports helping the middle class. More irritating is the sound of crickets I hear from the Right who now have made it abundantly clear that they just want Barack Obama to lose and it's not because they think his policies are wrong for the country. It's because they KNOW they are starting to be effective (which Romney will, of course, take credit for if he wins) and that would hasten the end (already inevitable, demographically speaking) of their party as they know it. It matters not if Mitt Romney does these things...just as long as it's not Barack Obama.

Honestly, I don't think Mitt Romney can do these things. I think he's a nice guy and he is exactly like all the dads of the kids I with whom I went to school (private school, grades 7-12) but he's not presidential material. The fact that people are now of the mind that he "looks like a president on the TeeVee" is really disappointing to me. I thought we had moved past all that.

I guess I'm very pessimistic about the race at this point. Perhaps it's because there was such a comfortable lead by the president that has now been needlessly squandered and we are left with an honest to goodness nail biter that sadly isn't based on substance. More frustrating is the fact that the Democrats are likely to pick up 12 seats in the House and hold the Senate, possibly even gaining a seat or two, given the fact that the GOP candidates are so awful this year and the Democratic candidates are so good.

281 does win it, however, and so perhaps I'm being overly paranoid. With Ohio holding the way it is (even after the president sucked in the last debate), that means that Romney is going to have to run the table on the rest of the states. Even Frank Luntz says that the president is likely going to win simply because of electoral math.

So, the president could really help himself tonight and I'm hoping that he will!

Tonight's VP Debate

I think I may be the only one in punditry land that doesn't think tonight's debate will matter all that much. The only way I see that it will is if Biden really does a poor job or says something stupid. I don't think anything Ryan does (good or bad) will matter.

At the end of the day, people care more about President Obama and Mitt Romney, not their second in command. The national polls have certainly tightened but they were going to do that anyway. Nothing much has changed in the swing states (more on that later today when I put up my daily poll numbers) and we are still basically down to 9 states.

Everyone's eyes are on next Tuesday as the President gets another chance to take on Mitt Romney.

More Moderate Mitt

There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda--- (Mitt Romney, October 9, 2012, Iowa)

OK, now this is just getting ridiculous...

28 Days

With the election exactly four weeks away, I thought it appropriate to sit back and see where things stand currently.

Now that Mitt Romney is just barely to the right of Barack Obama, the president and his re-election team have a real problem. The Etch-E-Sketch idea is actually working because many people didn't tune into the election until the debates. To them, Romney is a very reasonable man who looks and acts like a president. He's not the guy who said he was a "severe conservative," wants to cut taxes for the rich, and thinks that society is made up of makers and takers (copyright Ayn Rand). They weren't paying attention then. He is, in fact, a moderate.

The president's re-election is now more difficult because of this new (times four) Mitt Romney (who I happen to think is who he has been all along. Politico agrees). So, Barack Obama and his team need to do two things in the next four weeks and they need to do them well otherwise they might lose.

The first thing they have to do is get people to vote. If everyone voted who supports the president, the only state that Romney wins that the president won in 2008 is Indiana. But voter enthusiasm is lower on the D side than the R side so that makes the race tighter. In short, they need to get out the vote. Spending the next four weeks getting people registered to vote would be time well spent. Spending time talking about Big Bird  would not be time well spent.

The second thing the president has to do is vigorously defend his record in the next two debates, at rallies, and in the media. His team needs to stop talking about the last debate and focus on the next two. Personally, I don't think the Biden-Ryan debate is going to matter much because people want to hear from the president again, not a surrogate. In fact, the whole surrogate thing has to stop. No one can make his case for him anymore...the president has to nut up and do it himself.

He has a lot of great things to talk about so it should be easy. Our country is heading in the right direction on the economy with the unemployment number falling and jobs being added every month. His foreign policies have been specific (unlike Governor Romney) and largely successful. He needs to brag about them while illustrating that Mitt Romney's are a combination of dangerous naivete and a bizarre time warp to 20th century realism. And he really needs to pin Romney down on the economy with the details because Mitt doesn't have any.

As for folks like Andrew Sullivan, they need to leave the drama queen bit behind and start being helpful. The continued hand wringing over a debate now one week ago is getting very old. I realize that the art of performance is very important to media types like Sully but his posts are becoming so shrill it's hard for me to read them anymore. Personally, I think it's because his personal reputation is on the line after his Newsweek story about the president being the Democrat's Ronald Reagan and now he's worried that he might look foolish. Well, he's looking foolish now saying that the election is over with a full month left until people vote.

There are many folks in the political media that simply need to take a fucking chill pill. The new Pew Poll that shows Romney up 4 points nationally makes perfect sense when you consider that many people that took that poll identified as Republican. Unlike that whiners on the Right who foamed at the mouth about "skewed polls," people on the left (and everyone really) need to realize that this is simply how sampling works in some of these polls so that's why the numbers are weighed that way.

And, honestly, the national tracking polls are meaningless at this point as the 6-8 swing state polls hold more obvious insight.

Overall, I've noticed a somewhat muted response from the far right on the new, new, new, new Mitt Romney which I find to be fascinating. Are they being quiet because they don't want to jinx him? Are they afraid that he really is going to turn out to be a moderate? Or do they think he's just fooling everyone and the severe conservative will pop up if he wins?

Not that I want this to happen but I think it would be very interesting if Romney won the election and pretty much did the same things that President Obama is doing. After all, that's more or less what he said he would do in the first debate. Is this what the Right really wants?

I Stand Corrected

I originally thought this was Mitt Romney getting a shoeshine but, thanks to Guard Duck, I was wrong. Romney is actually getting wanded by TSA, according to Snopes. I stand corrected, once again.

I'm still waiting, though, for admissions of fault on this one, however. I wonder how much longer I'm going to have to wait...

OK...wait...Huh?

Less than 24 hours after his strong debate performance, he goes on Fox News and says this?

Well, clearly in a campaign, with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right. In this case, I said something that's just completely wrong.

WTF?!!??

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that he said this and it shows some real integrity but didn't he get the memo that if you are going to be the leader of the Right in this country that you need to be unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information and see compromise as a weakness?

I think we may need to add on fourth "new" to Nikto's New New New Mitt Romney. This latest model has now chucked the conservative base and the Tea Party right out the fucking window. Apparently, the wealthy elite who believe in "Makers and Takers" as well.

I figured he'd wait at least a few days to enjoy his victory before fucking it up for himself but not even one miserable day?

Sheesh....

Post Debate Poll

Here's that CBS poll that everyone has been talking about taken right after the debate.

In the moments following the candidates' performances on the University of Denver stage, 46 percent of voters gave the economy-centric debate to Romney, 22 percent said they believed the president was the winner, and 32 percent called it a tie. More good news for the GOP nominee: 56 percent of those polled said they viewed Romney in a better light after watching the debate. Eleven percent said their opinion of him dropped, and 32 percent cited no change in opinion.

54 percent of the people said they thought the president won or it was a tie? Obviously, Romney won so what's the deal here? Remember, these are uncommitted voters and it seems to me that they aren't swayed by the types of arguments that both the right and the left think they will be swayed by.

More Post Mortem on the Debate

I find it very interesting that the "liberal" media has been so critical of the president since the conclusion of the debate. Why is that? Are they angry that he didn't do his part to make it like a WWE wrestling match?

Moreover, there seems to be a disconnect between the undecided voters and the media's continued ripping of the president. As I flipped around last night checking out each network's coverage of those undecided focus groups, the individual voters interviewed seemed unfazed by the media's take. Their central concern seemed to be that neither candidate was giving them enough information to make a decision. It will be interesting to see how this shows up in the polls.

Here's a graphic that shows how little persuadable voters are interested in the debates.

In addition, none of them reacted well to any hint of negativity which makes the president's strategy last night now seem very wise. Of course, I'm still trying to figure out why he didn't want to be there last night. What was going on? Obviously, the first thought is a negative one: he's aloof, non caring, and an elitist snob. But what if it was something else? Did he have a fight with his wife? Something going on with his daughters? Some other sort of bad news? He's only human after all. We may never know.

A female friend of mine commented on my FB status today on the debate with the following.

I always wonder how the president runs the country and then has to find time to prepare for a debate. Obama looked so tired last night. Not his best debate for sure.

Women love the president and may ultimately be his saving grace from this poor showing with their sympathy.

Another good thing that came out of last night was the "newly discovered" Obama speech from 2007 is now ancient history. The Right can now spend the next few days pouncing on the president for his bad debate performance.

I also disagree with nearly everyone in the media when they say that Mitt's only awkward moment was the Big Bird comment. It wasn't awkward at all and was actually funny. Mentions of Big Bird have gone up 800,000% on Facebook today which shows you just how interested in the substance of the issues the general populace is these days.

Some other notes from around the inter-webs...

Governor Romney didn’t win the election last night, he just stopped losing it. That may not last; the road to the election is still very long and we are more likely than not to see momentum shift back and forth some more. (Walter Russell Mead)

If you watched it without sound – or, even better, if you didn’t speak English, so you could hear the sound but couldn’t understand the words – I have to believe Romney won by a mile. But if you didn’t watch the debate, and read the transcript, what you’d see is the following. When Romney attacked, Obama generally had a policy response – some more persuasive than others, but the response was generally policy-related. When Obama attacked, Romney would generally deny that he took the position that was being attacked. Romney’s palpable zest for the debate made him look like a guy ready to take charge, and the President’s demeanor suggested some willingness to let him do so. But his refusal to stand his ground on anything – and the marked contrast with the President in that regard – made him sound like a snake-oil salesman. (Noah Millman) 

I’m not particularly concerned with who won the debate, although if I were forced to declare a winner, I’d say Romney did. What I am concerned with was the poor quality of the debate. There was plenty of talk about the working poor and the unemployed, but they were used mostly as props. The crucial issue for the next four years is how to make economic growth work for everyone, how to get people back to work, and how to find and deploy the resources necessary to make our systems function well. I heard a lot more discussion of Dodd-Frank and Simpson-Bowles on Wednesday night than I did on those topics.(Daniel Gross)

Post Debate Thoughts

Mitt Romney did a good job tonight in the debate against the president and, man oh man, did he need it. If he had made one or two serious errors, it would have been all over.

Instead, he rose to the occasion and became the Mitt Romney that I had thought had vanished and been replaced by an android built by the right wing blogsphere. We saw this in his latest ad in which he is talking directly to the camera about the middle class. Mitt Romney, The Moderate, is back.

He spent the entire night talking about how he would help the middle class, keep Medicare and Social Security, and focus on education. Of course, he had to do all these things after the 47 percent remark. If you want to win the presidency, you have to win the middle and he was very congenial as opposed to being the red meat attack dog that we have seen for the last two years. In many ways, he essentially lopped off the far right from the campaign and...dare I say it?...shook the Etch-E-Sketch. I have to wonder...what is the base going to think about this?

The president seemed off his game tonight and I have to wonder why. Was he tired? Is there some sort of foreign policy crisis brewing that we don't know about? In many ways, this debate performance reminded me of President Bush's first debate against John Kerry (with Romney reminding me of Kerry as well) in 2004. He just didn't do a good job. The main thing I didn't like is he kept looking down, smiling and taking notes. He should've looked more often at Romney.

What's ironic about this is that the president's continued call for Romney to explain his specifics on things like what loopholes he would get rid of went unanswered. I was shocked that Jim Lehrer didn't to after this as well. Honestly, everyone seemed very nice and friendly....even down to the families getting together at the conclusions and chatting for a minute. I have to admit, it was kind of a nice break from all the ugliness.

I guess the group that I'm most PO'd at right now is the left wing pundits in the media. They are fit to be tied that the president didn't attack, attack, ATTACK!!! They have been whining all night about how he didn't mention the 47 percent and rub his nose in it. I don't think that would've worked at all and made him look less presidential. All of the undecided voters watching the debate on CNN reacted VERY negatively to any negative attacks.

In some ways, this is how the president is in a real bind. He can't be the attack dog that he needed to be to put Romney away for good but if he tries to rise above it all, he looks like he doesn't care which is essentially what happened tonight. I mean, we are talking about theater, after all:)

Of course, you could almost smell this in the air, right? The bullied and beaten up candidate..by his own hand and a rabid voting bloc...now...rising to the occasion and rising again...like the phoenix! The media just love this shit, right? We all knew that they would do this to keep people excited about the election. Well, in a few days, we'll see what the impact on the polls will be and we'll have a more accurate picture of the effect of this debate. If the CNN post debate interview with undecided Colorado voters is any indication, nothing will change. 8 flipped over to Obama and 8 flipped over to Romney!

In the final analysis, I don't think he's been bloodied enough in this election and he needed this kick in the teeth to avoid being complacent and resting on his lead in the swing states. It's certainly going to be an interesting rest of the week!

Or not.

Polls For Wednesday Oct 3rd

General Election: Romney vs. Obama	National Journal	Obama 47, Romney 47	Tie
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Gallup Tracking	Obama 49, Romney 45	Obama +4
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Tracking	Obama 49, Romney 47	Obama +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	NPR	Obama 51, Romney 44	Obama +7
Florida: Romney vs. Obama	NBC/WSJ/Marist	Obama 47, Romney 46	Obama +1
Virginia: Romney vs. Obama	NBC/WSJ/Marist	Obama 48, Romney 46	Obama +2
Ohio: Romney vs. Obama	NBC/WSJ/Marist	Obama 51, Romney 43	Obama +8
North Carolina: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Reports	Romney 51, Obama 47	Romney +4
Texas: Romney vs. Obama	Texas Lyceum	Romney 58, Obama 39	Romney +19
Virginia Senate - Allen vs. Kaine	NBC/WSJ/Marist	Kaine 49, Allen 44	Kaine +5
Ohio Senate - Mandel vs. Brown	NBC/WSJ/Marist	Brown 50, Mandel 41	Brown +9
Florida Senate - Mack vs. Nelson	NBC/WSJ/Marist	Nelson 52, Mack 41	Nelson +11
Missouri Senate - Akin vs. McCaskill	Rasmussen Reports	McCaskill 51, Akin 45	McCaskill +6
Texas Senate - Cruz vs. Sadler	Texas Lyceum	Cruz 50, Sadler 24	Cruz +26
Generic Congressional Vote	NPR	Republicans 45, Democrats 48	Democrats +3
President Obama Job Approval	Gallup	Approve 50, Disapprove 44	Approve +6
President Obama Job Approval	NPR	Approve 50, Disapprove 46	Approve +4
President Obama Job Approval	Rasmussen Reports	Approve 49, Disapprove 50	Disapprove +1
Direction of Country	NPR	Right Direction 39, Wrong Track 55	Wrong Track +16

Couple things to note here on the day of the first debate. Ohio looks like it's gone for Romney. We have yet another poll in which the president is up in the high single digits. How can Romney get to 270 without it? He'd have to take all of the remaining swing states (one of which is now Missouri thanks to Todd Akin) and bring Wisconsin back to his side as well. It just doesn't seem very likely.

The NBC poll, btw, did not oversample Democrats.

Rasmussen has the president up 2 points while Gallup has him up 4 overall. Remember that Rasmussen does not poll cel phone users so the president's lead is likely wider than 2 points as many young people have cel phones but no land line.

At this point, the Senate is all but gone for the GOP. Quite a difference from just a few months ago when I predicted that the Democrats would be lucky to get a tie at 50-50. If the election were held today, I'd say the Democrats would net a +1 or a +2.

The same, however, can't be said for the House. The overly optimistic predictions that the Democrats will take back the House are silly. At this point, I'd say they'll net +15, putting the spread at 227 GOP-208 Democrat.

Now What?

Well, this is interesting.

Dean Chambers, who runs unskewedpolls.com, quicky worked his usual magic on the Fox data but this time his "unskewing" wasn't enough to move the numbers in the GOP's favor. The result: Obama up by 2 points. While that's obviously less than the gap the Fox News poll showed, it's nonetheless noteworthy because it's a major departure from the past dozen or so of Chambers' "unskewed" polls that claimed to have Romney well on his way to a historic victory this fall.

Well, now what? Maybe his poll is stupid and fat now too...

Politico has a great story up today about the parallel universe in which Romney leads in all the polls.

There has always been a divide between the Republican consultant class and conservative media figures. Operatives must dwell in the real world because their jobs depend on winning and losing. The likes of Morris and Limbaugh have different incentives. They want to build their email lists and listening audiences and there’s no faster way to conservative hearts than to kick the dreaded mainstream media. And when it’s well after Labor Day of a presidential year and the Republican nominee isn’t faring well, reassuring the home team that there’s just a scoreboard malfunction offers a seeming dose of logic to the situation. 

"Seeming" being the key word.

The Harvester

Lost in this election is one very simple reason why Mitt Romney would not be a good president: he made most of his money off of driving companies into debt.

But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions - placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place..

If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.

Indeed.

The video below surfaced recently from Mitt's days at Bain which confirms this.


Harvest them at a significant profit...wow.

Heading in the Opposite Directions

Nate Silver over at 538 put up a piece yesterday which shows how events in the last few weeks have changed the numbers in the presidential race. Here's the graphic.

His conclusion?

What we can say with more confidence is that Mr. Romney is now in a rather poor position in the polls. In three of the four national tracking surveys published on Thursday, Mr. Romney trailed by margins of six, seven and eight percentage points. He also trailed by five percentage points in a one-off survey published by Fox News. The exception was Thursday’s Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, which showed the race in an exact tie, although that was improvement for Mr. Obama from a two-point deficit on Wednesday.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens after the first debate.

The Reality of the Electorate

As is often the case, someone will put up a post in comments that is worthy of its own post out here.

Barring any meltdowns from either side and as long as the campaign keeps going as is with no bombshells or October Surprises, I think Romney will win 52-47. I think Obama's own internal polls show that. How do I know? Just a hunch, a feeling, womens intuition, I don't know for sure. If Obama can get even more people on disability and food stamps from now till the election, that margin will narrow. (last in line)

My first thought is...where is the evidence for this (aside from Dick Morris' appearance on Sean Hannity on Wednesday)? Even Fox and Rasmussen show the president ahead in the polls. Fox had him up 7 points in Ohio last week (before the 47 percent comment) and all I heard was crickets. A couple of more polls come out that confirm this and suddenly it's on to massive mouth foaming. Gallup has the president at 50-44 over Romney (with approval/disapproval at 50-45) so I have to wonder how Mitt is going to get to that 8 points predicted in the above comment.

The only way I thought he could would be if Democrats got complacent. Certainly this is a worry of the Obama campaign and mine as well. It's still 5 1/2 weeks to Election Day and if people think the president has it in the bag, they are mistaken. In many ways, it's kind of terrible that he is up this much this early. People still need to vote. Of course, they already are voting early in many states, including Iowa which is a swing state this year. This obviously helps the president as he is running ahead right now.

All this bitching about the sampling is pretty amusing, though. The Democrats did the same thing in 2010 and the polls were all accurate. The fact is that more people identify as Democrats than they do Republicans. I guess that doesn't sit well with the Right. Now, these people could be lying but remember they are polling likely voters now and not registered voters.

Another thing to consider is that these polling companies make their money off of being accurate. If they aren't accurate, they lose business. So, it's in their best interest to poll as factually as they can.

Anyway, this whole poll flap has led me to the conclusion (something I was mulling over anyway) to put up posts with the latest polls each day. These won't just be horse race polls, mind you, but ones with substance behind the questions.

For example, here is the latest Kaiser poll which shows this

The always sturdy voting bloc of elderly people are concerned about Paul Ryan's voucher Medicare idea and think the president is going to do a better job with the program the GOP ticket. Because of Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney is behind in these swing states with older people.

The icing on the cake to all of this is the final sentence in last's comment. I realize he is joking here but it's this sort of sentiment that's about to meet the reality of the electorate on November 6th.

Where Has This Mitt Romney Been?

Take a look at this video.



Where has this Mitt Romney been? See, I think that this is who Mitt Romney really is...he's not the guy who was playing the "makers/takers" ass at the Florida fundraiser and he's not the guy who thinks that the president is an anti-colonial, Kenyan socialist. He's a fucking sensible moderate and he always has been.

The problem for Romney isn't himself. It's the Republican party. In order get his base to turn out, he has to play the part of the mouth foamer. But he obviously doesn't believe that crap so he comes across as disingenuous. And he can't be in the middle...where he is most comfortable...because then he'll be labeled as a heretic. Worse, the middle is behind the president.

This all plays in to why Romney hasn't gotten specific on his plans. He knows that we are going to have to raise taxes and get serious about income inequality in order to solve our economic concerns. But if he says that, again, he's going to lose his main chunk of support.

As I have said many times, the Republican party is fucked. They haven't gotten over 300 electoral votes since 1988. The country is changing demographically and yet they continue to take a hard line on such issues as immigration and health issues (specifically women's health). They can't win with a moderate (no base support) and they can't win with a hard line rightie (no middle support).

I Heart Bill Kristol?

They need to focus on the next four years. If this election is just about the last four years, that’s a muddy verdict. Bush was president during the financial meltdown, the Obama team has turned that around pretty well. He’s [Mitt Romney]got to make it a referendum on the choice about the next four years, and explain what Obama would do over the next four years that would be bad for the country and what he would do would be good for the country.

Finally, the truth from someone on the Right.

And he's right about the election. If Mitt Romney can't specify what he's going to do in the next four years, he won't win.

No Way

Of all the things there are to say about Mitt Romney, I simply can't believe this is true.

No fucking way.