++Both Nate Silver's blog and Sam Wang at Princeton should give concern to the Obama campaign. Sam Wang has Obama now at 281 EV and 257 for Romney.The meta-margin is now below 1%. At Nate Silver Obama has 290 EV and Romney 248. It is clear that Romney got about a 6% bounce out of the first debate and it is lasting. President Obama can not afford any more bleeding.He had a lot to give but I am afraid with only a few weeks out that any further misstep will be fatal.
++The good news is that Joe Biden stopped the bleeding. The whole point of his debate performance was to sheer up the middle class. He did that.
++This morning brought a Rasmussen poll showing Romney is ahead 51 to 47 in Florida. This tracks the dreadful Mason-Dixon poll yesterday showing Romney ahead by 51 to 44. The Obama campaign went out of its way to denounce the Florida poll.
++But why then are swing states not showing the Romney bounce the way the national polls are? Greg Sargent at the Washington Post and others have written that the Obama campaign has been unusually successful in painting Romney as out of touch with the lives of ordinary Americans. The Bain ads were submitted to focus groups before they were aired and they have proved devastating to the Romney campaign. Yesterday I mentioned Mark Halperin,a Republican pundit, saying that Romney was trying to figure out how to win without Ohio.
++Yesterday's Huffington Post has an excellent article on the difficulty Romney has in Ohio. It reminds me of the last campaign when a woman said she wanted change but didn't know how she could cope with it since her life had gone down so far she had just managed to deal with what little she had left. The same applies in Ohio among middle class Republicans who don't believe Romney gets their goals and aspirations and doesn't identify with them, unlike President Obama.
++By now we should know there are two campaigns-one in the Swing States and the other in the rest of the country,if you are lucky to see it. Romney's national polling some believe is because the electorate elsewhere have not seen the Obama ads so that Romney is more of a blank slate and has been able to define himself.
++What I find fascinating is that as Obama's fortunes temporarily fall the Democratic Senatorial candidates are doing terrific. The odds of Republicans taking over the Senate recede daily. There are now a few more interesting Senate races like Carmona against Flake in Arizona, where an astonishing 80% of Hispanics support Democrats.
++A final note--I have plenty of reasons for voting for President Obama already. But this week I bought the greatest deal in the United States--a lifetime pass and parking at all the national parks for $10. A day after I did this at Antietam battlefield, Mitt Romney told a crowd in the West he was open to selling the national parks to corporations. Thanks a lot.
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