You may have heard MSM hype today about how the presidential race is tightening just in time for tonight’s debate, based mostly on NBC/WSJ’s latest poll showing Obama with a mere 3-point edge in LVs. But the “tightening” meme has the smell of manufactured suspense, as Steve Singiser notes at Daily Kos:

…That “tightening” meme is paper-thin…the balance of the polling looks pretty middling, at best, for the GOP contender. Worse still for Romney, the national polls look positively boffo compared to the state polls, which today are pretty much a universal disappointment for the Republicans (Texas would seem to be the only poll that they could stick on the refrigerator).
The GOP can point with some happiness downballot, but even there we can see a lot of potential disappointments for the red team coming in five weeks.

Singiser then presents a truck load of recent polling data to illustrate his point, and adds,

Is the race tightening? Only by the most charitable of definitions.
Among likely voters, what was an Obama lead of 50-45 is now a lead of 49-46. So, by that standard, sure…there has been some movement. But, among the larger pool of registered voters, the movement was in the other direction. What was a 50-44 lead for Barack Obama is now a 51-44 lead. That seven-point edge among registered voters is actually the largest lead the president has enjoyed over his Republican rival in an NBC/WSJ poll in 19 months (a February 2011 poll gave him a double-digit edge).
What’s more, when the other candidates are thrown into the mix, the margin among likely voters is…five points. Which would indicate no movement at all, actually.
As for the other national pollsters, the movement is far from uniform. PPP moved a single point in Romney’s direction (from Obama +5 to Obama +4), while Quinnipiac moved a single point in Obama’s direction (from Obama +3 to Obama +4). National Journal’s movement cannot really be tracked accurately, because their previous poll (in April) was of all adults, where this survey has a (ridiculously large) likely voter screen.
As for the trio of daily trackers, the day-to-day movement was equally muted. Ipsos/Reuters didn’t move at all (holding steady at Obama +5), Rasmussen went two points in Romney’s favor (from Obama +3 to Obama +1), and Gallup went two points in Obama’s favor (from Obama +4 to Obama +6).
Again, as we noted yesterday, if there is a “tightening” of the race nationally, it is incremental, at best.

Singiser goes on the crunch statewide poll numbers, none of which offer much encouragement, trend-wise, to the Romney campaign and some of which should bring smiles to Obama’s strategists. All in all, as Singiser, says “Mitt Romney ‘needs a game changer'” in tonight’s debate.

For the best round-up of the latest wonkage on the topic of the influence of the presidential debates on polling and presidential elections, you probably can’t do much better than Dylan Mathews’ post, “Do presidential debates usually matter? Political scientists say no” at Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog.
Matthews quotes conclusions from a handful of statistical studies and he trots out five flashy charts measuring the effects of the debates and media framing. Among his conclusions:

…History is littered with examples of debate performances that allegedly decided elections. There was John F. Kennedy beating Richard Nixon due to the latter’s not-ready-for-prime-time scruff. There was Gerald Ford losing after asserting that the Soviet Union didn’t dominate Eastern Europe. There was Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again” comeback to Jimmy Carter, and Lloyd Bensten’s admonition that Dan Quayle is “no Jack Kennedy.”
But did any of those actually matter? The best political science says no.

Matthews adds, “Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the irrelevance of debates is that polling in past races hasn’t changed much at all following them” and he depicts the impressive before and after “continuity” in a tightly lined-up diagonal graph from a study by Columbia University’s Robert Erikson and Temple’s Christopher Wlezien. Matthews also shows Nate Silver’s chart indicating “slight national poll gains for challengers following debates” and adds,

However, the effect is small, with an average shift of 2.3 percentage points, and it’s hard to infer causality with such a small sample. In any case, only two elections — 1980 and 2000 — saw the candidates trade places in the polls following the debate, and in every case the poll leader after the first debate won the electoral college. So Obama can rest easy assuming he still leads after tonight.

Matthews reiterates, “The evidence for debate effects on election outcomes is thus weak at best, and at worst nonexistent.” But, interestingly, Mathews cites four different studies which indicate that “The media seems to be the far more important player” than even the candidates themselves in deciding voters’ opinions about the debates. He notes other studies indicating measurable effects of debate-viewers being exposed to conversations and opinions of other viewers, and yes, even social network buzz.
If Matthews is right, whatever polling differences emerge following the debates may be better explained by peer influence and media spin than the quality of performances by President Obama and Governor Romney.

All indications are that the public doesn’t think that tax cuts for the wealthy, budget cuts in needed services and deregulation sounds like much of a plan for addressing America’s economic woes, which puts Romney in a bit of a bind for tonight’s debate. Writing at The Washington Monthly, TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore agrees with Ezra Klein’s assessment that Romney “doesn’t have an appealing policy agenda capable of turning this thing around, and his party hasn’t given him the freedom to construct one.” Further, adds Kilgore,

…The dirty little secret of the GOP at the moment is that it has to run a national campaign focused on unhappiness with the economy while advancing a policy agenda that has little or nothing to do with the economy, and in fact would almost certainly make the economy immediately worse. It hasn’t gotten much attention, but the Republican Party (including its presidential nominee) is committed to deflationary monetary policies, and austerity federal spending policies. Despite its occasional gestures in the direction of understanding the need for a more skilled work force, the GOP is also fully committed to the destruction of public education as we know it (or at least that’s how I would interpret the full-on, unrestricted voucher system Romney has proposed), and to fiscal policies that would almost certainly get the federal government out of the business of skills development within a decade. More generally, the Republican assault on the very concept of collective bargaining and its treatment of wages and benefits (not to mention regulations and corporate taxes) as nothing more than cost-boosting burdens on “wealth creators” harnesses the GOP to a concept of economic development that if it were effective would have long made Mississippi the nation’s economic dynamo.

It’s a tough sell to a public which wants bold action to create jobs sooner than later, especially for a candidate who has been much more substantive in expressing support for an arch-conservative social agenda. As Kilgore concludes, “So Romney’s struggle to articulate an economic agenda while running a campaign that is supposedly about nothing else is no accident. And thus he will be driven to evasions and lies. It’s all he’s really got. ”

In his HuffPo post, “Questions That Are Unlikely to Be Asked Wednesday Night” former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has 7 good questions for each presidential candidate, and President Obama should be ready for the toughest ones, which will likely be directed to him in some form, which include:

President Obama: TARP authorized not only a bailout of Wall Street banks but help to distressed homeowners. You chose not to condition the bailout of Wall Street on the banks reducing the amount people owed on their mortgages. hindsight, do you think that was a mistake? A follow up question, if I may: It is estimated that one in five American families is still underwater — owing more on their home mortgages than their homes are worth. So far your efforts to help them have fallen far short of the goals you set. If you are reelected, what specific measures will you initiate do more for these families?
President Obama: You faced a particularly truculent Republican congress. But some say you didn’t fight Republicans hard enough during your first term, that you often began negotiations with compromises, and you didn’t use the full powers of your office to get more of what you wanted. Do you think there’s any validity to this criticism and, if so, what will you do differently in your second term?
President Obama: Last December, in a speech you gave in Osawatomie, Ks., you noted that in the last few decades the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by 6 percent. If you’re reelected president, what do you propose to do about this trend?

In the event that moderator Jim Lehrer fails to ask Reich’s most challenging questions for Mitt Romney, the President should prepare some sound bite/zingers that distill some of Reich’s questions for Romney, including:

Governor Romney: You’ve said that you have used every legal method to reduce your tax liability. You’ve also said that as president you would close tax loopholes in order to help finance a major across-the-board tax cut. What specific tax loopholes have you used that you would close? A followup: Would you close the loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax, even when they risk no capital of their own?
Governor Romney: Your mathematics has been attacked by those who say it’s impossible to provide the tax cut you propose; expand the military, as you want to do; preserve Medicare and Social Security, as you promise to do; and at the same time balance the federal budget, as you say you’ll do. Can you take us through the math, please, with specific numbers?
Governor Romney: You have campaigned as a “businessman” who has the managerial experience to turn the economy around. Yet some say you’ve run one of the worst campaigns in recent memory — filled with gaffes, misstatements, poor timing, Clint Eastwood, and much else. Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, for example, calls your campaign a “calamity.” Should Americans be concerned about your management abilities?

There will be sound bites, zingers, pivots and ‘gotcha’ questions aplenty tonight. Romney may exceed expectations, as he did in the GOP debates during the primary season. If the President can hold his own, he will be in good shape. But If he brings his ‘A’ game, and the Friday jobs report isn’t a bummer, then Democratic strategists should seriously consider shifting some resources down ballot.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of the book “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The reason that Mitt Romney’s condescending comments about the “47 percent” have done such damage to his candidacy is simple. As Republican consultant Alex Castellanos said in Tuesday’s Washington Post: “The only thing in politics that is worse than voters deciding they don’t like you is when voters decide you don’t like them.”
In politics there is no bigger sin than disrespecting voters. It is a sin that is rarely, if ever, forgiven. You can explain your policies and programs. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about how effective you are as a “manager.” It won’t matter.
People don’t want leaders who treat them with disrespect — who believe they are unable to “convince” them to take responsibility for their lives.
Respect is such a core element of voter decision-making because it addresses one of our primary self-interests as human beings. More than most anything else, people want to feel that they have meaning — that their lives make a difference. Meaning in life is our core motivator, and once you tell people that they are, in effect, meaningless pond scum, they are not so inclined to choose you as their leader.
Being disrespected is toxic in just about any human interaction. Nothing engenders more hurt or rage than the feeling that someone thinks you don’t matter. Ask the wife who feels that she is being treated like a piece of furniture by her husband. Ask the employee who can’t stand the high-handed attitude of his boss. Ask any high school kid what he or she fears the most — the disrespect of their classmates.
Great leaders inspire people. That’s just the opposite of communicating disrespect. Inspiration is not something you think, it’s something you feel. When you’re inspired, you feel empowered. You feel that you are part of something bigger than yourself and you can personally play a significant role in attaining that greater goal. When a leader inspires you, he or she does not make you feel that he is important. He makes you feel that you are important — that you matter. Disrespect communicates exactly the opposite.
In the 47 percent video, Mitt Romney did not imply that he disrespected half of the country. He said it directly. He said he didn’t care about “those people” because he could not convince them to take responsibility for their lives. What an arrogant, patronizing, disrespectful thing to say about half of the population.
And it was plain to see that this was not a gaffe. Romney wasn’t awkwardly searching for words. What you saw was the real Romney — the one that his campaign tries to hide — speaking to the home-boys and home-girls from the board rooms and the country club.
The tape by itself would have been bad enough. But its power was magnified because it was one in a long line of Romney comments that showed disrespect for everyday Americans. They have ranged from his contemptuous put-down of the cookies a local person had served him at a drop-by at their back yard, to his patronizing, “I love to fire people,” to his constant reference to “those people.”
And his disrespectful comments extended to his “blooper reel” foreign trip last summer, where he managed to disrespect the people of London and their competency to run the Olympics and the culture of every Palestinian.
Then again, it should not be surprising that disrespect should characterize the Romney foreign policy. He has surrounded himself with a neocon foreign policy team from the Bush years that specialized in showing disrespect for pretty much everyone else in the world. That worked out well.
The 47 percent tape simply served to confirm what most people were already feeling about Mitt Romney — and that’s why it is something that Mitt Romney will find it very hard to escape.
He will try hard in the debates to be respectful and empathetic to the voters. It won’t work, it’s not who he is.
When the Washington Post asked them last month the person they would rather have as the captain of a ship in a storm, the voters were about evenly divided between Obama and Romney. Now they choose Obama 52 percent to 40 percent.
That’s partially because the conventions gave voters a chance to think about where each candidate would lead the country, and which one they believe has the vision and skill to effectively solve the country’s problems.
But it’s also because many voters have become convinced that if Romney were the captain, he might have so little respect for them that he would throw them overboard.
Disrespect correlates very highly with another key parameter that affects voter behavior — the perception of whether a candidate is “on your side.” Of course, it is entirely possible for someone not to be “on your side” and respect you all the same. That happens all the time in sports (or as Romney would say, “sport”). Two teams have conflicting goals and do battle to win, but show the deepest respect for each other’s skill. The same thing happens over negotiating tables in business everyday.
But nothing fires up the members of a football team more than the belief that the other side doesn’t respect them.
And nothing makes for a more inspiring story than when everyday people stand up to those who have disrespected them and refuse to be defeated. That’s exactly what is going to happen November 6th.
Bottom line: you can be a rich guy and win Ohio. But you can’t be a rich guy who disrespects the voters and win Ohio.

George Lakoff has some debate pointers up at HuffPo, and President Obama — and all Democratic candidates — would do well do give it a read. Here’s a couple of Lakoff’s excellent tips:

Facts matter, but only when they clearly fit one’s morally-based frames. Facts and figures, when used, should create a moral point in a memorable way. And if the facts don’t fit your frames, the frames stay (since they are in your brain) and the facts are ignored or ridiculed.
…Effective political speech uses language based on one’s own frames and avoids language based on the opponent’s frames. The opponent’s language, even if negated and argued against, activates his frames in the brains of the public.
If the moderator uses the other side’s frames, shift to yours.
The best defense is a good offense: a narrative based on your frames. Always go on offense.
Tell why your views are patriotic.
…Limit discussion of policy details. Policies — and the facts and figures behind them — should only be discussed when they exemplify your values. Avoid isolated facts and figures. Tell stories with clear morals.
…Building the economy requires investment — in public infrastructure, education, research, and much more.
…Who are we as Americans? Are we citizens who join together to form a great nation? Or are we isolated individuals, with no commitments to each other, at the mercy of corporations whose central goal is their short-term profit.

Lakoff has more to say in this post and in his other writings, as a master of the linguistics and messaging needed to energize the spirit of broadly-shared sacrifice, opportunity and prosperity that can unify America.

The Republican obsession with voucherizing Medicare is a cornerstone of their ideology, but it remains one of the least popular ideas with the public, as TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira points out in this week’s ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘:

In the latest Kaiser Health Tracking poll, the public–by a 59 percent-37 percent margin–favored continuing Medicare as it is today, with the government guaranteeing the same set of health benefits, over giving seniors a fixed amount of money to purchase either a private health plan or traditional Medicare.
Even more overwhelmingly, in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, 78 percent of respondents favored continuing Medicare as it is today. Just 14 percent supported changing Medicare to a system where the government gives seniors a fixed amount on money to purchase health insurance.

Teixeira concludes that It is “highly improbable” that voucherizing Medicare is ever going to get any forward traction with the public. “The idea started out unpopular and is only continuing to lose support. Smart conservatives should start looking around for another big idea because this one is going nowhere.”

All of the debate hype notwithstanding, the jobs report that is coming out Friday, whether the unemployment rate is up or down, will likely be greeted with a chorus of GOP Chicken Littles, hysterically warning the nation that the economic sky is falling, and it’s all Obama’s fault. Here’s Ed Kilgore’s take at the Washington Monthly:

Friday’s jobs report, of course, is the Big Bertha. There will be one more the Friday before Election Day, but at that point the undecided vote will probably be down to a segment of the electorate that is far more likely to be focused on Honey Boo Boo than economic reports.
…Given the dynamics of the general election campaign, you can expect the warm jets of conservative spin over the September jobs report to achieve a level of heat and noise unlike anything that has ever been generated by a BLS publication. If the net new jobs numbers do not meet expectations (which will be set mid-week), we’ll hear renewed howling about double-dip recession and Obama’s Failed Presidency. If the jobs numbers are better than expected, the Right will focus on the unemployment rate.
…For Republicans, this will probably be the last clear opportunity for a news link to the Referendum on Obama’s Stewardship of the Economy meme. You can try to take a break from the news that day to avoid it all, but I suspect the intensity of the Doom and Gloom will be such that you will probably pick up the bad news on your dental fillings.

At HuffPo, Robert Reich adds,

Rarely in the history has the monthly employment carried so much political significance. If the payroll survey is significantly more than 96,000 — the number of new jobs created in August — President Obama can credibly claim the job situation is improving. If significantly fewer than 96,000, Mitt Romney has the more credible claim that the economy isn’t improving.

But Cenk Uygur thinks there is nothing much to worry about, explaining,

Here’s my new favorite fact: whoever is leading two weeks after the last convention has never relinquished the lead in the last 15 presidential elections. It’s way past two weeks since the last convention and President Obama doesn’t have a small lead, he has a huge lead…This doesn’t mean that the election won’t tighten sometime between now and Election Day. And, of course, the media will make a huge deal out of it because this is our bread and butter…But if you look at the numbers objectively, for all intents and purposes, this thing is already in the books. It’s over. President Obama will get re-elected.

A downtick in the unemployment rate could seal the deal for the President’s re-election, especially if it falls two tenths of a percent to 7.9 or better. A small uptick might not mean so much in the context of Romney’s disastrous September.
But Kilgore is right regardless. it’s going to get loud, very loud on Friday, no matter who wins the debates.

the following memo is cross-posted from a DCorps e-blast:
In this intensely partisan season, money in politics is one issue that breaks through the partisanship and the campaign media fog. This new battleground survey, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Public Campaign Action Fund in the 54 most competitive congressional seats held by Republicans, finds that voters from both parties and all demographic groups are intensely concerned about the corruption of the democratic system. By more than a two-to-one margin, voters say that the current system of “big donors and secret money…undermines democracy.”
This survey of the most vulnerable Republican districts–districts that could determine the balance of Congress for the next two years–are hotly contested ground where outside funding is big business and where both candidates and party committees will spend the most money. According to the Federal Election Commission, candidates, parties, and PACs have already raised more than $4 billion through June, and some estimates place campaign spending this election cycle on pace to break $6 billion.
In the context of this experience, our survey found that 78 percent of constituents say it is important for their candidates to come up with a new plan to reduce the amount of money in politics and the influence of Super PACs.
All in all, voters in these 54 districts are already sensitive to big money in politics and they’ll be even thirstier for solutions as the final weeks unfold.
These are vulnerable incumbents in the most unpopular of partisan institutions, and their outside challengers will surely see the opportunity to confront them on the role of Super PACs, special interest money linked to wrong-headed policies, and their plans for reform and transparency.
Read the full memo and findings at Democracy Corps.