At The New Republic, Nate Cohn has an encouraging observation: “…By Friday: we’ll be able to start assessing whether Obama’s post-DNC boost was a temporary bounce or a resilient bump…If Obama’s four point lead persists through the week, Obama should be considered a very strong favorite for reelection. While it might seem that the heart of the campaign is still to come, the candidate leading two weeks after the in-party convention has gone onto win the popular vote in every presidential election since Truman’s come from behind victory in 1948.”
More reason for Democratic high fives: “Obama has jumped out to an average lead of 3.1 percentage points in 10 national polls taken since Sept. 4. That’s triple the 1.1 percentage-point edge Obama held in polling conducted between Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate and the end of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla…Obama holds a lead in the polls in 11 of the 12 battleground states being contested by both candidates…The Republican nominee needs to capture at least eight of 12 swing states won four years ago by Obama to have a chance in an Electoral College,” according to according to Richard S. Dunham’s “Obama Leads in Electoral College Tallies” in the San Francisco Chronicle.
But Nate Silver takes a more sober view of recent polling data, putting unbridled optimism on hold until “Mr. Obama’s numbers hold at their present levels for another two weeks or so. Silver adds, “The forecast model is deliberately reading Mr. Obama’s polls a bit skeptically right now because we are still close enough to the conventions that there could be temporary effects from them.”
Hotline on Call reports that President Obama is in the ballpark, where he needs to be with white working-class voters: “Most notably, the national polls all showed the president at his target for reelection among white voters; Obama won 43 percent of whites in 2008 but is favored for reelection this year if he can clear roughly 39 percent. CNN/ORC showed Obama at 42 percent among whites, Fox News at 40 and ABC News/Washington Post at 41 percent. And a new poll from the Democratic outfit Democracy Corps showed Obama at 40 percent among whites without college degrees, the voters most resistant to the president in this campaign.”
Politico’s “Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled” by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei is getting most of the ‘Romney Campaign in Disarray’ buzz, with it’s finger-pointing at Romney’s top strategist Stuart Stevens. Seems to me this lets the candidate off the hook for his blundering, which began well before the convention and continues afterward.
He looks like a good candidate, but isn’t it just a couple of months early?
At Bloomberg Businessweek, John McCormick’s “Romney Seeks to Blunt Obama Edge With Swing-State Latinos” reports that Romney is readying his pro-small business pitch to Latinos in battleground states, beginning with a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. McCormick reports “The Romney campaign has run Spanish-language television ads targeting Hispanics, including one called “No podemos mas” — translated to “We no longer can” — that contrasts with Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan, “Yes, we can.” Limp.
Game on in NC, via early voting. Swing state IA begins this Saturday, along with half of the states.
Steve Kornacki reports at Salon.com on Elizabeth Warren taking the lead in the U.S. Senate race in MA in two new polls. Kornacki adds: “If the Warren-Brown race were for the governorship, an office that Massachusetts voters have been very willing to elect Republicans to in recent times, there’s little doubt that Brown would win. But because it’s for federal office, Warren has a better chance to harness the state’s aversion to the national GOP brand. We’ve seen a race like this before, when the very popular Republican Bill Weld – who was fresh of a gubernatorial reelection bid in which he racked up 71 percent of the vote – challenged John Kerry for the Senate in 1996. In a popularity contest, Weld would have won. But Massachusetts voters didn’t want to further empower Republicans in Washington, and Kerry survived by 7 points.”
This is a damn good — and important — question.