US Presidential Election 2012

[Count Bobulescu]

Watch Monday’s final debate which focuses exclusively on Foreign Policy issues, and should be of most interest to those outside the US at the link below. You can watch livestream, or come back when it suits you for a recorded version.

http://www.2012presidentialelectionn...bate-schedule/

From Europe to China to the Middle East, perceptions of the contest have lagged behind indications that the two men are in a virtual dead heat. Obama remains widely popular abroad, and there are signs that many leaders are unprepared for a Romney presidency.


In Western Europe, few people can imagine Romney in office. In China, officials have been focused on the intrigues of their impending leadership transition, though many worry that both American candidates have been beating up on their country instead of pummeling each other.
In Europe, leaders have good reason to avoid the issue: From the Scottish Highlands to the heel of Italy, it’s Obama country all the way. One survey last month from the German Marshall Fund found Europeans breaking 75 percent for Obama and 8 percent for Romney. Even conservative leaders have maneuvered themselves to appear closer to the U.S. president, reasoning that they can get their own electoral bump from doing so, although popular enthusiasm for Obama has diminished after a public frenzy in 2008.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z2


The 90-minute forum at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., is expected to focus mainly on foreign policy. Moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News has selected the following topics, subject to change for news developments:

America's role in the world
Our longest war - Afghanistan and Pakistan
Red Lines - Israel and Iran
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism - I
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism - II
The Rise of China and Tomorrow's World

Inside the NBC-WSJ poll, however, there are all sorts of fascinating findings about the electorate and what people think of the choice before them in 15 days time. We broke out 8 of the data points we were most struck by below. You can peruse the entire poll yourself here. (And stay tuned for a look at what the NBC-WSJ poll tells us about Romney’s alleged woman problem later today in this space.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...rc=nl_politics



Debate Preview: Looking Tough, but Not Too Tough, on Foreign Policy
By Steven T. Dennis and Jonathan Broder
President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney face off for the last time in tonight’s foreign policy debate with starkly different challenges as they near the end of their fight to be the next commander in chief. Full Story

http://www.rollcall.com/news/Debate-...email&pos=epol


Third Presidential Debate: Last Best Chance to Show Vision, Likability, Command
Mitt Romney won the first 2012 presidential debate decisively, while President Obama rebounded two weeks later with a narrow victory. That leaves Monday’s third and final faceoff — one ostensibly set to focus on foreign policy — as the tiebreaker. And in a razor-tight race, the winner could very well go on to claim the White House, report National Journal's Naureen Khan and Alex Roarty.
http://www.nationaljournal.com//poli...mmand-20121022


New Poll Shows Presidential Race Still Deadlocked
The race between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney is deadlocked among likely voters in the Nov. 6 general election, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday.
http://www.nationaljournal.com//2012...ocked-20121021


Analysis: In a Campaign About the Economy, Foreign Policy May Get the Last Word
It’s no secret that the economy has been the primary topic in the presidential race, but in the home-stretch of a dead-heat match, both campaigns are spending an increasing amount of time debating foreign policy, writes National Journal's Alex Roarty.

http://www.nationaljournal.com//sund...-word-20121021

Gallup Editor Defends Polls
Under fire that his organization’s poll leans disproportionately Republican, Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport told Fox News Sunday that his group’s polling methodology is “extremely solid.”

http://www.nationaljournal.com//sund...polls-20121021


The Hill: Obama faces long odds to close Gitmo if he tries again
By Jeremy Herb
President Obama may still harbor ambitions to close Guantanamo Bay, but he faces a difficult path if he wins reelection and decides to pursue the goal in a second term.

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill...e-tries-again-

The Hill: Campaigns spar over ‘Romnesia’ charge 
By Megan R. Wilson 
Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on Sunday defended the president’s charge that GOP challenger Mitt Romney is hiding his true positions to win centrist voters.

http://thehill.com/video/campaign/26...omnesia-charge


The Hill: Gallup poll: Romney lead back up to 7 points
 By Jonathan Easley
Mitt Romney is back up by 7 points over President Obama, according to Gallup’s daily tracking survey released Sunday.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/...up-to-7-points


THIRD DEBATE: LAST BIG CHANCE. Mitt Romney won the first 2012 presidential debate decisively, while President Obama rebounded two weeks later with a narrow victory. That leaves Monday’s third and final faceoff — one set to focus on foreign policy issues — as the tiebreaker. And in a razor-tight race, the winner could very well go on to claim the White House.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/polit...mmand-20121022

BOTH SIDES SPINNING AHEAD OF DEBATE. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns deployed surrogates on the morning talk shows today in an effort to set expectations and preview lines of argument for tonight’s debate. The Romney campaign emphasized diplomacy to curtail Iran's nuclear program, shying away from more hawkish rhetoric. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign released an ad focused on Iraq and Afghanistan that concludes with this narration: “It’s time to stop fighting over there, and start rebuilding here.” Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...ebate-20121022


IS OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY EDGE FADING? It would seem that between Romney’s flubs and the president’s strengths, President Obama is well positioned heading into Monday’s debate on foreign policy, as National Journal's Beth Reinhard writes. But a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found Obama’s overall advantage in the arena fading—possibly because of persistent questions about his handling of the Libya attack. Asked which candidate can do a better job in making foreign-policy decisions, Americans favored Obama over Romney by only 4 percentage points, compared with a 15-point gap in September. Read more

http://nationaljournal.com/magazine/...edge--20121018



EARLY VOTING IN NEVADA FAVORS OBAMA. After two days of early voting in Nevada, Democrats boast that figures released by county elections officials show they hold a significant lead. About 53 percent of the voters who turned out on Saturday and Sunday in Clark County, the state's most populous, were Democrats, while just 31 percent were Republicans, Hotline’s Reid Wilson reports. The 22-point disparity is higher than the 15 points by which Democrats outnumber Republicans—a sign, the party says, of the field organization Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Nevada Democrats have spent a decade building. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...evada-20121022

ROMNEY TAKES 49-47 LEAD IN NEW POLITICO POLL-Across the 10 states identifed as competitive, Mitt leads 50-48. On the generic congressional ballot, Republicans now tie Democrats, 46-46, after trailing slightly over the last six weeks.

Women propel Romney's move into first place in the poll - a majority of which was conducted before the Hofstra debate. Obama's 11-point advantage a week ago dwindled to 6 points. The Democratic incumbent still leads 51 to 45 percent with women, but Romney leads by 10 points among men.

GOP intensity advantage persists: 72% of those who support Obama say they are "extremely likely" to vote, compared to 80% who back Romney. Among those extremely likely to vote, Romney leads Obama by 7 points (52-45).

Both candidates go into the final debate on foreign policy with vulnerabilities. ”It sounded weeks ago like a mismatch. The final presidential debate would focus on foreign policy -- a sitting president who'd overseen the death of Osama bin Laden pitted against a one-term governor, so new to diplomatic thinking that he'd managed to offend a good chunk of Britain during a brief trip this summer. Monday night's debate doesn't look like a mismatch anymore…Before the two men first debated on Oct. 3, Obama held a 15-point lead over Romney on the question of who is more capable of managing foreign affairs. After Obama's listless performance, a Pew Research Center poll found that the gap had narrowed to a slender four points…In this debate, Obama could face the opposite of the situation many envisioned weeks before. Instead of lending him credibility, his commander-in-chief role could make him more vulnerable, opening Obama to questions about a range of unresolved crises.” Anne Gearan and David A. Fahrenthold in The Washington Post.


RICHARD N. HAASS, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (his next book, "Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order," will be published in spring by Basic Books), writing on POLITICO, "Why a foreign policy debate is an anachronism ": "Categorizing some issues as 'foreign' and others as 'domestic' bears little relationship to a world in which what happens out there affects conditions here and vice versa. This is the inescapable reality of globalization, the defining characteristic of the 21st century world. In fact, some issues are by their very nature both foreign and domestic. Immigration is one, as is energy policy, climate change, drugs, trade and finance.
http://politi.co/RcV9rI


BATTLEGROUND BRIEFING-THE PATH TO 270:
THEORIES OF THE CASE - MOMENTUM VERSUS THE MAP: "Obama's campaign is embracing a fundamentally defensive strategy centered on winning Ohio at all costs - while unleashing a new barrage of blistering attacks against Romney aimed at mobilizing a less-than-fired-up Democratic base," Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin report. "A surging Romney is suddenly playing offense all over the map, and the upward movement since the Denver debate gives him the luxury of striking what his advisers - and more than a few Democrats - think is a more positive, presidential, 'Morning in America' tone. In contrast to the grind-it-out Obama strategy, Romneyland's working theory is that the momentum shift since Denver is a late-breaking, decisive wave that gives them the chance to not just win but win big...Both campaigns are confident they can win."

MORE - CHICAGO MINDMELD: "The Obama team knows full well North Carolina is slipping away...If Romney officials are increasingly confident about Florida and Virginia, they are more bullish on Iowa than Wisconsin - which has emerged as a must-win if Obama holds on in Ohio. And they are more optimistic about Colorado than Nevada, which Obama aides now flat-out predict will be an Obama win. Romney isn't abandoning Nevada yet, though, and will visit the state this week on a western trek." http://goo.gl/8Z2Da

ROMNEY HAS SLIGHT EDGE IN FLORIDA: "Florida Republicans are feeling increasingly optimistic that Romney will carry the biggest of swing-state prizes and for good reason - he's narrowly leading in most every poll here and Obama is under 50 percent in the same surveys," Jonathan Martin writes. "The rising confidence on the right owes to three major factors: http://goo.gl/0bG06

BOTH CAMPAIGNS PRIVATELY AGREE OBAMA HAS NARROW EDGE IN MIDWEST: Iowa, Wisconsin and, most importantly, Ohio. "A Midwest swing-state sweep makes it almost impossible to chart a Romney win," Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei note. "At the same time, Romney is doing better than ever in Florida, is a slight favorite in Colorado and is back to near-even in Virginia."

LIGHTER CLICKS-

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE took on the town hall debate: http://bit.ly/T6dRxu
MITT did the coin toss for a flag football game between his staff and some reporters. Both he and Obama also recorded video messages praising RG3 that aired on Fox before the Redskins-Giants game: http://goo.gl/0Ohz9.

AN OHIO COUNTY ELECTIONS DIRECTOR resigned because the stress of running the election in a swing state was too much for him: http://bit.ly/RVDg1b

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT has a fun list of 18 quotes in today's paper. They are from Obama, Romney, and Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. You have to guess who said them: http://goo.gl/X5JQU.

KELLY CLARKSON is leaning toward Obama: http://goo.gl/RLk6J.
ANN talked with some supporters about how she copes with MS on the road. "If I'm home, I juice," she said. "You can't really juice on the road. Anyone got a blender?" http://goo.gl/4NHpy

MITTISMS are anachronistic words that Romney says. The New York Times on his throwback language: http://goo.gl/IE9iW.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "After I lost my race for president, I went to see George. I said, 'Tell me how long it takes to get over a defeat of this kind.' He said, 'I'll call you when it happens.'" - Walter Mondale reacts Sunday to the death of George McGovern http://goo.gl/dXNgt

[Count Bobulescu]

Oops! Debate link in previous post broken this one should work.

http://www.2012presidentialelectionn...bate-schedule/

[PaddyJoe]

Romney sounds nervous and unconvinced of his own arguments. Takes a few minutes to warm up, I suppose.

[PaddyJoe]

Obama sounds wooden and ransacking his memory for his debating points.
Early days.

[Count Bobulescu]

Well that was a doozy of a debate. Hard to stay awake even on US time. The pundits have mostly scored it for Obama but not by much. The striking thing I noticed for a debate that was billed as a Foreign Policy affair, is that there was no mention of the Mexican drug war, or of the European Financial Crisis, or of India, which is arguably as big a source of outsourced US jobs as China. There was one brief mention of South America then it was all Middle East, Iran, AfPak, with China thrown in for good measure at the end,

Based on what he said tonight, if you can believe him, Mitt threw all the neo-cons in his party under the bus and adopted a much less hawkish position than previously. This is a strategy that would appeal to women voters with whom he is currently running behind.

Debate Winners and Losers.

WINNERS

President Obama controlled the third debate in a way that is not all that dissimilar from the way Romney controlled the first one. Obama clearly came loaded for bear, attacking Romney from the jump for a lack of clarity when it came to his vision (or lack thereof) on foreign policy. If you are looking for moments — and remember that the media coverage over the next few days will focus on just that — Obama had two with his line about “the 1980s calling” in regards to Romney’s foreign policy and his reference to “horses and bayonets” to call into question his rival’s understanding of the modern military. It’s possible that Obama came off too hot/not presidential in some of his attacks but Democrats will take a little too much heat following Obama’s cold-as-ice performance in the first debate. Obama came across as the more confident and commanding presence — by a lot.

* Bob Schieffer: Yes, there was a section in the middle of the debate where the two candidates got into an extended conversation about class size and things looked like they might go completely off the tracks. But, to Schieffer’s credit he did a solid job of balancing the need to keep some sort of structure in the debate while at the same time letting the two men litigate out their difference. Also, huge credit to Schieffer for injecting a bit of humor into the proceedings; his rebuke of Romney for demanding more time brought a smile to the faces of both candidates and his wry “I think we all love teachers” line felt pitch perfect.

LOSERS

* Mitt Romney: Romney clearly decided to play it safe in this debate — whether because he thought he was ahead and will win if he doesn’t screw up or because he knows that foreign policy isn’t his strong suit. But, as NFL teams (re)learn every year, playing the prevent defense almost never works. Romney was constantly trying to parry Obama attacks; he knocked some down but plenty got through too. Romney also struggled to differentiate how his foreign policy would offer a break with what Obama has pursued over the past four years. And, he seemed uninterested in attacking Obama on Libya, a baffling strategic decision. Romney was, not surprisingly, at his best when talking about how the economic uncertainty in this country led to uncertainty for the country more broadly but he just didn’t do enough of it to win.

* Foreign policy: It was probably inevitable that a real discussion of America’s role in the world wasn’t going to happen amid polling that suggests that voters overwhelmingly care about the economy in this country. After about 15 minutes of trying to stay on the announced topic, both Obama and Romney started to talk at least as much about domestic policy as foreign policy. The two candidates’ closing statements were illustrative of this fact; neither man made more than a passing mention of foreign policy. It’s hard to imagine that any voter seeking a more detailed explanation of the two candidates’ views on a broad swath of foreign policy matters got it tonight.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...ebate/?hpid=z2

BOCA RATON, Fla. — President Obama and Mitt Romney clashed repeatedly over foreign policy here Monday night, with the president arguing assertively that Romney has lacked the consistency or clarity of vision to lead the country while the Republican nominee charged that Obama has been weak and ineffective in the face of growing turmoil in the world.

The two candidates differed most sharply over the president’s handling of the uprisings in the Middle East, his efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and his treatment of Israel. But often they seemed to find common ground on some of the policies the administration is pursuing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...y.html?hpid=z2

[Count Bobulescu]

Lots of post debate analysis. Two posts today.


Ohio Is the Post-Debate Place to Be for Obama, Romney
By Steven T. Dennis
President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney begin a nonstop sprint to Election Day after Monday night’s debate, with both campaigns giving special attention to the all-important state of Ohio. Full Story

http://www.rollcall.comnewsohio_is_t...email&pos=epol


Analysis: Obama Wins Third Debate but Romney Wins Debate Season
Bottom line: Obama won Monday night’s debate on points, benefiting from the blessings of incumbency and hard-world experience. But the challenger held his own, and thus the state of the race is likely unchanged, as National Journal's Ron Fournier writes.

http://www.nationaljournal.com//2012...eason-20121022


Five Takeaways: Obama Drives Debate; Romney Clears Commander Bar
Foreign-policy debates between the presidential contenders follow a more predictable pattern than encounters over domestic policy. Inevitably, the challenger accuses the incumbent of indecision and drift and explains how he will bend the world more to his will by showing strength and leadership; the incumbent tries to explain, without appearing defeatist, that the world isn’t always so easy to command, as National Journal's Ronald Brownstein writes.

http://www.nationaljournal.com//2012...r-bar-20121023


Analysis: No Major Differences in Foreign-Policy Debate
More than anything else, Mitt Romney needed to reassure Americans in the final presidential debate on Monday night that he was not a reckless warmonger. At that the Republican nominee largely succeeded, mentioning his desire for “peace” so many times that he might have been the late George McGovern, as National Journal's Michael Hirsh writes.

http://www.nationaljournal.com//poli...ebate-20121022



Analysis: Obama-Romney Debate Likely Last Major Moment of Campaign
The Monday night showdown between President Obama and Mitt Romney was not just the final debate between the two men—it was in all likelihood the last major moment of this presidential campaign, as National Journal's Alex Roarty writes.
http://www.nationaljournal.com//poli...paign-20121023


Fact Check: The Third Presidential Debate
President Obama and Mitt Romney focused on foreign policy in their third and final presidential debate, held Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Here is a look at some of their statements and how firmly they are grounded in fact.

http://www.nationaljournal.com//poli...0121022?page=1



Associated Press: Obama, Romney pumped for dash to the finish

By Nancy Benac and Ken Thomas
Their debates now history, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday open a two-week sprint to Election Day powered by adrenaline, a boatload of campaign cash and a determination to reach Nov. 6 with no would-have, should-have regrets in their neck-and-neck fight to the finish.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...10-23-03-08-18


The New York Times: An unseen force looms large over the race
 By John Harwood
For Mitt Romney, former President George W. Bush represents a burden to minimize but for President Obama, his record offers a shield on the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/us...=politics&_r=0


The Washington Post: In final face-off some common ground 
By Scott Wilson
Mitt Romney appeared to move closer to President Obama on a range of foreign-policy issues.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...eb3_story.html


* Why Obama was so forceful: Anyone watching the debate who hadn’t seen recent polls of the presidential race would have assumed that Obama was very much fighting from behind. The aggressive posture he staked out was the kind of strategy most often employed by candidates who need to make up ground. At the same time, the president’s campaign has often seen foreign policy as a trump card in the 2012 election and one it can effectively use against Romney. Whether this strategy was one of necessity or choice, it was certainly the strategy going in.

* Why it was risky: The president risked coming off as un-presidential. His comments during the exchange about military spending, in particular, could read as patronizing and juvenile. When Romney noted that the Navy is now smaller than at any time since World War I, Obama shot back: “Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.” Even if you think that exchange worked for Obama, the sarcasm was a bit jarring. (What’s that adage? ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?’)

* Why it probably worked: Romney was clearly put on the defensive throughout the debate, whether on China, the auto bailout or — and this was the big one — Osama bin Laden. Obama pointing to Romney’s 2007 comments that it wasn’t “worth moving Heaven and Earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person” was a particularly strong moment for the president, and one that will likely serve to elevate the death of bin Laden in the presidential debate — which is nothing but good for Obama.

* Why Romney was so reserved: It was clear from the first question that Romney wasn’t looking to mix it up too much with Obama. The first question went to Romney on Libya, and he passed on the chance to repeat his attack on the president’s handling of the situation. What followed was pretty much along the same lines. A few theories as to why: 1) The Libya attack didn’t pan out so well in the last debate, 2) Romney was simply feeling good about his chances in the race and didn’t want to mess anything up, and/or 3) Romney recognized that talking about foreign policy isn’t his strength, and he wanted to avoid yet another stumble on the issue.

* Why it was risky: Any time you allow your opponent to be the aggressor, you risk allowing them the chance to define the debate. That was very much the case here. Obama’s attacks on Romney will be the story on Tuesday — whether or not that reflects positively on the president — and that means that Obama had an opportunity to move numbers in his favor. Polling suggests the president did himself at least some good here.

* Why it probably worked: As we’ve written before, the name of the game for Romney on foreign policy is passing the “commander in chief” test enough so that he can win on the economy. And his performance Monday was probably good enough to do that — even if it wasn’t Romney’s strongest performance. A CNN poll after the debate showed 60 percent of voters thought Romney could handle the job of commander in chief. Romney avoided the kind of stumbles that have plagued his entree into foreign policy, and the fact is that, no matter how much the situation in Libya matters in the broader global context, it’s hardly the major issue in the presidential campaign. It’s hard to see where Romney created many glaring problems for himself at Monday’s debate, and that appears to be what he was going for.

David Brooks in The New York Times on being addicted to polls David Brooks is addicted to polls. After "hundreds of hours" of examining them, he gets "two banal observations": President Obama is more likely to win but there seems to be a whiff of momentum toward Romney. National polls don't actually say a lot. "I have wasted a large chunk of my life I will never get back."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/op...sses.html?_r=0


Roger Cohen in The New York Times on working with the Muslim Brotherhood "Perhaps the most radical change in U.S. foreign policy under President Obama has occurred here in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood, long shunned as a collection of dangerous Islamist extremists, is now the de facto object of American support," Cohen writes. A similar policy of engagement should be extended across the Middle East.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/op...otherhood.html


AFTER DEBATES, RACE STILL A COIN TOSS. Portrayed for weeks as a warmonger, Romney in the debates showed stronger interest in diplomacy and using military action only as a last resort. Yet in Monday night's face-off on foreign policy, Obama was the more frequent and strident aggressor, racking up twice as many points. So where does that leave the race? Probably looking more than ever like a coin toss with a smidge of advantage for the sitting president, writes National Journal’s Beth Reinhard. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...-toss-20121023


POST-DEBATE POLLS SHOW OBAMA VICTORY. A CNN/ORC International poll showed that 48 percent of registered voters watching the debate thought that the president won, compared to 40 percent who chose Romney. Obama also won a clear-cut victory in a CBS News instant poll of 500 uncommitted voters conducted online, besting Romney 53 percent to 23 percent with 24 percent saying it was a tie. A focus group of “Walmart moms” also gave Obama the edge. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...a-won-20121023


OBAMA RELEASES SECOND-TERM AGENDA. After weeks of being challenged by Democrats and Republicans to lay out his second-term agenda, President Obama's campaign is releasing a 20-page booklet called the "Blueprint for America's Future" on Tuesday and airing a new television ad to support it. The plan calls for improved education and training, increasing manufacturing, boosting American-made energy and other policy items. In the ad, which some say is reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s famous “Morning in America” spot, Obama says, “There’s just no quit in America and you’re seeing that right now.” Read more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...et-ad-20121023


OBAMA WINS DEBATE, BUT ROMNEY WINS DEBATE SEASON. Mitt Romney wins. That’s not to say he won Monday night’s debate or the presidential campaign, but it’s safe to say he won an important chapter: the debate season. With an acceptable, though far from exceptional, performance in his third and final face-off with President Obama, Romney became one of the few presidential candidates to make debates matter. Bottom line: Obama won Monday night’s debate on points, benefiting from the blessings of incumbency and hard-world experience. But the challenger held his own, and thus the state of the race is likely unchanged. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...eason-20121022


THE CAMPAIGN’S LAST MAJOR MOMENT. Monday night’s showdown was not just the final presidential debate—it was in all likelihood the last major moment of this presidential campaign. Both candidates now start a two-week sprint to Nov. 6 with the contours of their race largely solidified—a tight battle either campaign could win. Unforeseen events could still alter its complexion, but after months of marquee speeches, party conventions, and debates watched by tens of millions, voters’ views of the candidates by Tuesday will likely bear a striking resemblance to their perceptions on Election Day. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/polit...paign-20121023


DEBATE WAS MORE SEMINAR THAN SLUGFEST. Foreign-policy debates between the presidential contenders follow a more predictable pattern than encounters over domestic policy. The challenger accuses the incumbent of indecision and drift. The incumbent, with more gray hair than four years earlier, tries to explain that the world isn’t always so easy to command. Monday night’s final encounter between President Obama and Mitt Romney honored all of those conventions, albeit in an evening that was more seminar than slugfest. National Journal’s Ron Brownstein recaps five takeaways. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...r-bar-20121023


A DEBATE WATCHED AROUND THE WORLD . In Israel, they live-blogged. In France, they dubbed the debate with the dulcet tones of the French language. Al Jazeera English watched and reported on the debate in real time. And The Times of India had a story on its website before 7 a.m. India Standard Time. On a night when Obama and Romney turned their focus to foreign policy, media around the globe reciprocated, turning their attention to the debate. Read more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/polit...ebate-20121022


NO MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY DIFFERENCES IN DEBATE. More than anything else, Mitt Romney needed to reassure Americans in the final presidential debate Monday night that he was not a reckless warmonger. At that the Republican nominee largely succeeded, mentioning his desire for “peace” so many times that he might have been the late George McGovern, National Journal’s Michael Hirsh writes. But in making a vague and restrained case for a stronger America that would nonetheless steer clear of military involvement in hotspots such as Iran and Syria, Romney rendered almost moot any serious differences he might have with the president over foreign policy. Read more
http://nationaljournal.com/politics/...ebate-20121022

[Count Bobulescu]

Continued...............

Will Third Debate Change the Electoral Math?
Romney cleared commander-in-chief threshold, but he still has a harder path to 270.
By Charlie Cook

Although this race is very close, the road to 270 electoral votes is considerably more difficult for Romney than it is for Obama. The third debate did not alter that.
http://www.nationaljournal.com//colu...math--20121023

DELRAY BEACH, Fla.-
FIRST LOOK-OBAMA TO EMPHASIZE PLANS FOR A SECOND TERM: The president will unveil a 20-page "Blueprint for America's Future" glossy at a 10 a.m. campaign event down here. 3.5 million copies of the plan are being printed. 1.5 million copies will go to field offices for distribution. Laid out like a magazine on 8 ½ by 11 paper, the guide (http://goo.gl/heI68) has sections on reviving manufacturing and increasing American energy production (http://goo.gl/q0014), growing small businesses and improving education ( http://goo.gl/lHnGJ), fixing the tax code and improving health care (http://goo.gl/iKHHN) and protecting retirement security (http://goo.gl/nvo1x).

From an Obama campaign official: "The President, Vice President, and all of our surrogates will hold up the plan at events and ask our massive grassroots network to do everything they can to share the plan with their family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and others to reach every undecided voter in the remaining days of this election and ensure they understand the choice between continuing to move America forward and going back to the same policies that devastated our economy and punished the middle class."

WHO REALLY WON?

TIME's Mark Halperin calls it a draw: both Obama and Romney get B+ performances from him. http://ti.me/RRqVbj

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza calls Obama the winner. Romney is listed as one of the losers. http://wapo.st/PNCZ1j

The New York Times' Nate Silver says "Obama Unlikely To Get Big Bounce, but a Small One Could Matter." http://goo.gl/OIHdy

The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson calls it Obama's "strongest debate performance." http://goo.gl/edvnS

SILVER: Obama is unlikely to get a big debate bounce. But even a small one could matter. “[A]eraging the results from the CBS News, CNN and Google polls, which conducted surveys after all three presidential debates along with the one between the vice-presidential candidates, puts Mr. Obama's margin at 16 points. That compares favorably to Mr. Obama's average 10-point margin after the second debate, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden's 6-point margin against Representative Paul Ryan, but is smaller than Mr. Romney's average 29-point win in Denver…It is tempting to split the difference, and assume that Mr. Obama might get a 1- or 2-point bounce in the polls, but there are some mitigating factors. The pace of the debate was slow, and it was competing against high-profile baseball and football games, which may have kept viewership down. Voters have more information about the candidates than they did before the first debate, meanwhile, which means that their additional impressions of the candidates could make less difference at the margin. Historically, the bounces following the third presidential debate, in the years when one was held, were smaller than after the first two. Finally, the subject of the debate, foreign policy, is not as important to most voters as economic policy.” Nate Silver in The New York Times.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...wpisrc=nl_wonk

DEBATE REACTION -

FROM THE LEFT-

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: "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. Twice during the first half-hour, he mentioned that Al Qaeda-affiliated groups were active in northern Mali. Was that in the morning's briefing book?" http://goo.gl/T9diu

MSNBC's ED SCHULTZ: ""We just listened to the Republican candidate tell the American people that the president is doing a good job. This was the worst performance of any Republican candidate on foreign policy that I can ever remember. He was unsure of himself. He agreed with the president too much

FROM THE RIGHT-

WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL: "If Mr. Obama wanted to make the Republican look 'wrong and reckless,' as he said, he surely failed. The former Massachusetts Governor was so intent on appearing to be cool and steady that he avoided offering any major policy differences on Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. Most remarkably, he even refused to challenge the Administration's handling of the deadly assault on Americans in Benghazi. Mr. Romney was clearly keeping his eye on his main challenge of the evening, which was looking Presidential on issues that offer an incumbent a natural advantage. He passed that test with ease, making no major mistakes while offering impressive detail on everything from the radical government in Mali-make that 'north Mali'-to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. He wasn't rattled, and if anything looked cooler than a sometimes peevish Mr. Obama. The President scored more debating points, but he looked smaller doing it." http://goo.gl/CqH2Z

THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S WILLIAM KRISTOL: "Only two other challengers have done as well debating foreign policy with an incumbent president-Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and, to a lesser degree, Bill Clinton against George H.W. Bush in 1992."

BATTLEGROUND BRIEFING-THE PATH TO 270
:
THE BATTLE IS NOW FOR SEVEN STATES: "The main battlegrounds: Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida and Wisconsin," Jonathan Martin reports in the story leading our site this morning. "Romney officials, eyeing steady gains in the polls, have not ruled out attempting to broaden the map in other states-claims met with disparagement by Obama aides, who say they remain confident their electoral college firewall is intact even amid a tightening national race and signs that three swing states in the south are looking more favorable for the GOP nominee. Republicans are genuinely intrigued by the prospect of a strike in Pennsylvania and, POLITICO has learned, are considering going up on TV there outside of the expensive Philadelphia market. But what Romney officials worry about, both in Pennsylvania and Michigan, is that if they put some cash down or use precious hours to send their candidate there Obama will respond by crushing their offensive with a big ad buy of his own." http://goo.gl/4yQHn

BEGALA SUGGESTS NORTH CAROLINA IS LOST FOR OBAMA: Paul Begala, involved in the independent Obama super PAC, said "yes" when asked on CNN ahead of the debate whether the Obama campaign has given the state up. "I know I'm not supposed to say that," Begala said. "If you look at where he's going and where he's spending money, it looks like Gov. Romney is likely to carry North Carolina." The president has not been to the state since the DNC, but the campaign quickly denied they're writing it off (citing voter reg and early vote). Begala walked back his comments somewhat. http://goo.gl/ICDvG


Opinion on the debate


BARRO: Most of the globe was not invited to the debate. “Mitt Romney was in the odd position tonight of arguing that President Barack Obama's foreign policy is a failure, while advocating a substantially similar one…From Libya to Afghanistan to China, Romney sketched out positions virtually indistinguishable from the president's. In some cases, that meant abandoning his past positions…Obama seemed to delight in pointing out the changes, saying repeatedly that Romney has been ‘all over the map’ on foreign policy issues and couldn't be trusted to provide steady leadership. He also repeatedly thanked the governor for endorsing his foreign policy actions…The biggest problem with this debate, as with the previous ones, is what wasn't discussed. There was no discussion of Europe or sub-Saharan Africa and only a brief mention of Latin America by Romney. The candidates did not discuss immigration, the drug war, global health, climate change or the international financial system.” Josh Barro in Bloomberg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...wpisrc=nl_wonk



YGLESIAS: The misguided economics of the foreign policy debate. “[H]ere were five big malign economic policy themes I saw tonight…Foreign policy is all about angry Muslims…The Middle East first came into the U.S. foreign-policy focus precisely because its oil was economically important. But these days, the various conflicts in the Middle East often seem to have eaten the entire field of vision of American foreign policy. In the real world, the internal politics of the eurozone have more of an impact on the life of a typical American than the internal politics of Northern Mali…The budget deficit imperils our national security: Romney kicked this off by quoting Admiral Mullen saying the budget deficit is the biggest threat to American national security…This is totally wrong and, indeed, thinking about national security highlights the extent to which deficits are wildly overblown as a problem…We must stanch the tide of inexpensive Chinese goods: Obama bragged, not for the first time, about his policy of taxing low-cost Chinese tires in order to discourage Americans from buying them to help save the jobs of incumbent American tire-makers. This policy saved about 1,200 jobs at a cost to consumers of about $1.1 billion.” Matthew Yglesias in Slate.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...wpisrc=nl_wonk


STEPHENS: Mitt was a plausible foreign policy alternative. “Mitt Romney needed to pass the usual tests for Republican presidential candidates in his debate Monday night with President Obama. There was the Ford test (alternatively known as the Palin/Cain/Perry test): Would Mr. Romney say something so obviously misinformed, so manifestly silly, so revealingly ignorant as to disqualify him from serious consideration as a prospective commander-in-chief? He said nothing of the sort. There was the Goldwater test (unfairly named, but reputations are stubborn things): Did Mr. Romney make pronouncements so belligerent as to make ordinary people fear for their children’s safety…And there was the Bush test (not unfairly named but mistakenly understood to mean ideology when it ought to be about consistency): Would Mr. Romney find a deft way to define his foreign policy as something other than a retread of the 43rd president--but also as something defensible, distinctive, and (not least) identifiably Republican?” Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...wpisrc=nl_wonk


SARGENT: Peacenik Mitt gets pummeled. “Tonight, America was introduced to Peacenik Mitt — and watched him take a pummeling. I don't know how much this will impact the overall dynamic of the race — it may not matter much at all — but it's hard to see this as a good night for Romney. Romney didn't take many of the shots he was expected to take — while Obama landed a number of very hard blows on Romney early on.” Greg Sargent in The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...wpisrc=nl_wonk



BRUNI: Romney struggled on foreign policy. “[Romney] had an odd color and odder sheen, that of a man without Dramamine on a rickety boat in threatening seas. Obama repeatedly reminded television viewers that he alone was familiar with the responsibilities of the commander in chief. He clearly wanted Romney's experience as a mere governor to sound, in comparison, like a job running a curbside lemonade stand. And though Romney perspired and occasionally stammered, he wouldn't surrender.” Frank Bruni in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/op...wpisrc=nl_wonk

OVER THE NEXT THREE DAYS , we'll see the power of the Obama advance machine, as he hits seven states (two of them twice), starting in Florida this morning, then meeting up with Vice President Biden in Dayton this afternoon. POTUS comes home tonight, then tomorrow is off to Davenport to begin an "America Forward!" tour, which the campaign describes as "a two-day, around-the-clock campaign blitz." He continued to Denver, then holds a late-night event in Las Vegas. He flies overnight to Tampa, then on to a tarmac event in Richmond. Then he goes home to Chicago to become the first sitting president to cast an early vote in person. Then it's back to Ohio for an evening event in Cleveland. The campaign says: "As the President crisscrosses the nation, he will spend time on Air Force One calling undecided voters, rallying National Team Leaders and volunteers and continuously engaging with Americans across the country about the choice in this election."

FACTS OF LIFE - A top Romney source narrows the map to five: "Ohio is still leaning Obama. Wisconsin still leaning R due to [Gov. Scott] Walker turnout operation. Iowa is a mystery. Nevada leans O and NH leans R."


LIGHTER CLICKS -

JON STEWART criticized Fox News for their coverage of Obama's appearance on his show: http://goo.gl/c6Hqk.

THE ONION HEADLINE: "Romney delivers stern warning to China, speaking directly into the camera in fluent Mandarin." http://goo.gl/Tq9gz

"HORSES AND BAYONETS" already has its own Tumblr: http://goo.gl/tFjR9.
.
MARK LANDLER fact-checked the president's comments about his story in the New York Times on bilateral talks with Iran: http://goo.gl/iB2Vu.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "It's not a game of Battleship.' - Obama responds to Romney's attack that the Navy has fewer ships. http://goo.gl/ELEhX

[Count Bobulescu]

MORNING MINDMELD: If you're a political junkie, enjoy it, soak it in: In our lifetimes, there may never be another race that looks this close for the final two weekends. Yesterday, two of the most widely followed polling analysts drew opposite conclusions about who has Big Mo:

--Nate Silver, who gives Obama a 73% chance of winning, argued in the morning that the move to Romney had "stopped": "What isn't very likely ... is for one candidate to lose ground in five of six polls if the race is still moving toward him. ... [W]e can debate whether Mr. Obama has a pinch of momentum or whether the race is instead flat, but it's improbable that Mr. Romney would have a day like [Wednesday] if he still had momentum." http://nyti.ms/Y2zNij

--Six and half hours later, ABC's Gary Langer popped his analysis of the latest ABC-WP tracking poll, which had : "[T]he momentum on underlying issues and attributes is Romney's. Romney's gains are clear especially in results on the economy." http://abcn.ws/ROKMZa

SO AS A PUBLIC SERVICE, here is each campaign's latest THEORY OF THE CASE:

ROMNEY POLITICAL DIRECTOR RICH BEESON, in a phone interview from Boston HQ on Wednesday: "Florida is like an aircraft carrier: Once you start turning it, it's hard to stop, and it's been turning now for about the last 10 days. ... The Dems are talking about how they've closed the gap on absentee, but since the early vote window's gone from two weeks to one week, all that they're doing is taking their early vote and voting them absentee. ... We're ahead of where we were in '08, and ... our Election Day turnout is going to be very strong. ... Every day, [Florida] gets better, and as Haley Barbour says, 'Good gets better and bad gets worse.' ... I think at the end of the day, North Carolina is probably a 53-47 state. ...

"Virginia is a lot like Florida : It's starting to head the right direction. They tried to cut us with Northern Virginia, those suburban women. We've held serve: We're holding our numbers in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William. We will win Loudoun and Prince William counties. Then, as you go down to Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach, those Obama defense cuts are really starting to undermine him. ... And then, in Henrico County ... and those collar counties around Richmond - [including] Chesterfield -- we're going to ratchet it up to Bush turnout numbers in there. Then, from Danville on down to Bluefield and Tri-Cities, anybody down there who's voting for Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders [because of coal]. And so, we're going to have historic margins out of those. ... [W]e're talking 70-80 percent ...

"New Hampshire , ... we were tied there before we went and bought the TV, and [are] going up with a heavy, heavy radio buy. ...

Wisconsin is a tie. There's no two ways about it, and the good news for us there is where we have room to grow is, the further north and the further west you go, those places where we cut up Santorum in the primary, we can still get some Republicans to come home. We're going to run better in Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay than Republicans normally run. ...

In the primary, we were called the 'Massachusetts moderate.' [That's helpful in Wisconsin's] urban and even close-in suburban areas ... Same thing in Madison, Green Bay, and Milwaukee. Those were the only three DMAs we went to in Wisconsin in the primary, and that's where we won the Wisconsin primary... Romney runs better in those urban areas than the Republican presidential candidates have for the last two cycles. ... Paul Ryan being able to peel off blue-collar Democratic votes, ... that's just going to be icing on the cake.

"Iowa is one of my favorite states because it's obviously the state that launched Barack Obama in the caucuses ... Now, he is locked in a tie race. ... [I]n another week or so, I'm going to be prepared to move Iowa into our column. They have to go into Election Day with a 15 percent partisan advantage on absentee ballots. ... Anything over it they'll win; anything under it, we've got a shot at winning, because on Election Day turnout, Republicans in Iowa vote on Election Day; Democrats like to vote absentee. This is the first time we've ever had a registration advantage in Iowa ... In Colorado, which is my home state, there's a number of factors there that are working against the President. ... Again, it gets back to that candidate who runs better in urban areas than we've seen in the past. ...

"Nevada has been the toughest nut for us to crack , but having said all of that, we're still within a couple of points in Nevada. ... We never won early voting in Washoe County one day in 2008; we've now won it two days in a row. ... The other thing about Nevada to keep in mind is that the rural, the cow counties out there, they vote on Election Day. So, you've got 11 percent of the vote that's just going to sit there until Election Day, and we're going to win those rurals by big margins. There's a lot of LDS out there, very conservative voters ... I saw somebody move [Nevada] into the Obama column the other day and I found that sort of interesting, especially since they've done the same with Iowa and Ohio and add all those back.

"I think it was two weeks ago that people were asking if we were going to have to pull out of Ohio, and now ... it is a tie in Ohio ... [T]hey're counting party registration as a vote for them. So, [for] a Democrat early vote or a Democrat absentee ballot, they're saying: It's ours. But you look at the Mahoning Valley from Youngstown, down to the Charleston and Huntington media market, the further south you go, the more coal there is ... We are peeling off an enormous amount of Democrat votes in those coal counties ... The fight in Ohio is going to be Franklin County and then what margin we can come out of Cuyahoga with. ... They've dropped the auto bailout on us, but ... there's only so long you can ride that one-trick pony, and they just kept pounding away at it, and so that's baked in right now and we're tied."



OBAMA CAMPAIGN MANAGER JIM MESSINA, on a press conference call Tuesday: "We are outperforming our early vote margins in key states, compared to 2008. We're ahead of where we were against McCain, and more importantly, we're ahead of Mitt Romney. Romney may be winning more raw votes than McCain did at this point, but ... the numbers tell a very clear story. The electorate is bigger this year, and our vote margins are, too. In every presidential election since 1984, the turnout in a presidential year has eclipsed turnout in midterm elections, and in every presidential election since '96, the voter turnout has increased significantly over the previous election. In fact, more people are going to vote early this cycle than in 2008. And more of them will vote for President Obama in the states that will decide this election. Every single day now is Election Day, and voters in Iowa and Nevada and Wisconsin and Ohio are voting ..

"We are not leaving anywhere we are tied or ahead. Romney hasn't been unable to knock us out of a single battleground, but we've forced him to continue to spend significant resources in states like North Carolina that the Romney campaign said they wanted locked up a long time ago. By contrast, we've gotten him to pull resources out of states like Michigan, Pennsylvania ... and New Mexico. ...

The Romney campaign has bet that young people and minorities won't turn out. The early vote numbers are already proving the folly of that gamble, and the wisdom of our plan. ... Early vote is not taking a final universe of voters and only changing the day they vote. ... What early vote does is help us get out low-propensity voters - voters called 'sporadic' voters - which broadens are universe and freezes up more get out the vote resources later and especially on Election Day. ... Public polls show we are winning early votes in Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin. President is winning overall by 15 to 35 points among those who have already voted, and we are winning in-person early vote everywhere they have it. In Ohio, early vote turn-out is higher in counties that voted for Obama in 2008 than Republican counties. ...

"Republicans traditionally mail in ballots , especially in states like Florida and North Carolina, but Democrats are performing better than we did in 2008. ... In [Florida in] 2008 right now we were behind in vote-by-mail by almost a quarter a million of votes - that margin is now 38,000 ... We've dramatically reduced the Republican advantage. And what all that means, is the math for Republicans, and what they have to beat us by on Election Day, gets harder and harder, especially in states like Nevada, Iowa and Ohio. ... Republicans are anticipating that minority turnout will drop off, but we already know that's not the case, and that's important as you look at some polls here. The electorate has been increasingly and consistently more diverse.

"Minority voting is going to reach an all-time high this year , projected as high as 28% of all voters in the '12 Election. Most new registrants over the past three months are under 30, and nearly all-four in five-are youth, women, African American or Latino. ... [T]hese are all groups that strongly support the President's re-election. Voter registration has increased most among Latinos and African Americans, and two-thirds of those who have already voted are women, youth, African Americans or Latinos. In-person, early vote is especially popular among African American voters, and early voting among African Americans has increased since 2008 in North Carolina and Virginia. In-person to early voting has only just begun in Colorado, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin - has not yet begun in Florida, but Democrats are winning everywhere among in-person early votes. ...

"We continue to think it's going to be a higher percentage of minorities and young people than some are forecasting. If you look at the past, you continue to see an increase in numbers who voted. 1996, 96 million people voted, then 105, then 122 in the Bush/Kerry election, then 131 in 2008. We aren't looking at national numbers. We're going by state, and how we get to 50.1 in all these battleground states. And we continue to think that the math has changed. Florida's a good example of that. There are 250,000 more registered African American and Latino voters than there were four years ago when the President won Florida. ... In North Carolina, in the first five days of early vote, 50% more African Americans voted than in 2008. ... [T]hat shows enthusiasm, it shows organization, but I think it also says it's going to be a different total electorate that votes in 2012 than people are expecting. ...

"Early vote in Wisconsin, it's another bright spot for the campaign: 67% of all early voters are women, youth, African American and Latino, groups that favor the President strongly. ... We have the added advantage in Wisconsin: It's a same-day registration state, so we can help ourselves on the ground on Election Day as well, so we expect a higher turnout there. Look, we understand Wisconsin is a battleground state ... [T]he math is just getting harder and harder for Governor Romney in some of these states, to what he would have to get on Election Day to come back in states like Wisconsin."


THE WASHINGTON POST: Four more years for President Obama. ”Much of the 2012 presidential campaign has dwelt on the past, but the key questions are who could better lead the country during the next four years — and, most urgently, who is likelier to put the government on a more sound financial footing. That second question will come rushing at the winner as soon as the votes are tallied. Absent any action, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts will take effect Jan. 1 that might well knock the country back into recession. This will be a moment of peril but also of opportunity. How the president-elect navigates it will go a long way toward determining the success of his presidency and the health of the nation. President Barack Obama is better positioned to be that navigator than is his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.” The Washington Post Editorial Board.


MONEY-ROMNEY HAS CASH LEAD OVER OBAMA: " Romney's campaign and the Republican National Committee together boasted more than $120 million in reserve as of Oct. 17 (not including money raised with state party participants, which would give a total of $169 million), while Obama and the Democratic National Committee together had about $104 million, according to new disclosure documents filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission," per Dave Levintha. "Romney's presidential campaign alone reported $52.7 million in hand as of Oct. 17, while the RNC said it had $67.5 million, the filings indicate. Obama's campaign alone controlled more money - $93.66 million as of Oct. 17 - but the Democratic National Committee managed only $10.3 million cash on hand." http://goo.gl/b2RK3


LIGHTER CLICKS-

MEAT LOAF opened Mitt Romney's rally in Defiance, Ohio, last night with a rambling speech that, among other things, laced into Obama for thinking the Cold War is over. The most memorable 5 minutes of the day: http://goo.gl/6Uzy2.

JON STEWART criticized Republicans for defending Mourdock: http://goo.gl/KEkmy.

MICHELLE OBAMA went on Jimmy Kimmel Live: http://goo.gl/0xYCG.

PAUL RYAN will go trick-or-treating in Wisconsin for Halloween. http://bit.ly/TEd8Kp

LENA DUNHAM , the creator of "Girls," recorded a pretty risqué (and, to many, offensive) video in support of Obama. "Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody," the 26-year-old says in the video. "You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy who's beautiful, someone who really cares about and understand women, whether you get health insurance and specifically whether you get birth control. T..Before I was a girl. Now I was a woman." Watch: http://goo.gl/fYUP7.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else...that that's a pretty narrow vision.' - President Obama takes a subtle swipe at Paul Ryan in an interview with Rolling Stone (Full interview: http://goo.gl/Wmml1)

[Andrew49]

Retired NSA Analyst Proves GOP Is Stealing Elections

“Easy to Cheat”
Retired NSA analyst Michael Duniho has worked for nearly seven years trying to understand voting anomalies in his home state of Arizona and Pima County. This publication has written extensively about apparent vote machine manipulation in a 2006 RTA Bond issue election that is still being fought in the courts. Said Duniho, “It is really easy to cheat using computers to count votes, because you can’t see what is going on in the machine.”

When Duniho applied a mathematical model to actual voting results in the largest voting precincts, he saw that only the large precincts suddenly trended towards Mitt Romney in the Arizona primary – and indeed all Republicans in every election since 2008 – by a factor of 8%-10%. The Republican candidate in every race saw an 8-10%. gain in his totals whilst the Democrat lost 8-10%. This is a swing of up to 20 point, enough to win an election unless a candidate was losing very badly.

Fascinating read this (LINK FULL Report) - originally published by the authors yesterday on UKProgressive which is under a DDOS attack [] It was simultaneously released in this segment of [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K_Rgwo0Ut8&feature=share&list=UUvixJtaXuN dMPUGdOPcY8Ag]The David Pakman Show[/ame]. It also cross-posted on ThePoliticalCarnival Net and LA Progressive.)

[toxic avenger]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...f-mitt-mentum/

[Count Bobulescu]

The Washington Post: The many motives of a mega-donor
 By Marc Fisher
 Sheldon Adelson’s giving supports his political and business interests, but also more selfless pursuits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...b04_story.html

“2012’s worst candidate? With Mark Clayton, Tennessee Democrats hit bottom.” — David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...?wpisrc=nl_fix

“Candidates reveal their strategies for the home stretch” — Philip Rucker and David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...&wpisrc=nl_fix

“In Florida, Puerto Ricans’ rise gives a key swing state more swing voters” — Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...&wpisrc=nl_fix

“Reid calls himself a ‘one-man wrecking crew’ aimed at Romney” — David McGrath Schwartz, Las Vegas Sun

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012...?wpisrc=nl_fix


PRESIDENTIAL RACE NOT AS DEAD-EVEN AS IT LOOKS. The debates may have produced no clear winner and the national polls are looking about even, but that doesn’t mean that the election is an even-money contest between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, writes National Journal political analyst Charlie Cook. Although the race is very close, the road to 270 electoral votes is considerably more difficult for Romney than it is for Obama. Read more

http://nationaljournal.com/columns/o...math--20121023


SENATE CONTROL HINGES ON TOP OF TICKET. The presidential election isn’t the only contest that’s going down to the wire in November. The battle for the Senate is remarkably close, and control could end up being determined by the outcome of the presidential contest, writes Hotline’s Josh Kraushaar. As things stand today, Republicans look reasonably positioned to net two to three seats in the upper chamber, and three is enough for Mitch McConnell to become Senate majority leader, if Romney wins the presidency. But if Obama wins, Republicans would need to net four seats for a majority. Given the narrowing Senate map, that’s looking almost impossible.

http://nationaljournal.com/columns/a...-race-20121024


From now until Election Day, the U.S. might as well consist of just eight or so states, not 50.
Those are the battleground states where President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, their running mates and spouses will be spending much of their time in what remains of the 2012 race for the White House.

It's all about amassing the 270 electoral votes required to be elected president. NPR's analysis of the race at this point suggests the eight states that are most in play are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Both presidential campaigns are looking for the combination of those states that helps them reach the almighty 270.

You can search for that combination, too, using NPR.org's new interactive "Swing State Scorecard" (npr.org/scorecard). Summon up your inner political consultant by figuring out the available routes to 270.

Our interactive scorecard lays out in a table all the combinations that get each candidate over the top. Assuming, as we do, that Obama begins with 237 electoral votes from blue states that can be safely placed in his column, a quick glance at the table tells you Obama could win by adding a combination of just two additional states, such as Ohio and Florida, to his column. Those two would give him a total of 284 electoral votes.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolit...cc=ph-20121024



Dana Milbank in The Washington Post on how Twitter encourages debate groupthink Twitter should deliver a diverse array of opinions to the news, but actually it causes "conventional wisdom to be set, simplified and amplified, faster and more pervasively." In the debate, a narrative was set through Twitter as the debate happened. Milbank doesn't fault the tweeting journalists, "but our political dialogue may lose something because of this pre-publication and pre-broadcast collusion."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...962_story.html


The New York Times: Reid's machine powers Obama in Nevada test
 By Adam Nagourney 
Senator Harry Reid’s political machine could hold the key to a victory for President Obama in the economically ravaged state, as both Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney seek coveted electoral votes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/us...dayspaper&_r=0


Los Angeles Times: In Iowa, the race becomes surprisingly competitive

By Kathleen Hennessey and Maeve Reston
The state has long been problematic for Mitt Romney and seemed to be President Obama's for the taking, but it's shaping up into a close fight for 6 electoral votes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,2345602.story




Mitt Romney's Secret 'Rock Star' on Energy
Meet the woman in Mitt Romney’s binder nobody knows about: Rebecca Rosen, the campaign's top energy and environmental policy adviser. National Journal's Amy Harder has the story.
http://www.nationaljournal.com//poli...nergy-20121024

POLL: ROMNEY CLOSES GENDER GAP AMONG WOMEN. Mitt Romney has closed a 16-point gender gap with President Obama among women in just one month, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll released on Thursday. Now tied with Obama at 47 percent among women, Romney has closed what was once a double-digit lead for the president. Additionally, women now view Romney as the better economic candidate, 49 percent to Obama's 45 percent. Just a month ago, Obama was favored over Romney 56 percent to 40 percent. Read more

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...women-20121025


THE UNSEEMLY POLITICS OF VOTER SUPPRESSION. In Maricopa County, home of more than half of Arizona's voters, material reminding Spanish-language speakers to vote lists Election Day as Nov. 8, two days after the polls close. The Florida Division of Elections is investigating letters sent to voters in 24 counties that say recipients have been flagged as possible non-citizens and are therefore ineligible to vote. And voters in several swing states have reported receiving calls telling them they can vote by phone instead of at the ballot box. While President Obama and Mitt Romney work to mobilize as much of their base as possible, some operatives are working behind the scenes to dissuade the other side's voters from casting their ballots.

http://nationaljournal.com/columns/o...rnout-20121025

OBAMA SAYS HIS PLAN STARTS WITH IMMIGRATION. Forget the second-term agenda President Obama unveiled earlier this week. He’s now put immigration reform at the very top of his list of long-term priorities for a second term, he says. “I want to get it done because it’s the right thing to do and I've cared about this ever since I ran back in 2008,” Obama told The Des Moines Register. Obama said he plans to tackle it after working to reach a grand bargain on deficit reduction, which he hopes could be accomplished in the first six months of 2013, National Journal’s Fawn Johnson reports. Read more

http://influencealley.nationaljourna...mmigration.php

MIXED GOP REACTION TO MOURDOCK REMARKS. The GOP hasn’t thrown Richard Mourdock under the bus with Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., over Mourdock’s statement that he opposes abortion in cases of rape because “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” But Republicans aren’t rallying to him, either. The Romney campaign, while probably wishing their candidate hadn’t just cut an ad for Mourdock, said that Romney disagrees with Mourdock, but didn’t withdraw his support. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, long bullish that the Indiana state treasurer will win his race against Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, stuck firmly with Mourdock, even as Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., canceled plans to campaign with him. Sen. John McCain called on Mourdock to apologize, saying his support depended on what the candidate does in coming days.

“Obama maintains ad advantage despite being outspent by GOP” — Dan Eggen, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...&wpisrc=nl_fix


“Obama’s Edge: The Ground Game That Could Put Him Over the Top” — Molly Ball, The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...?wpisrc=nl_fix

“Could the campaign ads benefit from the Mad Men touch?” — Ned Martel, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifest...&wpisrc=nl_fix


“As key Senate races get tighter, Republicans’ hopes rise” — Rosalind S. Helderman and Paul Kane, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...&wpisrc=nl_fix


Poll shows deepest racial split since '88
Among whites, President Obama is doing much worse than he did four years ago, and the clearest loss for the president is among white men.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...=nl_pmpolitics


Romney pushes message of 'big change'
In Ohio, the GOP nominee says President Obama is taking the country on a "status quo" path. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...=nl_pmpolitics



THE FIX: Massachusetts Senate race moves to 'lean Democratic'

The Fix is moving the race from the "tossup" category to the "lean Democratic" column, a reflection of Elizabeth Warren's momentum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...=nl_pmpolitics



Why We Might Not Have a Presidential Winner on Election Night
Two presidential campaigns are under way: One to win on Election Day, the other to win after it, writes National Journal's Alex Roarty.
.http://www.nationaljournal.com//poli...night-20121025



Tight Race for Newspaper Endorsements Reflects State of Presidential Campaign
In an election cycle marked by Internet and cable information saturation and the use of micro-targeting to tailor messages to tiny slices of the electorate, the importance of the newspaper endorsement is unclear. But the campaigns think enough of their value to put their candidates before editorial boards in swing states. And so far, the race for endorsements is shaping up to look much like the presidential campaign itself: President Obama enjoys a slight lead, but has lost ground since 2008, reports National Journal's Ben Schreckinger.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-...paign-20121026


LIGHTER CLICKS-

TAGG ROMNEY apologized to Obama after the debate for saying he wanted to "take a swing" at him: http://bit.ly/TSB07G

JON STEWART made fun of how much Romney agreed with Obama during the foreign policy debate on his show last night: http://goo.gl/cjEIn.

CONAN jokes that Obama's second term agenda is to "re-kill Osama bin Laden": http://goo.gl/LKyKK.

CLINT EASTWOOD narrates a commercial for American Crossroads that will run in seven states: http://goo.gl/UAafz.

ROMNEY'S FACE gets carved into Boone, Iowa, cornfield: http://goo.gl/zPSts.

THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES debated in Chicago. Moderated by Larry King: http://goo.gl/XW7pm.

OBAMA plans to take questions from voters on MTV: http://bit.ly/TSyDS8

BIDEN, as he left a pizza shop in Ohio Tuesday, told the owner he's a "pizza guy." http://politi.co/VC0XPI

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I thought, at last! Vision, moving forward! Newt Gingrich is gonna put people on the moon? I'm going to be one of them! I went Newt Gingrich nuts." -Tom Hanks jokes with David Letterman about Newt Gingrich's moon colony idea. http://politi.co/TStw4u

[Yojimbo]

Republicans in a big quandary for the closing stages of the election - go for the misogynistic vote or the racist one? From the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...or-racism.html

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

You have to hand it to the Americans. We've been a byword for political corruption for a long time now but even so in the Land of the Free they've managed to land the biggest political fish of them all- a $2billion election which is completely and utterly irrelevant in the scheme of things.

Goldman Sachs, like Standard Oil in previous times, owns both of the parties and both of the lead candidates.

Gore Vidal was quite literally on the money when he pointed out that the US is a one party state- the same party with two wings.

Really looking forward to 2016 and the next Presidential Election when we may all hope for the $3billion election spend ceiling to be breached.

It is what Jefferson would have wanted I am sure. Quite possibly one of the most expensive political charades in the world.

[Count Bobulescu]

Republicans in a big quandary for the closing stages of the election - go for the misogynistic vote or the racist one? From the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...or-racism.html

It shouldn't be too difficult for the GOP, there is a lot overlap between the misogynist and racist votes. If they can't bag those they definitely don't deserve to win.

[Count Bobulescu]

Washington Post poll: Obama holds slender edge over Romney in Va.

President tops the GOP nominee 51 to 47 percent among likely voters in the battleground state of Virginia, where more than one in four voters have been contacted by both campaigns.

Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...962_story.html

Could we have a reverse of 2000, where the Republican wins the popular vote, and the Democrat wins the Electoral College?

Most polls at this moment suggest GOP nominee Mitt Romney is in the lead nationally, but surveys in the nine or so swing states are registering a narrow advantage for President Obama.
So here’s a prospect worth contemplating: What if Romney carries the popular vote, but Obama regains the presidency by winning 270 votes or more in the electoral college?

.If Obama is reelected that way, “the Republican base will be screaming that Romney should be president, and Obama doesn’t represent the country,” McKinnon predicted. “It’s going to encourage more hyperpartisanship.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...y.html?hpid=z2

Whites’ support for Obama eroding

The 2012 election is shaping up to be more polarized along racial lines than any presidential contest since 1988, poll shows.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...rc=nl_politics

If Obama Loses, Blame the Debates

Independents now see Mitt Romney as a job creator. That wasn’t the case before the start of the debates.
Continued on nationaljournal.com »
http://www.nationaljournal.com//colu...bates-20121025

ROMNEY AHEAD IN LATE MONEY RACE. Mitt Romney outraised President Obama by about $21 million in the first half of October, according to The Washington Post. Obama and the Democratic National Committee said they raised about $90.5 million from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17, with roughly $125 million cash on hand, while Romney and the Republican National Committee said they raised about $111.8 million in that same time period, with roughly $170 million in the bank. Both sides are on track to raise about $2 billion in total, The New York Times reported. Obama told NBC that the amount of money being spent in the race is “ridiculous.” Read more

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2....html?hp=l3_b2

HAS ROMNEY ERASED THE GENDER GAP? A new Associated Press-Gfk poll survey, conducted Oct. 19-23, shows President Obama tied with rival Mitt Romney among female voters at 47 percent, his previous 16-point lead among women in the same survey completely gone. Yet the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, conducted Oct. 21-24 and reported as a multi-night rolling average, shows Obama with a 15-point advantage, leading Romney among women 56 percent to 41 percent. Gallup, based on an average of daily polls Oct. 1-21, has Obama garnering 54 percent among likely women voters to Romney’s 46 percent. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted Oct. 17-20, also shows the president up 8 points, 51 percent to 43 percent, among likely female voters. Read more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/polit...id=site_search

With lots of early votes starting to roll in across several swing states, Republicans continue to trail but are now in a slightly better position among early voters than they were in 2008.

Democrats built a lead early this month among early voters — in Iowa and Ohio in particular. But Mitt Romney’s momentum in the presidential race, combined with increased voter contacts by Republicans, appear to have him on pace to perform better on the early vote than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) did in 2008.
The question from there is whether his improvement is good enough.
Read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...pisrc=nl_pmfix

The Hill: After Bush v Gore, Obama, Clinton backed Electoral College reforms
 By Mario Trujillo 
Amid talk of a split between the Electoral College and popular vote, politicians' past views on selecting president face scrutiny.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign...er-bush-v-gore

The Hill: Obama, Romney cancel rallies in response to Sandy 
By Daniel Strauss 
The storm could force both campaigns to alter their schedules more in the coming days.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...urricane-sandy

The Hill: State Dept.: European election observers immune from US law
By Sterling C. Beard
The Texas attorney general had threatened to arrest international observers monitoring the Nov. 6 elections.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...ne-from-us-law

The New York Times: In memos from employers, suggestions on how to vote
By Steven Greenhouse
Freed to do so by the Supreme Court, major companies are suggesting and sometimes explicitly recommending how their workers should vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/us...w-to-vote.html

BREAKING - AP's Julie Pace: "President Obama and Bill Clinton will campaign together next week in three of the most competitive battleground states. Obama and the former president will hold rallies Monday in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Their appearances will kick off the final full week of campaigning before Election Day. ... Monday's stops will be the first joint rallies the two presidents have held together during the 2012 campaign. They have previously attended joint fundraisers and appeared together briefly at the Democratic Party's convention."
-
The 11th-hour shift to a policy-focused message reflects anxiety in the Obama camp. ”Everything was going great for Barack Obama until about 9:04 on the night of Oct. 3, when Mitt Romney startled everybody by refusing to live up to his caricature as The Worst Candidate Ever. Romney's late-game comeback — an unexpected assertion of presidential competence in front of 67 million viewers — robbed Obama of his momentum and forced the president's team to make a subtle yet significant change to their closing argument in the critical last two weeks of the 2012 campaign…That led his campaign on Tuesday to release a detailed, bullet-point plan for his second term — a formal agenda his team had long resisted.” Glenn Thrush in Politico.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories...wpisrc=nl_wonk

DIONNE: How 2012 has crushed the far-right. ”The right wing has lost the election of 2012. The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year's best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination…The right is going along because its partisans know Romney has no other option. This, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has gained no traction…The total rout of the right's ideology, particularly its neoconservative brand, was visible in Monday's debate.” E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...wpisrc=nl_wonk

MORNING MINDMELD: For months, we have explained the basic difference in the campaigns' strategies as: Obama is wholesale; Romney is retail. Obama is a community organizer; Romney is an ad agency. Boston was trying to sell a big message; Chicago was trying to identify, motivate and turn out every last Obama-friendly voter. Each was a strategy of necessity: Obama aides realized early on that he wasn't going to be able to run on hope and change. And Romney - after long, expensive primary - was never going to be able to match the ground game that Obama has been building since at least April 2011, and arguably for years.

Now, the vaunted Obama ground game is starting to look like momentum insurance, if Republicans turn out to be right that Romney is riding a wave. (The White House and Obama campaign insist fervently that it's a con game, enabled partly by a credulous press.)

Senior Obama campaign officials explained their latest state-of-the-race thinking to POLITICO yesterday, accompanied by these striking stats about the number of local campaign offices in swing states: Ohio - Obama 137, Romney 39; Nevada - Obama 27, Romney 12; Iowa - Obama 68, Romney 14; Florida - Obama 106, Romney 52; Virginia - Obama 63, Romney 32; Colorado - Obama 65, Romney 14; Wisconsin - Obama 39, Romney 24; North Carolina - Obama 55, Romney 24; and New Hampshire: Obama 24, Romney 9.

Physical offices are a dubious metric , but an Obama official explained their importance this way: "If you really want to have a distributed organizing program -- where you have not only offices out in states but then ... staging locations where you actually have a presence in neighborhoods, which is something that we built over the last 18 or 19 months -- you have to have this type of footprint. It is unrealistic for a volunteer, if you want the number and the volume that you want, to drive 30 or 40 or 50 miles to come into a place and then make phone calls. It was imperative ... to make sure that we had a footprint in the neighborhood and, because of that, we're able to implement a program that allows us to have this type of early-vote lead."

The same official gave this fascinating window into the Obama M.O.: "I view campaigns as a list-building exercise, and there's three ways that you can build your list: You can do that by registering new voters who support the President. You can persuade undecided voters to support the President. Or you can increase turnout with your existing list of supporters. Ultimately, that's all we're doing here. We're going to be spending lots and lots of money doing those three very simple things." You could write a book about that quote -- and plenty of folks will.


--JOE SCARBOROUGH writes on POLITICO: "All the president's men believe they have built a turnout machine over the past five years like no other American political history. ... The Romney campaign is now relying more on the intangibles of the political trade. Boston expects to be swept to victory on Election Day because of debate momentum, partisan passions and ... 'Change.' The great irony for the Romney camp is that their candidate who has been driven by data and numbers his entire life is now having to rely on the most unpredictable and maddening force of all -- human emotion -- to carry him over the top." http://politi.co/RVOnVy

CAMPAIGN SEMIOTICS -- Lead of NYT print-edition "The Caucus" column - "Obama's Word Gets More Emphatic," by Peter Baker: "The period at the end of President Obama's official slogan 'Forward.' drew curious questions: Why a period? ... [W]hy not an exclamation point? Then suddenly, there it was this week, the exclamation point. No longer was it 'Forward.' It was 'Forward!' On placards and banners at Mr. Obama's stops during a two-day, round-the-clock swing, ... the newly punctuated slogan made its debut. ... [T]he Web site and campaign ads are [still] using "Forward." http://nyti.ms/RoSbii

BATTLEGROUND BRIEFING: THE PATH TO 270-

OBAMA DOMINATES SWING-STATE AIRWAVES: POLITICO's Tarini Parti reports on the ad disparities between Obama's campaign and Romney's campaign this month. 'In the first three weeks of October, Obama for America has aired over 97,000 TV ads - more than Mitt Romney, Karl Rove's American Crossroads, the Republican National Committee and pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future combined. Obama and his allies have also dominated the airwaves in 13 of the 15 swing media markets, according to information released Wednesday afternoon by Wesleyan Media Project and Kantar Media/CMAG. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's expected October ad blitz has yet to strike.' http://politi.co/R0TZfs

HARRY REID'S INFRASTRUCTURE HELPS BOOST OBAMA IN NEVADA: The New York Times' Adam Nagourney looks at how Harry Reid's political machine in Nevada helped Obama win the state in 2008, and is the reason Democrats are so optimistic about winning there again this year. 'Mr. Reid has spent the last 10 years building a political machine that helped Mr. Obama win Nevada in 2008 and carried Mr. Reid to a re-election victory two years ago that stunned many pollsters. It is widely praised - even by Republicans - as one of the most effective voter-organizing and money-raising political organizations. But the Reid machine is facing its biggest test yet. Mr. Reid's organization is a large reason that Mr. Obama is favored by many analysts to win narrowly in Nevada, despite what may be the worst economic climate in the nation and a sizable population of voters who, like Mitt Romney, are Mormons.' http://nyti.ms/R0ViLw
BLOOD IN THE WATER-PROGRESSIVES POUNCE:

MoveOn.org-chartered planes will fly over Romney's and Ryan's events today with Mourdock-themed banners. At Romney's Cincinnati rally: "Mitt: Support Women, Dump Mourdock." At Ryan's Bristol, Va., rally: "Romney's GOP: Wrong on rape and women."

VoteVets.org responds to the Mourdock comment by doubling a previous buy. They already spent $300,000 running an ad attacking Mourdock on veterans issues (which we reported). Now they're teaming up with the United Food and Commercial Workers union to make a fresh $320,000 buy against Mourdock. Watch the ad: http://bit.ly/XjJREf.