DAYLEE PICTURE: A moose at Maligne Lake in Alberta, Canada. From National Geographic.
TWO UP-FRONT "GROUND GAME" NUGGETS!!
Mitt Romney Ohio Ground Game: A Frantic Race To Catch Obama (Sam Stein) from the Huffington Post
"It is part of a frantic effort by the Romney campaign to catch President Barack Obama on the ground in Ohio ... While Romney has 36 campaign offices in Ohio, Obama has 96. Romney and the state GOP have an estimated 130 staffers. Obama has what his state communications director said were "hundreds of staff and thousands of volunteers." Romney started his general election campaigning in May and opened his first Ohio office in early June (he closed the Dublin Street headquarters after he won the primary). Obama for America has been in the state, basically, for five years."
What difference does this make? See the following:
As Iowa Launches Early Voting, A Prime Opportunity For Mitt Romney Is Slipping (Jon Ward) from the Huffington Post
"He was the first to arrive, around 7:15 a.m., but soon a long line of around 200 people formed behind him, almost all of them wearing stickers distributed by President Obama's reelection campaign with the message: "Be the First!" Iowa was the first swing state to begin early voting, though not the first to begin voting overall. Ohio will follow when it opens up the polls on Tuesday. All the other swing states start their early voting near the end of October."
State Of The Race: How Previous Presidential Campaigns Looked Going Into October (CHART) from Talking Points Memo
"Historically, President Obama is in a solid position to win re-election, if the Gallup tracking poll of the presidential race is any guide."
Whose Idea Was It to Nominate Romney, Anyway? (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
Chait has been ON FIRE lately!! In case you missed his excellent column from yesterday, check it out!
"In what you might regard as an unhealthy sign for Mitt Romney’s campaign prospects, conservatives have turned to debating the question of who is to blame for nominating this man in the first place. ... The case for Romney, such as it is, falls to his anonymous advisers, who tell Politico that he is a brilliant and wonderful man but sadly bad at politics: ... Being terrible at running for office sounds like a pretty serious drawback for a presidential nominee!"
GOP Insiders: Senate A No-Go (Alex Roarty, Naureen Khan and Brian McGill) from the National Journal
"Republicans no longer think they're going to retake the Senate, according to the latest National Journal Political Insiders Poll, a stunning drop in optimism for a party that began 2012 confident it would regain control of the chamber. Only four percent of GOP insiders rate their chances as "high," a free-fall in confidence from when National Journal Insiders were asked about Senate races in February."
GOP's Acorn Moment (Alex Seitz-Wald) from Salon
"A Republican consulting firm allegedly commits voter registration fraud. Where's the right-wing outrage this time?"
Why Mitt Romney is the Perfect GOP Candidate (Andrew Leonard) from Salon
"Mitt Romney is the perfect evolutionary adaptation to a world in which workers get screwed."
Shades of 1996: Unless Mitt Romney Does Something—Quick—He Could See GOP Donors Abandon Him, Just as They Did Bob Dole (Charlie Cook) from the National Journal
"Public attitudes toward candidates and elections often start off in a fluid state. Then they gradually begin to jell, first reaching a semisolid state before hardening to rock-solid. This year’s presidential race isn’t over, but Mitt Romney’s current trajectory in the polls will not cross President Obama’s by Nov. 6—or maybe even Nov. 6 of next year. If something doesn’t happen to shake up the race, Romney will lose."
The Million Wingnut March (Ed Kilgore) from Washington Monthly
"There’s been a steadily building discussion, albeit shrouded in some mystery, about the potential impact on Election Day (and to some extent, before it) of right-wing “volunteer poll watchers” who are promising to descend on minority neighborhoods to make sure the Pink Elephant threat of “voter fraud” does not transpire. ... But it’s the specter of Election Day (or perhaps in-person Early Voting locations) that should trouble everyone, regardless of partisan affiliation."
“47%” Was Bad for Romney; Ryan Has Been Deadly (Noam Scheiber) from the New Republic
"The conventional wisdom on Obama’s recent surge is that it’s due largely to Mitt Romney’s 47% disaster, and there’s clearly something to this. ... But it’s worth pointing out another dynamic that’s been overlooked here: The escalating disaster that is Paul Ryan."
The Debate Expectations Game (Michelle Cottle) from the Daily Beast
"How Romney botched it and Obama played it perfectly. ... A crisp, clear, resounding debate victory is the governor’s best shot at turning this baby around. Why then does Team Romney seem dead set on making such a breakthrough performance nearly impossible? Romney needs some jokes. And he needs them for his first presidential debate on Wednesday."
I disagree here. I do not get that Romney is a good teller of jokes -- and a joke that lands flat ends up being a great joke for the likes of Jay Leno and Jon Stewart ... or Joe Scarborough (as we saw the other day)!
In the End, It’s Mitt (Allen, Martin & Vandehai) from Politico
"It isn’t the chair or the ho-hum convention. Or the leaked video. Or Stuart Stevens. Or the improving economy. Or media bias. Or distorted polls. Or the message. Or Mormonism. It’s Mitt. ... Slowly and reluctantly, Republicans who love and work for Romney are concluding that for all his gifts as a leader, businessman and role model, he’s just not a good political candidate in this era."
While there is a lot of truth here, I am more of the view that it is the party and GOP voters who are at the source of Romney's problems. The party itself is so divided and delusional that Romney (a basically sane human being) has had to pretend to be something else. The key to getting elected is having enough voters see your real strengths and forgive enough of your real weaknesses. These are the things campaigns reveal. It's hard enough selling voters on who you really are never mind some crazy fake Tea Party version of yourself, someone you have never been in all your years of public and private life. During the primaries, many of Romney's most difficult moments stemmed from when he was being too candid and he basically revealed who he really was or what he really thought. Is there any of that real Romney left now? Based on the 47% video, I suspect not.
Mitt Romney: King of Comedy (Roger Simon) from Politico
"It is time to cut Mitt Romney some slack. It is wrong to criticize him until you’ve walked a mile in his living room. That last line was a joke that someone posted on Twitter. Jokes have power. When a politician makes a joke, he can make a point and also leave people with the impression that he is a regular guy and not some cardboard cutout."
Do the Romneys Suffer from a Siege Mentality? (Judith Warner) from Time Magazine
"Their recent comments reveal a real resentment of the social changes that have helped former outsiders gain a toehold in society."
The Republican Brain: Constructing an Alternate Polling Reality for 2012 (Kevin Drum) from Mother Jones Magazine
"Neither side has a monopoly on sloppy number crunching or wishful thinking, but liberals, faced with a reality they didn't like, ended up accepting reality and deciding to learn more about it. That's the Nate Silver approach. Conservatives, faced with a reality they didn't like, invented a conspiracy theory to explain it and then produced an alternate reality more to their liking. "
George W. Bush Posts Better Favorability Ratings Than Mitt Romney in New Bloomberg Survey from the Dallas Morning News
"For all the talk about whether Mitt Romney should distance himself from George W. Bush –and the policies of the last GOP White House — a new survey shows that the former president actually has better favorability ratings than the Republican nominee."
LOCAL PITTSBURGH NUGGET!!
Forging a Giant Footprint (AUDIO) from WESA's Program, Essential Pittsburgh
In case you've missed this awesome PPG series on UPMC, check it out!
"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters talk about this week's 4 part series on UPMC's growing presence in the region's real estate market. Then Carnegie Library's five year plan..."
LABOR HISTORY PHOTO NUGGET!!
The Sacrifice of Innocents: Haunting Images from 1911 Show Workers Who Lied About Their Ages to Keep Their Families from Starving... as They Made Toys for Other Children from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Haunting images taken at mills in Winchendon, Massachusetts in 1911 capture the faces of children as young as eight as they illegally endured unsafe conditions, long hours and poor pay to keep their families from starving."
COMIC BOOK NUGGET!!
Avengers Assemble! (Sean Howe) from Slate
"How Marvel went from Hollywood also-ran to mastermind of a $1 billion franchise."
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