Some good polls out of Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida and Michigan, producing the map below. And we also have Nate Silver offering some comments and thoughts about Gallup's history of being very wrong when it is the outlier poll.
We have a letter from the hateful bigots on the Delaware Family Policy Council, and it is your standard boilerplate anti-equal rights fare. But one of the last paragraphs is pure idiocy. As Matt Pazoles says on Facebook, "the only thing worse [than bigotry] is poorly written bigotry." Click through to read and rant...
The call came from a Colorado number (719-373-2265) and it started off saying that this was a survey from Renew Delaware PAC, and it was not affiliated with any campaign. It then asked me to push 1 if I was voting for anyone but Tom Carper. I did nothing. Because while I may not be a fan of Tom Carper and his extinct DLC ways, I am much less of a fan of Alex Pires and his evil rumormongering and mud slinging and teabagger ways, and even less of a fan of the Republican Kevin Wade (and yes, I can hear Green Party candidate Andrew Groff screaming for recognition right now). But I digress.
Come inside for more, including information on a mysterious Mr. Anderson being behind it all (including Kevin Wade and the Delaware Republican Party).
Housing starts are at their highest level in four years. The unemployment rate is at its best point in four years; consumer confidence is at its best point in five years; the federal budget deficit is at its best point in four years. Just this week, reports on retail sales, industrial production, and new housing construction showed sharp and unexpected improvements.
This probably isn't what Republicans wanted to hear.
How Mika didn't pull a Tagg Romney is beyond me. This morning Mika brought up the fact that Mitt Romney lied about the binders. Here's the lie:
ROMNEY: And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?”
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.
Mika pointed out that this was a lie.
Whoa! That was simply too much for the men of Morning Joe. How dare she bring up something that the men declared unimportant; how dare she point out that Mitt lied again. Joe Scarborough declared the women in binders topic ridiculous and desperate - which tells me that he's afraid of it. Mark Halperin stated that "that's not what this election should be about" and how they "shouldn't be parsing individual statements said live during a debate" and asked, wistfully, if we could just talk policy for the next three weeks. I intend to hold him to that.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the ratings for the cable network coverage of Tuesday's presidential debate have numbers surged ahead of the first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. That's good. Now we have to see if the President repaired any of the damage he did to himself in the polls. Obama has regained the lead in all national polls but the Gallup poll (which is now looking like an extreme outlier when compared to the other tracking polls) and Rasmussen (although Obama is improving in that poll as well).
Looking at the Gallup poll, while I will not parse that poll like my conservative brethen, I will point out something that is extremely interesting:
"Well, you want to jump out of your seat and rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him." -- Tagg Romney, in an interview on WPTF-AM, when asked how it felt to hear President Obama call his father a liar during last night's debate.
Well, what a violent bully this Tagg Romney is. I wonder what horrible single mother raised this violent and disgusting thug? Who taught him that when things do go your way you get violent? I wonder if Tagg You're It is going to get a call from the Secret Service.
Watch online here now!
Governor Markell and Jeff Cragg are debating at 8 pm. Lt. Governor Denn and Sher She Didn't Build It Valenzuela are debating now. I got home late and missed the 7 pm start time.
Sher is being downright nasty in her closing statement.
There is some NSFW language about 20 seconds in, but that just adds to it. It is rare because as these guys realize how ridiculous it looks it just gets…
It is horrible that this is true, but half the battle of these debates is the media narrative. With a week to go before the next debate, the rest of the week will be dominated by the media discussing just how great the winner of the debate was and just how evil and horrible the loser of the debate was. It is a vicious circle that tends to compound the polls. A 50% Romney victory the night of the debate turned into a 71% victory two days later. Now the shoe is on the other foot. John Cassidy finds that "the overwhelming majority of the pundits proclaimed the President the victor":
Even Charles Krauthammer and Laura Ingraham said that he won on points. With this type of unanimity, the media narrative for the next few days, which is at least as important as the debate itself, will run in favor of Obama and against Romney. The G.O.P. candidate [...] will be criticized for his blunders on Libya, guns, and women.
Check inside for more reactions and some videos of the highlights of the debates.
