Chris Cillizza writes a superb daily political analysis at
The Washington Post. Here is his overview of the Presidential election post-first debate. :
Many political observers have taken to dating this campaign in terms of “BD” (“before debate”) and AD (“after debate”), believing that
President Obama’s lackluster performance in the first general election debate has fundamentally altered the course of the race.
And judging from new national polling from
Pew and
Gallup, there is some evidence to suggest that the race has shifted — with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney making up ground rapidly.
Before we draw too many conclusions about the state of the race, however, it’s important to remember that 10 days ago, the political world was on death watch for the Romney campaign. Yes, things can change fast — and some dynamics of the contest clearly have. But there are other things that haven’t changed too.
What’s Changed
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Republicans are excited about Romney: Until the first presidential debate, the Romney vote was roughly 80 percent anti-Obama, 20 percent pro-Romney. The enthusiasm gains among Republicans in the post-debate Pew survey suggest that Republicans now feel as though they have a reason to vote
for Romney, not just
against Obama. That matters; people like to feel as they are casting an affirmative vote for their guy; John Kerry’s loss in 2004 was due, at least in part, to his struggle to articulate a message beyond “I’m not George W. Bush”.
*
The national race is close: Put aside all of the arguments — and they are legion — about how, when and why these last national polls were conducted, and you are left with an obvious reality: At the national level, the Obama-Romney contest is a statistical dead heat. And that shouldn’t be surprising. After a slew of national polls in mid-to-late September showed Obama with a high-single-digit/low-double-
digit lead, the race had begun to tighten in other data on the eve of the debate last week. Given that almost every objective source saw the debate as a Romney victory, some movement nationally toward Romney makes sense.
*
Romney is re-energized: Don’t underestimate how hard it is to keep slogging through campaign stop after campaign stop with a smile on your face when you known things aren’t going well for you. That was Romney’s life from the moment Clint Eastwood (and his chair) took the stage at the Republican National Convention until last Wednesday night. But now the narrative has changed and, with it, Romney’s demeanor and the coverage he is getting. Now we are seeing the
softer side of Romney stories. The candidate is delivering
forceful condemnations of the Obama foreign policy. Heck,
he even looks like he is having fun speaking in the rain.
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The vice presidential debate could matter: We’ve long been skeptical that vice presidential debates (or vice presidential picks) matter much. (How many people make their mind up about the election because of the guy standing next to the guy?) But, politics, like sports, tends to work on momentum. And right now Romney has it — big time. If Rep. Paul Ryan delivers a winning performance at the VP debate Thursday night, the GOP enthusiasm/excitement will just continue to build. If, on the other hand, Vice President Biden — a decidedly underrated debater — puts in a strong performance, it could snuff out (or at least slow) the current Republican momentum.
What Hasn’t Changed
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Obama’s electoral vote edge: Let’s assume that the national poll bump for Romney starts to trickle down into some critical swing states. (It should.) For the sake of argument, say that Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia all move toward Romney — and he winds up winning them as well as all of the more reliably Republican states leaning or solidly in his camp today. He still loses the electoral vote to Obama. We’ve written extensively about this often-overlooked reality in recent months but it’s worth reiterating again: Even if Romney surges in a handful of swing states,
his path to 270 electoral votes remains tough. For Romney to win at this point — assuming he can’t put Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin play — he needs to all but sweep the remaining toss-up states.
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The Obama team isn’t dumb: When times are good, the candidate and his/her campaign are geniuses. When times are bad, they are idiots. Neither characterization is accurate. What we know about Obama and his team is that they have ousted Hillary Clinton in a primary, won a sweeping electoral landslide in 2008 and, until last Wednesday, run an effective campaign that had put the incumbent very clearly in the driver’s seat. All of the smart strategy that went into those accomplishments hasn’t disappeared suddenly. Yes, Obama laid a major egg at the debate. But to assume that the campaign has somehow forgotten what got them to where they are because of one bad debate performance is a major mistake.
[For example:]
The Obama campaign is up with
a light-hearted new ad hitting Romney for wanting to end federal funding for public broadcasting. The ad features convicted corporate titans like Bernie Madoff and says, tongue in cheek, that Big Bird is the bird who oversaw it all.
“Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about; it’s Sesame Street,” the narrator says. The ad plays off a line Obama has used on the campaign trail juxtaposing Romney’s plans for Wall Street versus Sesame Street.]
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Money, money, money: Lost amid the post-debate coverage was the fact that
Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $181 million in September, an eye-popping total that will almost certainly eclipse what Romney and the Republican National Committee collected over that same time period. What Obama’s massive haul means is that the expectation that he will be badly outspent by Romney and his allies over the final days of the campaign could well be wrong. While we still expect the combination of Romney, RNC and outside conservative groups to outspend Obama, DNC and outside liberal groups on TV in the final 60 days, it won’t be by a three- or even four-to-one margin. And that matters. Money talks, after all.
