Brain Emptying

Just a couple quick, unrelated-ish thoughts this afternoon.

First, ever since the first debate, national polls have shown a large surge for Romney and have typically come in at a tie or a slight Romney lead. Many have attributed this to Obama’s performance in the debate and I’m sure there’s some truth to that, but if I recall the debate was also the point at which pollsters began applying their “likely voter” screens. Obama has continued his lead among registered voters. So the headline numbers suddenly looked worse for Obama after the debate, but that includes the application of the likely voter screen. I don’t think the debate hurt nearly as much as people think in terms of actual support. Rather, it served to fire up Romney’s base and depress Obama’s, and that’s showing up in the likely voter numbers. This is a very close race. It was always going to be a very close race. The divergence between the likely and registered voter numbers makes me think that it’s all going to come down to get out the vote operations. 

Second, tonight’s debate. Public opinion is firmly on the President’s side. He ought to press the advantage. People want less defense spending and they want less wars. Romney wants to increase defense spending and go to war with Iran. Moderate Mitt will probably show up again tonight, and he may even try to turn away from those positions. Obama can’t let him. Also, I’ll try once again to live-blog it. Drink any time someone says “exceptionalism”, “Libya”, “terrorism”, “manipulator” or “leadership”. Actually just drink, because those are likely to be the only words used.  

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