TPM Electoral Scoreboard shifts to Obama 276, Romney 206. Colorado and Ohio move from Lean Obama to Toss Up. And North Carolina moves from Toss Up to Lean Romney.
Late Update: Now it’s 270 to 206 as Nevada moves from Lean Obama to Toss Up.
A lot of reporters and fact checkers have gotten bamboozled by Mitt Romney’s ‘don’t worry I’ll make it work’ explanation of his tax plan. Now the folks who wrote the non-partisan analysis which caused all the hubbub are responding to Romney’s refusal to admit what his plan does. A few key portions …
Our conclusion was not a prediction about Governor Romney would do as President, it was an arithmetic calculation: all of the promises couldn’t be met simultaneously without resorting to tax increases on households with income below $200,000.
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You still can’t drive cross country in 15 hours without speeding.
I am leaving out, of course, the computational arguments. Rather, I’m focusing on the pure up-is-downism the analysts are forced to reply to.
If you care about these things you should take a moment and read Gale’s short piece. If you’re a reporter who doesn’t like being lied to you should definitely read it.
Hard to imagine the Supreme Court wanting to weigh in on an early voting case right before the election, but Ohio’s Republican secretary of state is giving it a shot.
Stan Greenberg tells Greg Sargent that the key slippage for Obama coming out of the debate was with unmarried women. They didn’t hear anything from Obama. But Romney did connect with them.
Just to keep everyone up to date: We now have three non-tracking polls out today. Two have Mitt Romney by a 2 point margin, one has him by a 1 point margin: PPP (49-47), ARG (48-47), IBD/TIPP (47-45). All the details here.
TPM Reader JM is having deja vu …
I’ve long thought that your “bitch slap theory of electoral politics” was the best way to understand so many of our recent political developments.
The reason why the debate performance has been so bad for Obama is precisely because he was attacked and he failed to respond forcefully enough. Re-reading your post, you could substitute Obama’s debate for Kerry and it could read the same eight years later.
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