The head of an Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall, the Washington Post reports.

Said Brian Antal: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Rick Hasen: “The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to reverse a federal court ruling requiring the state of Ohio to let its counties decide whether to permit early voting during the weekend before Election Day. With the presidential race tight in Ohio, and the presidency potentially turning on the state’s electoral votes, the court’s decision could help determine who will win the White House. While the Obama campaign has a strong policy argument for the extension of early voting to include this final weekend, its constitutional claim is a major stretch.”

Mark Halperin has obtained the Memorandum of Understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns setting the ground rules for the presidential debates.

Gawker: “The upshot: Both campaigns are terrified at anything even remotely spontaneous happening.”

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Here are the latest daily tracking polls for the presidential race:

Gallup: Romney 49%, Obama 47%

IBD/TIPP: Obama 47%, Romney 47%

Rand/American Life: Obama 50%, Romney 45%

Rasmussen: Romney 49%, Obama 48%

Reuters/Ipsos: Obama 47%, Romney 45%

A new Pew Research poll finds 41% of voters surveyed say President Obama will do better in this week’s presidential debate, while 37% expect Mitt Romney to prevail.

This stands in stark contrast to expectations prior to the first presidential debate two weeks ago, which voters expected Obama to win by a 51% to 29% margin.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds Mitt Romney leads President Obama by five points among likely voters in the nation’s 12 top battleground states, 51% to 46%.

Key finding: “As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds female voters much more engaged in the election and increasingly concerned about the deficit and debt issues that favor Romney. The Republican nominee now ties the president among women who are likely voters, 48%-48%, while he leads by 12 points among men.”

Washington Post: “Mitt Romney’s campaign said Monday that it had raised $170.4 million in the month of September, falling just short of the staggering $181 million monthly total reported by President Obama’s reelection campaign.”

Joshua Green: “Until just over a week ago, President Obama’s campaign was on the cusp of doing something unprecedented in modern presidential politics: turning the election into a referendum on the challenger, Mitt Romney. Why is that so special? Because every prior example of an incumbent running for reelection in recent times has wound up being a referendum on the guy in the White House.”

“Those who run the re-election campaigns for sitting presidents are usually loath to admit this, especially when the preceding four years have not been a runaway success. Obama’s campaign is no different.”

“This would have been an impressive bit of jujitsu had Obama been able to
sustain it. But of course he couldn’t. The president’s poor showing in
the first debate, and Romney’s crisp and effective contrast, have broken
the spell. Now Obama is the one trying to reassure frantic supporters
and Romney the one rising in the polls. This suggests the election will
revert to something more like the historical mean.”

Here are the latest polls from the battleground, updated as needed:

Florida: Romney 49%, Obama 48% (Gravis)

Iowa: Obama 48%, Romney 48% (American Research Group)

Pennsylvania: Obama 49%, Romney 45% (Morning Call/Muhlenberg)

Pennsylvania: Obama 51%, Romney 44% (Public Policy Polling)

Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (American Research Group)

Elizabeth Warren (D) announced her U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts raised $12.1 million in the third quarter, the Boston Globe reports.

Meanwhile, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) revealed he had raised $7.45 million during the same span, his best fund-raising quarter so far.

Federal prosecutors and the FBI are in the final stages of a criminal probe into allegations that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) misused campaign money to decorate his house, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The investigation into possible misuse of campaign funds began before Mr. Jackson vanished from the public eye in June. At first, aides said he stopped working to receive treatment for exhaustion, but it was eventually revealed he had been at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., receiving treatment for a bipolar disorder. He returned to his Washington home in September but has remained out of the public eye even as he seeks another term in Congress.”

Chicago Sun Times: “The revelation that Jackson is under
federal scrutiny comes as questions have increasingly swirled around the
congressman’s absence from his official duties in Washington and the
campaign trail.”

A new video captures Jason Thompson, the son of former Wisconsin governor and current U.S. candidate Tommy Thompson (R), at a GOP gathering yesterday saying, “We have the opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago — or Kenya.”

[Read more…]

“I am not goofy enough to be in the House, and I’m not senile enough to be in the Senate.”

— Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), quoted by the AP, adding that he “prefers to be in charge than pay homage to congressional seniority rules.”

Nate Silver: “If the current polls hold, predicting the election outcome will boil down to making a series of educated guesses about the relationship between state and national polls, and between the Electoral College and the popular vote.”

“There have been plenty of elections before when the outcome was highly uncertain down the stretch run or on Election Day itself. But I am not sure that there has been one where different types of polls pointed in opposite directions. Anyone in my business who is not a bit terrified by this set of facts is either lying to himself — or he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg tells Greg Sargent he has identified a key reason Mitt Romney’s last debate performance was a success: Romney successfully grabbed the mantle of change agent.

Said Greenberg: “The danger for Obama is that Romney would become the candidate of
change. Obama has the chance in this debate to
undermine that.”

“This explains Romney’s gains. For months he operated from the flawed
assumption that he could win by making the race all about Obama. Romney
began surging only when he broke through at the debate with an
affirmative case for his own agenda — because voters began entertaining
the idea that Romney represents change.”

Greenberg has new research backing up his point — and counseling Obama on how to prevent it from happening.

Jack Bohrer busts the myth, often repeated by Mitt Romney, that father George Romney dramatically “charged out of the 1964 Republican National Convention over the party’s foot-dragging on civil rights.”

“Only George Romney did not walk out of the 1964 Republican National Convention. He stayed until the very end, formally seconding Goldwater’s eventual nomination and later standing by while an actual walkout took place. He left the convention holding open the possibility of endorsing Goldwater and then, after a unity summit in Hershey, Pennsylvania, momentarily endorsed the Arizona senator. Then he changed his mind while his top aides polled ‘all-white and race-conscious’ Michigan communities for a ‘secret’ white backlash vote against LBJ’s civil rights advances — a backlash that might have made a Goldwater endorsement palatable at home. Finding the Republican label even more unpopular than civil rights in Michigan, Romney ultimately distanced himself from the entire party, including his own moderate Republican allies.”

Ben Smith: “It’s hard to blame Romney for passing on myths given him by his father or his father’s circle, or for having an idealized image of his father.”