First Read notes the Mourdock story couldn’t have come at a worse time for Mitt Romney and the GOP, with President Obama extended the story with his comments on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Said Obama: “Let me make a very simple proposition, rape is rape. It is a crime. So these various distinctions about rape don’t make very much sense to me… The second thing this underscores though this is why you don’t want a bunch of politicians, mostly male making decisions about women’s health care decisions.”

“The Obama camp also is up with a web video linking Mourdock to Romney and Paul Ryan. But the real potential blow to Mourdock (and thus the GOP’s chances of winning back the Senate)? John McCain’s endorsement is now up in the air.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Wall Street Journal again that she’s not going to run for president in 2016: “I have ruled it out. It’s important for me to step off this incredibly high wire I’ve been on, to take stock of the rest of my life.”

But she added: “I will always want to be in service to my country.”

President Obama explained to Rolling Stone Bill Clinton’s prominent role in his re-election campaign.

Said Obama: “Our relationship is terrific. He did a masterful job, obviously, at the convention. … I’m talking to him regularly, and he has given me good advice. … The biggest challenge we’ve always had is that unlike FDR – who came into office when the economy had already bottomed out, so people understood that everything done subsequently to his election was making things better — I came in just as we were sliding. Because of the actions we took, we averted a Great Depression — but in the process, we also muddied up the political narrative, because it allowed somebody like Romney to somehow blame my policies for the mess that the previous administration created. Bill Clinton can point that out in ways that are really helpful and really powerful.”

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign announced Clinton will appear at rallies with the president on Monday in Florida, Virginia and Ohio.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for re-election in an interview with CBS News.

Explained Powell: “When he took over, the country was in very very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment peaked a few months later at 10 percent. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing, the housing was start[ing] to collapse and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it’s starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising.”

“This all dates back to when we were growing up together in Kenya. We had constant run-ins on the soccer field. He wasn’t very
good and resented it. When we finally moved to America I thought it
would be over.”

— President Obama, on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, joking about Donald Trump’s latest challenge.

[Read more…]

Jon Ralston: “Any reasonable analysis of the early voting numbers so far shows that the Democratic machine is crushing the Republicans’ Rube Goldberg contraption.”

“I have been reliably told that Romney’s internals in Nevada show him up a point – but some of those folks are smart enough to give the margin of error to the Democratic machine. But that makes it a race, so they aren’t going anywhere.”

“Obama’s polls here consistently have shown him up by 5-8 points. Mark Mellman, who consistently showed Harry Reid winning in 2010, is doing those surveys.”

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds Mitt Romney has erased President Obama’s 16-point advantage among women, while the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney’s edge among men.

Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favored by 47% of likely voters and Obama by 45%, a result within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

Harry Enten: “Four years ago, then-candidate Obama said he could heal the divisions of our country. Those who know anything about voting pattern demographics were suspicious that Obama could accomplish this goal. With this year’s election close at hand, we can now see if the president has come closer to reaching his objective. The polls indicate that voting divisions for this year’s presidential race have either not closed or have actually expanded to near-record extents.” 

President Obama and his allies “have aired more ads in battleground states this month than Mitt Romney and his supporters, despite being outspent by the Republican nominee and GOP groups,” the Washington Post reports.

“Obama has a key advantage over Romney by raising the bulk of his money through his campaign committee, which qualifies for discounted ad rates under federal election laws. That can allow Obama to pay much less for the same ads compared with conservative super PACs and other outside groups, which don’t qualify for such rates.”

“Unlike Obama, Romney also
bought relatively little ad time in advance — which is cheaper — and has
tended to choose more expensive ad spots with guaranteed placements.”

Here are the latest polls from the battleground, updated through the day:

Nevada: Obama 50%, Romney 48% (Rasmussen)

Nevada: Obama 51%, Romney 47% (Public Policy Polling)

New Hampshire: Romney 50%, Obama 48% (Rasmussen)

New Hampshire: Obama 48%, Romney 45% (Lake Research)

Ohio: Obama 49%, Romney 44% (Time)

Ohio: Obama 47%, Romney 44% (SurveyUSA)

Ohio: Obama 48%, Romney 48% (Rasmussen)

Ohio: Obama 46%, Romney 44% (Lake Resaearch)

Virginia: Obama 50%, Romney 43% (Old Dominion University)

Virginia: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (Newsmax/Zogby)

The latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll finds President Obama had a lead of 53% to 42% among the 17% of the surveyed registered voters who said they had already cast
their vote.

In the crucial swing state of Ohio, a new Time poll finds Obama holds a two-to-one lead over Romney among those who have voted early, 60% to 30%.

Molly Ball: “We may not be able to fully size up the campaigns’ ground games and
their effect until Election Day — and maybe not even then. But what
struck me most, in talking to Republicans about their ground game, was
the extent to which they admitted they weren’t even playing the game.”

David Gergen: “In the pivotal state of Ohio, for example, the Obama campaign has three times as many offices, often captained by experienced young
people. By contrast, a major Republican figure in the state, throwing up
his hands, told me that the Romney field team looked like a high school
civics class.”

Bill Clinton appears in another TV ad: “The stuff some folks are saying about President Obama sound kind of familiar. The same people said my ideas destroyed jobs–they called me every name in the book.”

Mark Halperin: “Some additional Bill Clinton events for Obama will be announced in the coming days, likely pairing him with other big names, a la his hugely successful Ohio appearance with Bruce Springsteen.”

[Read more…]

Nate Cohn: “The polls are pretty good, but they are not perfect, and with observers paying so much attention to the slight distinctions between Obama’s 1.9 point lead in Ohio and .6 point lead in Virginia, unrealistic levels of precision may be necessary to avoid surprises. And that’s before accounting for the possibility that the race could shift over the final two weeks in subtle ways that move particular demographic groups and states without similar changes in others. The nine battleground states are so close and so diverse that late movement among specific demographic groups or slight errors in the polling could easily reshape the electoral map before November 6.”

“Direct those questions to Boston because Donald Trump is Mitt Romney’s biggest supporter, so he owns everything he says.”

— David Plouffe, quoted by Politico, when asked about Trump’s much-hyped video announcement today.

Here are the latest tracking polls of the presidential race:

Gallup: Romney 50%, Obama 47%

IBD/TIPP: Obama 47%, Romney 44%

RAND: Obama 49%, Romney 45%

Rasmussen: Romney 50%, Obama 46%

Reuters/Ipsos: Romney 47%, Obama 46%

Public Policy Polling: Obama 48%, Romney 48%

UPI/CVoter: Obama 49%, Romney 47%

Washington Post/ABC News: Romney 49%, Obama 48%