The AP notes Mitt Romney’s campaign is looking for more routes to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.

“They are weighing whether to shift resources from North Carolina, where Republicans express confidence of winning, into states long considered safe territory for President Barack Obama, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”

First Read: “This also caught our eye yesterday: Romney didn’t mention Libya — or the exchange on the topic from Tuesday’s debate — during two campaign stops in Virginia yesterday. Instead, Romney focused on the economy and what he said was Obama’s failure to lay out a vision for a second term.”

“By the way, it’s worth echoing what Mike Allen wrote this morning in Politico: This is the SECOND time Romney has given Obama a political ‘get out of jail’ free card on Libya. It only raises the stakes for Romney for the third debate, focused solely on foreign policies. He has to be very careful not to walk into any more rhetorical traps which are much easier to fall into on an issue that isn’t second nature to the challenger.”

President Obama “plans to hold his election-night rally at Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, a move aimed at easing concerns over weather and security,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

“Given the indoor location, the event seems unlikely to match the electric atmosphere of Obama’s 2008 outdoor victory rally in Grant Park. That event drew an estimated 240,000 people downtown and created picturesque images of the city’s skyline that were seen worldwide.”

President Obama “is prepared to veto legislation to block year-end tax hikes and spending cuts, collectively known as the ‘fiscal cliff,’ unless Republicans bow to his demand to raise tax rates for the wealthy,” the Washington Post reports.

“Freed from the political and economic constraints that have tied his hands in the past, Obama is ready to play hardball with Republicans, who have so far successfully resisted a deal to tame the debt that includes higher taxes… In the days after the November election, the tables will be turned: Taxes are scheduled to rise dramatically in January for people at all income levels, and Republicans will be unable to stop those automatic increases alone.”

New York Times: “After three debates and four and a half hours of nationally televised exchanges, Americans have learned that President Obama has a smaller pension than his opponent and Mitt Romney wants to get Big Bird’s beak out of the federal trough, that Joseph R. Biden Jr. likes to smile and Paul D. Ryan drinks lots of water.”

“But they have not learned as much about what the next four years might look like. With tens of millions of Americans tuning in to the debates, the four candidates for president and vice president have spent most of their time on the biggest public stage of the campaign fighting more about what happened in the last term than what should happen in the next.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced he “will be making an eight figure independent spending campaign that will support moderates on both sides of the aisle — as well as independents — who have shown a willingness to work in a bi-partisan fashion.”

“Well, you want to jump out of your seat and rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him.”

— Tagg Romney, in an interview on WPTF-AM, when asked how it felt to hear President Obama call his father a liar during last night’s debate.

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

New Hampshire: Obama 50%, Romney 49% (Rasmussen)

Nevada: Obama 48%, Romney 45% (SurveyUSA)

Nevada: Obama 50%, Romney 47% (Rasmussen)

Nevada: Obama 50%, Romney 43% (Project for a New America)

Ohio: Obama 45%, Romney 42% (SurveyUSA)

Wisconsin: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (Marquette Law)

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) top legislative aide said that his boss had told him he had decided to run for re-election in 2014 — “a definitive statement that seemed to put to rest speculation over the longest-serving Texas chief executive’s future candidacy,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

But a spokeswoman for Perry quickly rebuffed the statement from her colleague, saying, “The only person to make that announcement is Governor Perry.”

Hollywood Reporter: “Early ratings for cable network coverage of Tuesday’s presidential debate have numbers surging ahead of the first showdown between President Obama and Mitt Romney earlier this month…”

“Nielsen figures have FNC’s telecast of the town hall debate matching its highest ratings ever (Sarah Palin and Joe Biden’s 2008 vice presidential debate) with 11.1 million viewers. On par with that record, FNC also scored a demo win with 3.46 million adults 25-54. Though its returns are shy of broadcast competition in NBC and ABC, it also topped CBS.”

“You all saw the man that I have sat with every day on average four
to six hours a day.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by Politico, on President Obama’s debate performance.

If you nearly get into a fight with your opponent at a candidate’s forum, you have know that it’s going to end up in a political ad.

[Read more…]

Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) tweeted last night that Mitt Romney “shot his whole wad” and repeatedly spelled President Obama’s name “Oboma,” the Washington City Paper notes. The tweets prompted at least one person to ask if she was drunk.

“Whatever it was, Norton was acting pretty sober this morning when, after attention from DCist
and elsewhere, she mass-deleted  tweets from last night and the
vice-presidential debate, as well as some seemingly-unrelated tweets
that also mentioned the president. Fortunately, they were all grabbed by the Sunlight Foundation.”

The Gallup daily tracking poll shows Mitt Romney has opened up a six point lead over President Obama among likely voters, 51% to 45%.

It’s the first time he’s had a lead outside the survey’s margin of error.

Markos Moulitsas: “Romney’s entire advantage comes from a massive lead in the South. Now
sure, some of that may be Florida, but the state-level polling certainly
doesn’t show that. So Romney is driving up big margins in Texas,
Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other such presidentially irrelevant
states?”

“If you look at the movie, he didn’t say it. Somebody in the
audience said it and he repeated it, and I’ve talked to him about it and
he apologized and that’s it.”

— Tommy Thompson (R), quoted by the AP, on remarks by his son caught on video suggesting President Obama should go back “to Chicgao — or Kenya.”

From President Obama’s Twitter feed:

Taegan Goddard: “He kept Romney on the defensive and came prepared … It was devastatingly effective.” OFA.BO/Qt2KiR #ObamaWinsDebate

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 17, 2012