“He attacks the 47 percent of the American people who he says pay no federal taxes.  And he attacks, he, Romney? Attacking someone on taxes? I mean, Woah! That’s like me attacking someone for being passionate in politics.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by ABC News, commenting on Mitt Romney’s remarks which were caught on hidden camera video.

Charlie Cook: “Leading Democratic and Republican pollsters and strategists privately say that the Obama lead is around 4 or 5 points and is neither widening nor narrowing. The convention bounces have dissipated, but Romney’s negatives remain quite high and are not diminishing. In the Gallup three-week super-samples–almost 10,000 interviews–the percentage of Democrats saying that they will definitely vote has moved up to the point that it is now virtually tied with Republicans.”

The Obama campaign launched a second TV ad slamming Mitt Romney over his “47%” hidden camera video remarks, NBC News reports.

The ad will run in eight states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia. The first TV ad seizing using the hidden camera video — released yesterday — was aimed to just Ohio.

[Read more…]

Dick Morris told Sean Hannity that, “barring any debate debacle,” Mitt Romney will win the presidential election by “4 or 5 points” and will win Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

[Read more…]

Mitt Romney political director Rich Beeson told BuzzFeed the campaign’s internal polls are telling a different story than the public polls.

Said Beeson: “The public polls are what the public polls are. I kind of hope the Obama campaign is basing their campaign decisions on the public polls… I have great faith in our data.”

He added, “We are, by any stretch, inside the margin of error in Ohio.”

Police investigating the weekend break-in at Rep. Michael Grimm’s (R-NY) campaign office tell the New York Times that “experts had examined the campaign’s computer systems and concluded that nothing had been erased or tampered with” and that “there was no evidence that an intruder had been in the office.”

“At this point, there is no indication that it was anything other than an act of vandalism.”

However, Grimm told the Staten Island Advance that the incident was nothing less than an “attack on free elections.”

Update: The AP reports police now say a teenager has admitted to the vandalism.

Greg Sargent: “Mitt Romney might still win this election, but he’s now stuck in a trap that will be difficult to escape. Americans are rejecting his argument that they should view their choice mostly as a referendum on Obama’s economic performance, because they blame the sluggish recovery on the magnitude of the mess Obama inherited from George W. Bush, and believe things will get better in Obama’s second term. That is putting pressure on Romney to be more specific about why his alternative, such as it is, would spark a faster recovery than is occurring under Obama.”

“But Romney can’t be too much more specific about that alternative, because it risks reminding voters of the degree to which his policies resemble those of the aforementioned George W. Bush, under whom the meltdown happened in the first place.”

Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) staffers chanted Indian “war whoops” and made “tomahawk chops” during a campaign rally for the senator this week, WCVB-TV reports.

A video shows Brown staffers holding campaign signs “chanting and making tomahawk chops, presumably in reference to Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Cherokee heritage.”

[Read more…]

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

Florida: Obama 51%, Romney 47% (Washington Post)

Nevada: Obama 52%, Romney 43% (PPP/LCV)

Nevada: Obama 46%, Romney 46% (Bolger)

Ohio: Obama 52%, Romney 44% (Washington Post)

Ohio: Obama 45%, Romney 44% (Gravis)

Pennsylvania: Obama 48%, Romney 40% (Mercyhurst University

Mitt Romney got a warm introduction from Bill Clinton before of his speech at the Clinton Global Initiative, Politico reports.

Romney thanked Clinton: “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this election by the way it’s that a few words from Bill Clinton can do a lot of good.”

He joked that he would now wait a few days for his “bounce.”

National Journal: “It has become a recurring refrain among some Republican pundits and observers each time a new poll shows President Obama or downballot Democrats doing well: Check the party composition.”

“Critics allege that pollsters are interviewing too many Democrats — and too few Republicans or independents — and artificially inflating the Democratic candidates’ performance. Pollsters counter that the results they are finding reflect slight changes in public sentiment — and, moreover, adjusting their polls to match arbitrary party-identification targets would be unscientific.”

Just published: Elephant in the Room: Washington in the Bush Years by Paul Glastris and Steve Benen.

The book explores why, despite efforts to airbrush him out of today’s political conversation, George W. Bush remains central to it.

First Read: “We noted yesterday the importance of Ohio in this presidential election and to Romney. But it’s hard to overstate it – this may be the make-or-break week for the campaign in the state. If this week’s bus tour doesn’t move the needle, as the Romney campaign might say, they very well could decide to all but write off the Buckeye State. They won’t say it explicitly; they’ll go through the motions, but they may have no choice than to try and shore up or make in roads in places like Wisconsin, Colorado Florida, and Virginia.”

Alex Burns: “Ohio isn’t the only reason why national Republicans are so pessimistic
about Romney’s campaign right now, but it is one of the big reasons, and
it’s why the Romney campaign’s continued references to national
tracking polls are wide of the mark. Even if Romney managed to move the
national campaign 2 to 3 points in his direction, it would probably
leave him short of a win unless he improved his position in Ohio by a
bigger margin.”

“This guy has gotten more free passes than a 12-year-old boy at a fair.”

— Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), in an interview with the Washington Post, on President Obama.

New York Times: “Mr. Obama was scheduled to attend a reception for world leaders
at the United Nations on Monday night. But a campaign adviser
acknowledged privately that in this election year, campaigning trumped
meetings with world leaders. ‘Look, if he met with one leader, he would
have to meet with 10,’ the aide said, speaking on the condition of
anonymity.”

President Obama “is running as the kind of careful, poll-watching politician he disdained the first time he ran for president,” Politico reports.

“Obama 2012 has become the silver-templed soul of caution, embracing Napoleon’s dictum of ‘never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’… In doing so, Obama’s campaign team is seeking to take advantage of Romney’s own well-chronicled reluctance, at least so far, to release a slate of policy proposals comparable to the detailed blueprints put forth by Obama and other candidates four years ago.”