A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds respondents think Joe Biden performed better than Paul Ryan in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate, 42% to 35%.

The Week: “There were no devastating gaffes in Thursday’s vice presidential debate. Still, both Biden and Ryan made potentially costly unforced errors.”

Mitt Romney continues to surge in both national and swing state polls and Nate Silver now gives him a 38.9% chance of winning the presidential election.

“The only really good news for Democrats is that Mr. Obama had built up a large enough cushion that he could withstand a lot of damage without becoming the underdog. The forecast model still has him clinging to narrow leads in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nevada, states that in some combination would give him 270 electoral votes.”

The Week: Is Romney taking over in the swing states?

Mitt Romney and his allies “are banking heavily on a high-risk, high-reward media strategy in the final weeks of the campaign, hoping that burying President Obama in ads will give them a crucial edge on Election Day,” the Washington Post reports.

“Ad purchases in the presidential race doubled or in some cases tripled last week in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Virginia, tracking data show. The surge is being driven by Romney and well-funded allies, who decided against running more ads earlier in the campaign in favor of a big bang at the end.”

Mitt Romney is preparing for his second debate with President Obama “but taking time to tell voters in Ohio that enthusiasm for him is surging both in this critical state and across the country,” the AP reports.

“Obama was hunkering down Saturday in Virginia to go over the game plan for the town-hall debate with Romney. But his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday spoke of an industry that’s critical to Ohio, another battleground state and perhaps the most important to his Republican opponent’s White House hopes.”

They face off on Tuesday night.

Even though recent swing state polling shows President Obama maintaining a lead over Mitt Romney, Nate Silver says the president’s Electoral College advantage is build on a shaky foundation.

“Even if one grants Ohio to Mr. Obama, however, that would not seal victory for him. He would still need to win some other combination of states; his path of least resistance probably flows through Wisconsin, and then either Iowa or Nevada.”

“Iowa, in particular, is a crucial state that has been thinly polled all year. (The FiveThirtyEight model, in fact, calculates that Iowa is slightly more essential to the Electoral College than Florida, despite having many fewer electoral votes.) There has been just one poll of Iowa since the debates, and while it gave Mr. Obama the lead, it was an automated poll that probably does not merit too much weight.”

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), the pro-life lawmaker who recorded a phone conversation urging his mistress to get an abortion, now says in his first public comments that the woman turned out not to be pregnant, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports.

A transcript of the phone call shows DesJarlais saying, “You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one.”

He then appeared to blame the woman for becoming pregnant: “You lied to me about something that caused us to be in this situation, and that’s not my fault, that’s yours.

The woman responded: “Well, it’s your fault for sleeping with your patient.”

DesJarlais blamed “a disgruntled, defeated ex-congressman, a vindictive ex-wife, and a desperate Democratic candidate” for dredging up details from his past.

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states:

Colorado: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (Denver Post)

Florida: Romney 49%, Obama 46% (American Research Group)

Florida: Romney 51%, Obama 47% (Rasmussen)

Michigan: Obama 52%, Romney 45% (Rasmussen)

New Hampshire: Romney 50%, Obama 46% (American Research Group)

North Carolina: Obama 46%, Romney 45% (High Point University)

Virginia: Romney 49%, Obama 47% (Rasmussen)

Peter Berg, the writer-director of the Friday Night Lights movie and television series, is not pleased that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has co-opted a phrase from the show for his campaign appearances.

In a letter to the Romney campaign obtained by the Hollywood Reporter, Berg calls the use of “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” an act of stealing.

Writes Berg: “Your politics and campaign are clearly not aligned with the themes we portrayed in our series. The only relevant comparison that I see between your campaign and Friday Night Lights is in the character of Buddy Garrity — who turned his back on American car manufacturers selling imported cars from Japan.”

“Well, I’ve taken a look at both sides of the thing. And it seems to me that evolution takes a tremendous amount of faith. To have all of a sudden all of the different things that have to be lined up, to create something as sophisticated as life, it takes a lot of faith. I don’t see it as even as a matter of science, because I don’t know if you can prove one or the other.”

— Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), from a recording obtained by Think Progress at a Tea Party meeting this week.

Jonathan Chait: “The contrast with Obama lies not merely in their very — very, very — different energy levels. Obama approaches debates with the same intellectual method he uses in his books, his speeches, and his policy discussions. He instinctively tries to find common ground first, trying to work within the framework his opponent has established and acknowledge what he agrees with before delineating his disagreements.”

“Biden does not bother. He simply casts aside his opponent’s frame and works within his own. He did not ignore Ryan’s arguments, but he barreled over them like an enraged truck driver plowing over orange cones, before moving on to his own intellectual turf. Sometimes he barreled so fast his points were wrong or incomprehensible… But it was a highly effective way to handle the smarmy evasions that Ryan predictably served up.”

Associated Press: Love him or hate him, it was all Joe.

John Sides: “Here’s some breaking news: the kind of people who choose to watch a vice-presidential debate instead of baseball or football or a cooking show are not sensitive
souls who curl up into a ball at the first sign of disagreement between
politicians.  People who choose to watch political conflict can deal
with it.  Those who can’t — or just aren’t interested in the first
place — are watching something else.  Research by political scientists Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson shows this.”

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) released a brutal ad featuring a former boss of challenger Richard Carmona (D) saying she once found him angrily pounding on her door in the middle of the night and accusing him of “issues with anger, with ethics, and with women.”

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