John Avlon compiles a list of 89 anti-Obama books that make outrageous and false claims about the president.
“We will look back on birtherism and some of the other strange conspiracy theories that have clustered around him as, at the very least, vestigial remnants of racism. The sheer tonnage of hate and lies directed his way in the White House is stunning and it will seem somewhere between stupid, silly, and sad in the future.”
With a new poll showing him just two points behind in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, Rep. Todd Akin (R) released a blistering new ad accusing Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) of corruption.
While President Obama’s average lead in Ohio is just 2.3 points, Mitt Romney doesn’t lead in a single poll. In Nevada, Obama’s edge is 2.5 points and Romney has led in just one poll this entire year. In Wisconsin, Romney trails by just 2.3 points but hasn’t led in a single poll since August.
Harry Enten notes that “in only one in 150 of the state contests in the last three presidential elections was there an instance of a candidate winning a state where he didn’t hold the edge in at least a single poll in the closing weeks of the campaign.”
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The conservative Super PAC that had already plowed $2 million into Rep. Joe Walsh’s (R-IL) re-election race and had threatened to put in an additional $2.5 million to “bury” Tammy Duckworth (D), is now putting its money elsewhere, the Chicago Sun Times reports.
“The decision comes a week after Walsh, already a flame thrower, made national headlines by declaring that abortion was never necessary to save the life of a mother. In an atypical move, he held a news conference the next day to clarify his remarks.”
A new Chicago Tribune/WGN poll finds Duckworth leading by 10 points, 50% to 40%.
Walter Shapiro: “The dirty secret of campaign journalism for the next 11 days is that
there is no way for conscientious reporters to give readers what they
crave most of all–advance knowledge of who is going to win the election.
We have reached the point in the campaign when the polls are too close
and the dictates of spin too intense for anyone but a fool (or a TV
pundit) to offer anything more than tentative guesses about who is going
to be inaugurated on January 20.”
“When I was younger–and cockier about divining the future–I was convinced
that if you had the right sources within a campaign, you could figure
out the gist of their internal polling by their off-the-record mood and
body language. So I was privy to the buoyant mood at the upper levels of
the John Kerry campaign during the final heady week of the 2004
campaign. Sometimes in politics, though, the most potent spin comes from
the lies that campaign strategists tell themselves as they interpret
ambiguous information.”
“Yes… I think, at this point, this is breaking down.”
— Barack Obama, in a U.S. Senate debate in 2004, on whether he favored eliminating the electoral college.
President Obama is out with a new closing ad in several key swing states this morning, including Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia.
The spot asks voters to remember when it’s “just you” in the voting booth what Mitt Romney’s policies will mean.
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Missouri finds Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) with a narrow lead over Rep. Todd Akin (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 45% to 43%.
Akin is benefiting from McCaskill’s “seemingly intractable favorability rating, one of the few constants in a race of dizzying changes this year. The poll found that while McCaskill has a much higher favorable rating than Akin does — at 40%, to his 28% — she also has the higher unfavorable rating, at 47% to his 42%.”
Update: McCaskill reponds releasing an internal poll showing her with a huge, 52% to 39% lead. National Journal suggests one reason to believe this poll is that the DSCC is already cutting ad spending in the state.
The Washington Post notes most polls at this moment suggest Mitt Romney is in the lead nationally, but surveys in the nine or so swing states are registering a narrow advantage for President Obama.
“So here’s a prospect worth contemplating: What if Romney carries the popular vote, but Obama regains the presidency by winning 270 votes or more in the electoral college?”
“That kind of split decision between the electorate and the electoral college would mark the fifth time in American history — and the second time in a dozen years — that the person who occupies the White House was not the one who got the most votes on Election Day.”
Jason Sattler: Mitt Romney is losing the election that matters.
An Indiana man told ABC News he auctioned off space on the side of his head, where he tattooed Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign “R” logo in a 5-by-2-inch spot for a bid of $15,000.
Said Eric Hartsburg: “I am a registered Republican and a Romney supporter. I didn’t mind getting this tattoo because it is something that I could live with and it’s something that I believe in.”
“Colin Powell, interestingly enough, said that Obama got us out of Iraq. But it was Colin Powell, with his testimony before the U.N. Security Council, that got us into Iraq.”
— Sen. John McCain, quoted by the National Review, upset with the former Secretary of State’s endorsement of President Obama.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was taken to the emergency room at University Medical Center in Las Vegas following a traffic accident, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.
A Las Vegas police spokesman said Reid was the only person transported to the hospital, mainly for “minor rib injuries.”
A new application will turn your WiFi access point into a campaign tool by replacing images seen during normal web browsing with those of your preferred candidate and a message reminding people to vote.
BuzzFeed finds the Romney campaign modified an image of a Nevada campaign rally to exaggerate the size of the crowd.
President Obama and Mitt Romney are both on pace to raise more than $1 billion with their parties by Election Day, the New York Times reports.
“From the beginning of 2011 through Oct. 17, Mr. Obama and the Democrats raised about $1.06 billion, and Mr. Romney and the Republicans collected $954 million… The overall totals do not include hundreds of millions of dollars being raised and spent by “super PACs” and other outside groups, mostly to benefit Mr. Romney and other Republicans.”
Current TV, the ratings-challenged cable network started by former Vice
President Al Gore, has put itself up for sale, the New York Post reports.
Psychology Today: “If the subject isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, misinformation is more likely to take hold, according to the researchers. They point out that rejecting false information requires more cognitive effort than just taking it in. That is, weighing how plausible a message is, or assessing the reliability of its source, is more difficult, cognitively, than simply accepting that the message is true. In short, it takes more mental work. And if the topic isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, the misinformation is more likely to take hold.”
“Moreover, when you do take the time to evaluate a claim or allegation,
you’re likely to pay attention just to a limited number of features, the
study found. For example: Does the information fit with other things
you already believe? Does it make a coherent story with what you already
know? Does it come from a credible source? And do others believe it?”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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