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.”
A New York Times reporter met Shahbaz, a scammer who used fake bank alerts to make victims panic. When confronted, he just laughed—no guilt, no remorse.
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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.”
In the mail: The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist by John A. Jenkins.
“The Rehnquist Court, which lasted almost twenty years, was molded in his image. In thirty-three years on the Supreme Court, from 1972 until his death in 2005 at age 80, Rehnquist was at the center of the Court’s dramatic political transformation. He was a partisan, waging a quiet, constant battle to imbue the Court with a deep conservatism favoring government power over individual rights.”
Mitt Romney’s campaign “may be struggling, but his transition operation is moving full steam ahead,” Politico reports.
“The transition effort — while necessary and appropriate for a GOP nominee so close to the election — is a jarring contrast to a campaign that appears on the ropes to many Republican strategists. Receiving no bump from the Tampa convention, Romney is plowing ahead with a methodical approach to staffing his would-be administration, despite the fact that his campaign is said by some to need a radical makeover.”
Glenn Reynolds interviews Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president.
“Even Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson — in no danger of overexposure — is drawing much more press attention than she is. Stein puts that down to fear that if she got more attention, her candidacy would pull votes from the clear favorite in the race for many in the press, President Obama.”
Florida state Rep. Mike Horner (R) ended his re-election campaign “after being named as a client in a racketeering and prostitution case,” the Orlando Sentinel reports.
Said Horner: “I deeply regret decisions I made that are causing my family unjustifiable pain and embarrassment… My family still deserves better from me, as do all my friends, supporters and constituents.”
“We had a bad week — if the election were going to be held tomorrow that
would be a problem, but there’s a lot of ground to cover in the next 42
days.”
— New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R), quoted by Bloomberg, on the state of Mitt Romney’s campaign.
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that voters in 12 key swing states trust President Obama over
Mitt Romney to address issues facing the Medicare system,
50% to 44%.
Obama holds a slightly larger advantage on this issue among
voters nationally, 51% to 43%.
The Los Angeles Times reports Mitt Romney spoke about the concern he had for his wife when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday because of an electrical malfunction.
Said Romney: “I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were. When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems, have a good day. And by good day, I mean fuck off.”
— State Department spokesman Philippe Reines, in an email to BuzzFeed, responding to questions about the department’s handling of the Libyan embassy crisis.
Saturday Night Live interviews people who are still undecided in the presidential election.
Peter Beinart: “The more honest discussions take place behind closed doors, in the
innumerable private fundraisers that Romney and Obama do with their big
givers. Honesty, in fact, is part of what those donors are paying for.
No one shells out $50,000 to listen to the same platitudes that Joe and
Mary Six-Pack hear at a 5,000-person rally in Akron, Ohio. In the
“skybox” society (in Michael Sandel’s parlance) in which we live, the
super-rich don’t simply stand in different lines at the airport; they
experience a different presidential campaign.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.