It is too good to be true. Keep donating/door-knocking/registering/etc., Citizens!

If the polls show a 60%-39% support for President Obama to Governor Romney, then I would consider the race to be pretty much over. However, it is still pretty close in some battleground states, where the lead can still change in the next month.

Romney is not out of it, but he can't continue to campaign like this, or have every news cycle focus on his huge mistakes and his campaign is listless.

How is he polling? Does "real America" think he's doing as badly as we liberal commie pinkos do?

We can't assume anything. It would lead to complacency. We cannot afford that. We must work as if we're behind. Double the donations to Obama. Work harder. There's too much at stake.

Agreed @1 this fight is FAR from over. The republican establishment has known for a long time now that Rmoney was DoA and so instead of attempting to make it work they are tirelessly working to suppress voters in key states with new draconian, unconstitutional "voter fraud" regulations. And they aren't even being subtle about their intentions behind it! Most of the Republican governors and lawmakers pushing these horrendous laws have already stated publicly the real reason for fighting this: to win Romney their states (by suppressing opposing votes)

So yes- Rmoney is a disaster. He's a horrible, sociopathic asshole who is ruining his own campaign. But this does not mean we shouldn't expend as much energy as possible getting the word out even more and continuing to donate.

And it doesn't mean you should stop with the 'Rmoney' mockery, Mudede. We need that now more than ever.

The better one is "Mitt Romney's campaign is so dead the Mormon church just baptized it"

People who will vote for Rmoney don't care about these missteps.

Short of Romney pitchforking babies on a special production of the Oprah show, this is going to be a very very close election, which could be won by voter-denial or Diebold-ish tactics in swing states. You are still dealing with a country with 45% snake-handlers.

A few weeks ago I was saying Mitt would be better off just issuing a statement that he's opposed to health care reform, then going into hiding. Now I'm thinking Maybe it's Obama who'd be better off in hiding. Not that he can't run a competent campaign, but Mitt's self-destructiveness is just awe-inspiring.

The Rmoney thing was weird & a little distracting to see in print. It'd always take me a split second longer to read any sentence that contained it for whatever reason.

@ 3, polls always lag by a few days. Pay special attention to them in the coming days, pay attention to the crosstabs when provided, and look most for the dates 9/19-9/20 for when they were conducted. We'll know what kind of impact this has had then.

I saw a comment on another blog that Romney has scored an "own goal hat trick." THAT is my favorite observation as of right now.

Good Afternoon Charles,
After this escapade, I'm reminded of something Michael Kingsley onced remarked: "A gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth".

Romney committed a gaffe. No doubt about that. But, the Seattle Times had this to say:

"Politicians are frequently more candid when speaking at fundraisers that are closed to the media than they are at public events; to supporters who have paid handsomely to see them, they offer up inside takes on their campaigns, their policies and their world views. Obama found himself in similar circumstances in 2008, when he was covertly taped at a fundraiser saying that "bitter" small-town voters "cling to guns or religion."

In Romney's case, his argument that nearly half of the American population pays no income taxes is accurate, at least in recent years. But it fails to note that even those Americans pay other taxes, including the federal payroll tax, state taxes and local taxes. Most of those who pay no taxes at all are destitute, disabled or elderly."

Of course, that's not a defense of what Romney said but he should recover. Beware, that Pres. Obama like Romney is human and could do the same thing. @2 & 5 are correct. It isn't over yet.

We'll see what happens.

I agree that Obama is beating the crap out of Romney during the campaign, but unfortunately I don't think that most Americans vote based on who's the better campaigner.

Part of it is personality, but that's already baked in. The few people who didn't already know that Romney's a jerk or don't care will be swayed by recent events, but that's not a lot of people.

Part of it is the economy, and that's bad but probably not bad enough to be decisive.

Part of it is advertising. Romney will have a 3:1 advantage in the closing weeks of the campaign. This point is the main one that worries me.

The debates only matter if someone makes a huge gaffe. That's a possibility, but Romney is usually able to avoid them, and gaffes of that kind are way out of character for Obama. The big exception for Romney I can think of is his $10,000 bet in one of the GOP debates. If he does that, he'll be hurt.

But mostly I think that people have decided and the few people who haven't will make the decision based on TV ads. Scary, but true. Given that, we should assume that Obama is doing a couple percent worse than his current polling numbers.

#16, Obama beat the crap out of Romney a couple months ago. Then the Democrats put on a great TV show. Since then, they've done what Democratic candidates always seem to do: Sit back on their smug, self-satisfied haunches and wait for the public to come to them. When will they ever fucking learn?

Remember: Obama's convention bounce has totally disappeared, all while Romney has supposedly been "melting down." Where are Obama's surrogate pit bulls? What did he do, knock out their teeth and replace them with foam rubber dentures?