The End Of The Bounce!

Just in time to keep Republicans out of the panic room, Obama's bounce may have cooled off--so says Nate Silver:

To be sure, Mr. Obama had a fairly strong day of polling on Monday relative to the long-term baseline. But the data was a little bit more equivocal than in polls released over the weekend — which may suggest, at least, that he will make few further gains in the polls.

Even if you believe Silver is a squish who works for the Obama campaign, this is worth watching closely: he puts Obama at +10% to win in November for around 80%. The Princeton Electoral Consortium, for example, has him walking around at 88% likely to win:

Ryan Did Help. The Race Still Isn't Back To Pre-Ryan Levels Of Obamanation ...

What Are People Saying?

PowerLine brings back the Reagan-Carter Gallup Poll:

Imagine Yourself In a Serene Pool Surrounded By a Sudden Shift In Polling For Your Candidate ...

[L]eading up to the campaign’s last days Gallup showed Carter surging, and in October he ostensibly had an eight-point lead. That had to be sheer fiction. Reagan won, of course, in a historic landslide

Ace of Spades finds the WAPO poll showing a tie and goes, hey? Maybe it's not so bad ... Although being tied with Obama isn't great:

It's less a Freak Out that we've fallen -- maybe -- slightly behind than exasperation that something we've been expecting -- for people to realize This isn't working -- isn't happening.

The race appears tied, pretty much. This exasperates many of us -- like me -- because, 1, how the hell???? and 2, I'm getting psychologically burned out from being in a state of anticipation/anxiety.

I agree that Romney maybe needs to change his methods ... and Andrew Sullivan seems to concurr:

Romney should have stuck to a simple "Obama's not working" line, and picked a running mate to reflect that. And stuck with it. Instead, we've had two strategies - a base one, with Ryan and Robertson and Steve King and Sheldon Adelson, and a centrist one, with, er, Ann. The national security card has been taken from Mitt, as have most of the social issues.

This, while not entirely true--Romney, himself is a centrist or, at least, arguably is--is insightful. That plus the fear that going full on Socialist-Communist-Terrorist against Obama will boomerang back in his face makes any move dicey. To this point, Politico (no friend to the red blooded conservative, I'll note), has an article which details a cavalcade of fairly serious conservative voices telling Romney he needs to be more specific about his plans. It includes this depressing bet of explanation:

Why such reticence to go specific? Top campaign officials have explained it this way: In the modern political and media culture, with every day dominated by one side doing a better job than the other of pouncing on facts or, more often, on plausibly defensible distortions or lies, specificity is merely ammunition for the other guys.

I'm afraid they're right ...

We're still dominated by his boring ads. Maybe I'll dissect one ... but here's an ad from a super-pac that, while not terribly convincing, is funny and not boring!