This isn't about polls, per se. It's bigger than that.

Trende's argument -- I feel stupid digesting it because he's perfectly succinct and clear in explaining it himself -- is that this election's real story is "Obama vs. Gravity," or "Obama vs. the Fundamentals Which Are Largely Against Him." Being a "bandwagon" sort of candidate, it's crucial for him to maintain the Winner's Edit -- like in a reality TV show, you know who's going to win or lose based on who gets the Winner's Edit, and who gets the Loser's Edit.

The pattern of the race, and the polls, has been this: Obama wins a newscycle, big, for whatever reason, and ekes out a 4-6 point lead. But then the public remembers about the fundamentals of the state of the nation, and that lead begins to deteriorate down to about 2 points, or a tie. And at that point Obama comes out with another big attack on Romney (it's almost always an attack blitz) and pushes his lead up... for a time. Until gravity overtakes that again, and pulls it back down, in which case it's time for the Next Big Narrative-Grabbing Attack.

It's not so much a "theory" as "exactly what's happened."

He notes the downside of this strategy-- the bandwagon effect relies on an all but permanent Winner's Edit. What happens when he starts to lose? Compare the Virtuous Cycle (for the White House) that the Winner's Edit provides him with the Vicious Cycle the Loser's Edit saddles him with:

First, the bandwagon effect affects fundraising. Once you move outside the partisan core, people like to back winners. This is especially true of the business community. By assiduously cultivating its front-runner status, the Obama campaign has aided its ability to press future arguments.

Second, maintaining a lead allows greater leeway in the arguments it can make. Something like the “cancer ad” from August looks hard-hitting from a campaign that is leading (and I certainly include candidate super PACs as part of the “campaign”), but would probably be described as “desperate” from one that is losing.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it affects press portrayals of the candidates and party enthusiasm. This is the most important thing here: I still think the default expectation here has been that Obama should be losing. “Defying gravity” is hardly an original motif for this election, after all.

So the view that Obama is going to lose can -- or at least could have -- quickly become the conventional wisdom. If that happens, we would end up with a vicious cycle that looks something like this: The Democratic base becomes downtrodden, its enthusiasm falls, the rightÂ’s enthusiasm skyrockets, the likely-voter screens skew more Republican, and Obama falls even further behind in the polls. Instead, we have a campaign where everyone marvels at Obama's constant lead, further adding to the mythos surrounding his supposed inability to lose.

This is why the Oct. 3 debate really might have marked an important, structural change point in the campaign.

As Trende notes, this has an important impact on media coverage.

There are a lot of things Obama doesn't want to be on the front pages of newspapers, from the economy to the Benghazi Massacre, the negligence of that, and the deliberate cover-up. So long as Obama's winning, the press can pretend it's "just reporting the news" by just talking up his winning campaign. That's news, too. Isn't it? And if the press seems to be overcovering the horserace aspect while ignoring Obama's many failures... well, they'll just note "we overcovered the horserace" on November 15th and then go about their business.

But if he's losing, the press is either going to talk about process issues -- Why is he losing? Where did he lose it? -- or these other issues Obama also doesn't want to make headlines.

The Winner's Edit permits the press to hide all that, to focus on Happy Things.

But if he's losing, they don't have that cover. It's either This Bad Thing or That Bad Thing.

Of course, given that Obama's campaign has consisted of deploying a Kill Romney meme every time he gets behind, or close to behind, one has to worry what their last couple of cards are.

A really terrific piece that you'll be poorer for for not reading. Just seems to reveal so much that has been mysterious.

Bonus: Gallup Likely Voting polls began being published today.

They said the polls would "wipe out the president's lead" and result in a tie; they lowballed it (or they said this before last night's polling came in).

It's 49-47, advantage Romney, and their seven-day track still has pre-debate numbers in it from Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. (I assume that most of Wednesday's calls were placed before the 9 PM Eastern debate.)

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (99)
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BOOM.

+2 DailyKos
+4 Pew
+1 ARG
EVEN Rasmussen
EVEN Zogby
-1 GWU

Strange days when Rasmussen is a good poll for Obama.

Posted by: CAC at 09:01 AM | Comments (107)
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Y'all can get excited over Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada.

But I am extra giddy because my white whale has indeed returned.

And just think: all it took was 90 minutes.

The regional breakdown is pretty damning if one statistic holds. Look at SEPA (Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, Chester counties). Republicans haven't lead in the Philadelphia burbs in 24 years.

Posted by: CAC at 08:41 AM | Comments (175)
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As Twitchy said, someone needs to keep an eye on the despondant, excitable Andrew Sullivan.

Whose tears are flowing even more freely now.

But back to the poll. They have it 49-47, advantage Romney, Romney's first lead all year.

One bit of spin they offer, which I'm not sure is spin-- Romney's biggest nights were Thursday and Friday, after the debate. They claim (and this may be true) that that bounce dissipated over the weekend in Rasmussen and Gallup; making it a bounce and not a lasting advantage.

Guess we'll have to see.

More: Romney is now barely ahead, 49-47, in Rasmussen's swing-state polling; ARG has him slipping into a a one-point edge in Ohio, 48-47.

These are all MoE figures but as polling tends to overstate Democrat support and understate Republican support, I think it's more likely than not they are showing a small, but real, lead.

Meanwhile, Zogby -- remember when he used to matter? -- says it's a tie, but Romney leads on key issues.

Little more than a week ago, heading into the first debate of the campaign season, Mr. Obama led on the economy and national security, as well as handling of energy, immigration and foreign affairs. In each of those categories he either topped or was just below the magic number of 50 percent support.

But that changed in the latest The Washington Times/Zogby Poll conducted by Zogby Analytics, released Monday, which gave Mr. Romney a 48 percent to 45 percent advantage on national security and a 50 percent to 44 percent advantage on jobs and the economy.

Gallup is finally switching over to LVs, and they say that their new numbers will also show a tie.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Comments (264)
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More whispers that Obama is working out the details for a counter-strike on Libya, D-movie protesters, the terrorist dogs that assassinated our consulate staff in Benghazi.

To this I say:

Good foreign policy is not reacting slowly and indecisively to the murder of Americans by our enemies, and should never accept one iota of a terrorist's reasoning for violence.

It would be good if Romney & Ryan would get ahead of any operations ordered by Obama and frame this correctly as a limp response to a tragedy that was easily predicted --strike that -- that actually had been predicted by all accounts. A response that started with a failure to firmly reject any limitations on our first amendment, and that misled the American people for 9 days before finally admitting the nature of the attacks.

Going after our enemies when they strike us should be a given and should be expected by the American people of their leaders.

What also is expected by us is that our leaders are providing security for us, especially when we are in an area known to be dangerous. If a president is willing to throw consulate staff to the wolves despite all indications that added security was needed, what other areas should the American people be concerned about?

This was not a failure in intelligence. It was not a failure in military or security strategy. It was a failure in fundamental security policy. The kind of policy that puts America's best in harms way with Rules of Engagement that tie our hands in deference to the sensibilities of the most barbarous religious sect the world has seen since the middle ages.

This was a direct failure by Obama and his state department. Any action in response to it is too little, too late, and will be seen by our enemies as the political posturing of a paper tiger rather than the decisive and determined retribution of a woken giant.

Retaliatory operations aimed at "justice" for our fallen should not be the measure of a president's foreign policy chops. The American people expect the bar to be set far higher, especially post 9/11.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:52 AM | Comments (271)
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The following information is, as far as I know, exclusive to the HQ and is based on communications with sources inside the Bielat campaign.

The headlines show Kennedy leading Bielat in the polls with ~55% of the vote, but ... and this is a big but ... new polling data from last week shows that lead to be as soft as little Joe Kennedy's hands that have never done an honest day's work in their life.

This is far different than Barney Frank's base of support that proved to be solid all the way through the 2010 race, and there has been a net 12% swing in support to Bielat since candidates announced early this year.

According to campaign sources, 11% of voters in the district, including 1 in 3 Elizabeth Warren voters, remain undecided. And of poll respondents who say they plan to vote for Kennedy, only 50% say that decision is definite compared to ~85% for Warren (and a like number for Brown).

This certainly squares with what I'm seeing anecdotally. Driving around the district, you see many more Bielat yard signs than Kennedy yard signs, but there are more Warren and Brown signs than Halloween pumpkins. The intensity just isn't there for Kennedy as this poll bears out.

This weekend I even drove past a house with Brown and Obama/Biden signs in their yard. I don't understand how you reach this decision myself, but this is exactly the kind of swing voter in the district that could also pull the lever for Bielat.

Even better, while he has instant name recognition, only 5% of Kennedy's voters say the Kennedy name is why they're voting for him compared to 10% of Bielat's voters who answered "not a Kennedy" as to the reason why. It seems the Kennedy name just doesn't carry quite the cachet it once did here in the Bay State.

Bottom line: this race is winnable and is trending in our direction.

More to follow ...

Posted by: andy at 04:10 AM | Comments (422)
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Happy Tuesday. It's a bit of a slow news morning. Mostly poll stuff that Ace and CAC already covered.

Romney's VMI speech last night was something to see. I thought it was better than his convention speech.

North Korea says it has missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland. Sorry 'bout that Washington, Oregon.

Hackers killed thousands in World of Warcraft, making for some rather amusing mass die-off videos.

A good method of preventing your political yard signs from being stolen. But see the "plot twist" in the comments.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (103)
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Hello Sweetlings!

HA. More random pics for you. This is an even worse post than last night. If any of you have been taking your Maetenloch for granted or kicking him around, tomorrow would be a great day to kiss his ass and thank him for not being me.

On to the dreck. Cake was a hit last night, we can do that again.
Red velvet.

OKAY, this is kind of brilliant.

And so is this. Awww.

Whoah. No. Just no. I don't believe it. I love you Ann, but GTFOOH.

This post brought to you by cat people who like cake. more...

Posted by: LauraW at 06:04 PM | Comments (793)
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Good God.

And if that's not bad enough: A State Department official told Congressional staffers almost immediately after the attack that it was pre-meditated terrorism.

n a briefing to Capitol Hill staffers delivered the day after the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the killings appeared to be the result of a terrorist attack.

Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy -- who exercises responsibility for all department personnel, facilities, and operations, and who is one of the department's most respected civil servants, having served in his position under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations -- delivered the assessment in an unclassified, half-hour conference call with staff aides to House and Senate lawmakers from relevant committees, and leadership offices, on the evening of Sept. 12. Capitol Hill sources described the call to Fox News.

And yet the White House went out insisting it wasn't pre-meditated, and was a "spontaneous protest" due to an "internet video."

Posted by: Ace at 05:43 PM | Comments (162)
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Texans. Jets. Pain train comin, my Jets afficianados. That's Spanish.

I would have given you 30 points, and still won a Whataburger with cheese and jalapenos.

Oldie but goodie, for the Jets fans.

Hope I didn't screw up the tag. And by "hope I didn't screw up the tag" I mean "she makes me feel funny in the swimsuit area."

Let freedom ring.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:33 PM | Comments (286)
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