Romney Campaign: Don’t Panic But, Maybe, you Should Keep that Resume Updated

So the Romney campaign put a memo out earlier today urging it’s people not to panic, everything is fine and their boys R&R and going to bring it home in November.  Memo’s like these usually signify that the campaign is, in fact, panicking.  The memo:

ROMNEY/RYAN

MEMORANDUM

TO: Interested Parties

RE: State of the Race

DATE: September 10, 2012

Don't get too worked up about the latest polling.  While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar-high 

from the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly.  The reality 

of the Obama economy will reassert itself as the ultimate downfall of the Obama Presidency, and 

Mitt Romney will win this race.

In his acceptance speech, President Obama did not offer any solutions for the millions of 

Americans unemployed or underemployed.  But his convention speech was not the only big 

letdown to voters, as Americans also dealt with yet another dismal jobs report last week.

The latest CNN / ORC polls show Obama up at 52% over Romney’s 46%.  Obama’s likeability is up to 57%, the highest it’s been in over two years and 59% of Democrats are excited to go vote as opposed to 47% of Republicans (those ‘excitability’ numbers last week were 52% for the Democrats and 62% for the GOP.)

The memo is attributing the polling numbers to a ‘sugar high’ felt by the country after the DNC and that the dismal performance by the President with his speech, as well as a bad jobs report tempered this bump.  So, jobs report was bad (and yes, it was) and his speech wasn’t that good but still Obama leads in the polls has increased by 6 points since the bad speech and the bad job numbers.  Is the bad speech and bad numbers part of the sugar high?  Did people ignore the bad stuff and still get high?  Shouldn’t the bump be significantly lower based on what the memo is saying, or are we just confused? 

A good rule in life is always, if someone tells you not to worry, you should.  If we were Romney campaign staffers, this memo wouldn’t be giving us the warm and fuzzies.  But that’s just us.

Post-Convention, Who’s Winning? Who Knows.

Round and round she goes, who will win, nobody knows

The convention season is over and neither candidate really has anything to show for it.  Romney got his 1% bounce in the polls but that was short lived as it got cancelled out by Obama’s 3% jump.  That jump was stifled by less than satisfactory jobs report that was released yesterday.  North Carolina, a state that was a Republican lock a few weeks ago now might be leaning Obama.  Ohio, a state that was leaning Obama is now leaning Romney.  After all is said and done neither candidate is any closer to claiming victory then they were three weeks ago.  So what’s a candidate to do?  Hit the campaign trail hard and start getting ready for the debates.

Obama spent yesterday stumping in New Hampshire then Iowa but went to bed last night in Florida.  Romney spent the day in Iowa with both candidates hitting those swing states hard.  The Romney camp has also released a set of ads based off of the conventions targeted at all the swing states but no tangible results from them have shown up in the polling numbers yet.

The debates are going to be crucial.  They are being held in the last few weeks of the campaign and have the opportunity to shape the undecided voters opinion.  Whether it will happen, given how this campaign has gone, is anyone’s guess.  The most probable scenario is that there will be a good number of voters on election day that will decide who to vote for in the voting both and hold their nose as they drop their ballots in the box.  Even Obama’s closest advisors feel that this campaign will go right down to the wire.

Both candidates only have a few more opportunities to get in their final digs.  By just comparing speaking style, Obama should have the debates in the bag but again, the way this campaign has been going, Romney may very well come out on top.  If after the debates the poll numbers come up within 3 points of each other, at that point the only definitive way to know who the winner will be is to wait until election night.