John Cassidy's Blog, page 86

Romney Has a Christie Problem and a FEMA Problem

Like many others—though not the weather forecasters or the political authorities—I underestimated the scope of the storm. Now that at least thirty-eight people are dead, thousands have been driven from their homes, and millions are without power, the election campaign looks like something of a side show. But the fact remains that voting will go ahead next Tuesday, and the politicking continues, albeit in a different manner.

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Obama Takes Early Lead in Hurricane Sandy World Series

What with the official World Series having ended before it really got going, and the Jets quarterback controversy being put off for a bit—the hapless Gang Green has a much-needed bye week ahead—the big sports story of the moment is Hurricane Sandy and how it affects the Presidential race. To be sure, speculating about the likely impact of a giant storm that has roughly sixty million people in its path risks being in poor taste, but that’s the world we live in, so let’s get to it.

Having spent the first part of the weekend campaigning in the swing states and monitoring the weather forecasts, President Obama flew back to Washington on Sunday and set about exploiting his home-field advantage. With his opponent last reported to be stuck in Celina, Ohio, population 10,400, he went to the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where he received a briefing from the head of the Agency and his colleagues. On Monday morning, the President received more updates, this time in the White House Situation Room, which is usually reserved for military briefings, and talked to the governors in the affected states. Then he ducked down to the press room to come on all businesslike and Presidential.

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Cassidy’s Count: Can Romney Win Without Ohio?

With President Obama holding onto, and by some accounts solidifying, his lead in Ohio, the key question consuming both campaigns now is whether Mitt Romney can find another route to victory in the electoral college without the Buckeye State. The answer is he could, but not easily. In addition to carrying Florida and Virginia, two states where he is narrowly ahead, he would have to win Wisconsin, where Obama has been in the lead all year, or else sweep Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Neither of these outcomes is out of the question. But to bring either one of them about, Romney would need another two or three point swing in his favor in the battleground states. With less than a week and a half to go until Election Day, that’s a big ask.

Here’s a look at the electoral math, together with an update on the latest polling data, and a few changes to The New Yorker’s electoral map. Let’s start with the polls.

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A New Yorker’s Dilemma: How to Treat Election Fever

Now that the debates are over and the candidates have disappeared for good into the swing states, New Yorkers are faced with a pressing problem: How are we to participate in this thing? We want to, we need to—urgently. Ever since the disastrous showdown in Denver on October 3rd, there’s been a certain low-level hysteria in the air, which has affected almost everybody. It’s the mental equivalent of an outburst of poison ivy that demands to be scratched. With the President’s much improved performance in the second debate and Romney’s listless show in the third one, the itchiness has gotten a bit less intense, but the underlying condition persists.

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Brooks vs. Silver: The Limits of Forecasting Elections

Updated below.

In Tuesday’s Times, David Brooks had a pop at political forecasters, including his colleague, Nate Silver, whose blog, FiveThirtyEight, is a popular feature on the Times Web site. Of course, Brooks was too polite to personalize his argument, but given Silver’s popularity and profile there can be little doubt whom Brooks was referring to when he wrote “I know … how I should treat polling data. First, I should treat polls as a fuzzy snapshot of a moment in time. I should not read them, and think I understand the future. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that even experts with fancy computer models are terrible at predicting human behavior.”

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Mitt the Shape-Shifter Falls on Obama’s Bayonet

Let’s start with the blindingly obvious: President Obama won last night’s debate in Boca Raton, and won it easily. According to a CBS instant poll of uncommitted voters, his margin of victory was thirty points—fifty-three per cent to twenty-three per cent—a bigger margin even than the one Mitt Romney enjoyed in Denver a few weeks ago. On the question of who would better handle terrorism and national security, the split in Obama’s favor was almost as large: sixty-four per cent to thirty-six per cent.

These figures are hardly surprising. From Obama’s very first answer, when he said to his opponent, “Your strategy previously has been one that has been all over the map,” to near the end, when he said, “Governor Romney, you keep trying to airbrush history,” he was the more aggressive debater, the more polished, the more persuasive, and the more punitive. Before the first debate, his aides proclaimed him above the use of “zingers.” On this occasion, he came with his pockets bulging with them, none more zingy than his crack about the military having fewer bayonets and horses than it did in 1916—a riposte that clearly had been prepared for use if Romney repeated his line about the U.S. Navy having fewer warships now than it had almost a hundred years ago, which indeed he did. Not content with mocking his opponent once, Obama proceeded to do it twice more: “We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them,” he said. “We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

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Mitt the Shape Shifter Falls on Obama’s Bayonet

Let’s start with the blindingly obvious: President Obama won last night’s debate in Boca Raton, and won it easily. According to a CBS instant poll of uncommitted voters, his margin of victory was thirty points—fifty-three per cent to twenty-three per cent—a bigger margin even than the one Mitt Romney enjoyed in Denver a few weeks ago. On the question of who would better handle terrorism and national security, the split in Obama’s favor was almost as large: sixty-four per cent to thirty-six per cent.

These figures are hardly surprising. From Obama’s very first answer, when he said to his opponent, “Your strategy previously has been one that has been all over the map,” to near the end, when he said, “Governor Romney, you keep trying to airbrush history,” he was the more aggressive debater, the more polished, the more persuasive, and the more punitive. Before the first debate, his aides proclaimed him above the use of “zingers.” On this occasion, he came with his pockets bulging with them, none more zingy than his crack about the military having fewer bayonets and horses than it did in 1916—a riposte that clearly had been prepared for use if Romney repeated his line about the U.S. Navy having fewer warships now than it had almost a hundred years ago, which indeed he did. Not content with mocking his opponent once, Obama proceeded to do it twice more: “We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them,” he said. “We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

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Cassidy’s Count: More Alarm Bells for Obama

Since Friday evening, when I reported that the national race was virtually tied, and that President Obama’s firewall in the electoral college was just about holding up, there have been a couple of significant developments. Mitt Romney has sustained his momentum in the national polls, and in the pivotal state of Ohio he appears to have made up more ground. I don’t think either of these things alters the basic picture I presented in my previous post, but clearly they represent more alarm bells for Democrats. I’ll deal briefly with each in turn:

National Polls: Sunday’s poll of likely voters from NBC News/Wall Street Journal, which showed the two candidates tied at forty-seven per cent each, has generated a lot of headlines. As far as I am concerned, it was merely catching up with other polls, which, averaged out, have shown the race to be pretty even for about a week now. The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had Obama leading by three points, but that survey was carried out before the first debate, which means it is pretty meaningless. The new poll merely confirms what we already know: what happened in Denver shifted the electoral dynamics in a fundamental way.

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Cassidy’s Count: National Polls Tied; Obama’s Electoral-College Firewall Is Holding—Just

Some Democrats I know are getting very jittery, and it’s not hard to see why. At the end of a week that contained a strong debate performance from President Obama, some widely-watched voter surveys still show Mitt Romney in front, and one of them—the Gallup daily tracking poll of likely voters—has him expanding his lead to as much as seven points. On Monday, according to Gallup, the Republican candidate was leading Obama by two points, 49-47. By Thursday, he was ahead by seven, 52-45. On Friday, there was little change: Romney fifty-one per cent, Obama forty-five per cent.

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Obama on “The Daily Show”: A Gaffe is a Gaffe

I don’t see any point in denying it: President Obama’s description on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” of the killing of four Americans in Benghazi as “not optimal” was a gaffe, and one he can ill afford given the tightness of the race. Coming two days after his much improved performance in the second debate, and four days before the third debate, in which what happened in Libya is sure to loom large, it was a gift to the Republicans—one they and their media allies are seizing on gratefully.

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