According to Jim Messina, at least.
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters on Saturday that despite national tracking polls showing the president and Romney tied, Obama is still winning.
“In all the battleground states, we continue to see all our pathways there,” he told the White House pool at an Obama fundraiser in Milwaukee. “We’re either tied or in the lead in every battleground state 45 days out.”
Two problems, there:
- 45 days out. And 52 days out Obama was leading in the national tracking polls, too.
- That argument somehow forgets to mention that every ‘battleground’ state is one that Obama won in 2008. But then, I suppose “We’re defending our 2008 firewall! …Mostly!” is probably a bit too much truth for Barack Obama’s campaign manager.
Moe Lane
PS: The polls go up. The polls go down.
Interesting commentary from Rasmussen yesterday, that’s moderately related.
Interesting, Skip: because I’m starting to think that Romney’s team is increasingly having damn little use for the political class.
The polls may be tied up, but what has moved significantly the last week is the prediction markets. Intrade now has O at 70%. They have a pretty good record-but heck, they missed the boat completely on the Obamacare Scotus outcome and they could be wrong again.
Intrade’s taken some hits in the past couple of cycles: for example, it turned out to be absolute crap when it came to predicting NY special election House races, largely because it turns out that most polls were absolute crap when it comes to predicting NY special election House races, too.
http://memegenerator.net/instance/27205680
Are we talking about the same Messina?
Mew
Let me think about this a bit. Obama is up big in the biggies – California, New York, Illinois, a few others. He’s tied nationally. So, he’s leading in the battleground states? I think my 4th grade arithmetic book is in the attic someplace. Gotta find it for a little review.
Things are starting to go badly for the Left and they Know It, I think they’ve Known it for a while. And yes Moe the Romney team is aware that the political class are in bed with O’Bama, they always were and the Romney team Knows It. Interesting times are coming!
Check out http://www.hillbuzz.org for its daily ground reports and anti-doom and anti-eeyore updates for our side.
Catseye – that was one of the things I liked about Romney early on .. he’s not a DC guy.
I’d’ve *preferred* someone with a little more of an in-your-face persona, someone with a better record of running a State, but .. if he wins, Romney will be the first not-a-DC-guy we’ve elected in a long, long time.
Mew
p.s. no Bush 2.0 *was* a DC guy .. he grew up in it, and he clearly borrowed the old man’s rolodex. That he hated it doesn’t mean he wasn’t *in* it.
@Catseye: Some on the Left know that things have gone badly. Many more seem to watch only MSNBC and will be in for a shock on November 7th.
Intrade manipulation? OH! Say it ain’t so Joe……
It’s not even manipulation: it’s that Intrade’s no less vulnerable to GIGO than anything else is. The dirty secret of this business is that there’s no true killer app that will let us infallibly predict elections.
About Intrade . . . If you wanted to buttress a narrative about Obama winning then how many dollars would it take to keep the odds at 70% favorable to Obama? I tried to buy the 274 contracts (costing $588.) at these 3:1 odds, but it is not easy. It has to do with Irish money laundering laws. I was amazed at how few dollars were needed to buy ALL contracts on Obama. By the was the pay off was in the $1,450 dollar range. They keep some % of both Buy/Sell purchases.
Romney is playing a long game; slow and steady. How many times was he written off during the primaries; that he couldn’t seem to break past that cursed 27%? Meanwhile, everyone else was having highs and lows and gyrations all over the place. But Romney, while not breaking open, was not losing ground either. Slow and steady. Nobody loved him, but he kept plodding, and plodding, and this Romney steadiness broke all of the other candidates, finally leaving only the Paul-bots in opposition. Won’t that be sweet at the national level?
Unlike the primaries, with their multiple candidates, this national race is more of a zero-sum exercise and is therefore more sensitive to swings. Any bounce for Obama almost has to come at Romney’s expense because there just aren’t that many ‘undecideds’. But notice that while Obama bubbles, Romney is not losing ground; his rise is inexorable. Slow and steady.
This is Romney as a businessman. Windfall profits are nice, but any competent businessman is not going to base his operation on an expectation of windfalls. (It’s cronyism that does that.) I’m sure that he would love to have the polls break wildly in his favor. But such gains are untrustworthy, and Romney knows that. The businessman will grow his business to be sustainable, as opposed to poll-driven ‘bubble-wrapped’. This long game is maddening to pundits, but it is a surer guarantee to his success.
I liked Jim Messina better when he was still working with Kenny Loggins. . .