Timing of image seems to be everything -- Let's hope it works in our favoir

[Armstead]

In life, they say, timing is everything. Likewise in politics it would seem.

Looking back, here is my view of what has happened so far.

The Obama campaign successfully planted the (correct) image of Romney in the public mind as a cold-blooded plutocrat, an out-of-touch elitist, an arrogant rich prick, etc. This, combined with Romney's own assholishness, reached a peak last month with the disastrous GOP convention, Romney's 47 percent moment of accidental candor and his opportunistic misfire on 9-11.

The tide was rushing in Obama's direction.

But then the first debate "rehabilitated" Romney in the mind of people who don't really pay attention and make their judgements on the most superficial basis. Obama's poor performance combined with Romney's slick salesmanship made them stop and say "Wait a minute. This Romney guy actually human and forceful. He isn't so bad after all. And he's promising to cut my taxes and get me a good job. And Obama doesn't look so good by comparison."

Hence, the tide started to turn in the opposite direction. Romney got a bounce which grew into a surge.

Then the second debate and Obama came back while Romney was basically the same slick lout he always was. Romney also made some awful gaffes. Obama punched back and took the fight to him and looked a whole lot better. It wasn't a knockout, but caused Obama and the Dems to regain some lost ground.

In my humble opinion, now that Romney is becoming more familiar, the very real chinks in his armor are showing for real. Those on-the-fence types are taking another another look at him, and not liking what they are seeing....And hopefully some of the lies beneath the surface are being exposed by Obama and the Dems, to undercut Romney's message.

As a result, the tide is starting to turn back to Obama. He will win, if Romney's oafishness and deceptions and awful right-wing agenda continue to get noticed, combined with Obama's renewed vigor and the recent signs that the economy is actually recovering.

The question is whether there is enough time between now and Election Day for those factors to sufficiently take hold in the public consciousness to swing back enough of those swing voters (and energize enough Obama supporters to get to the polls).

Hopefully, Obama will be especially strong in the last debate and deliver a decisive win -- and/or there will be another 47 percent moment for Romney at some point in another situation soon.

But mostly, it seems to boil down to the Gods of Time -- as to whether or not there will be enough time for Obama to continue to build positive momentum again and for the public to get to know the real, real Romney again and dislike and mistrust what they see.

[politicman]

1. big bounce for romney never existed

This whole notion that Romney had a big bounce and then started to surge is in my mind a total fabrication.

The only indications we had of any big surge towards Romney was a whole host of right-wing push polls conducted after the 1st debate, which drove the narrative that Romney got a big bounce.

Then to re-inforce that notion we had a few reputable polls that clearly were outliers OR were conducted on bad sampling for that particular poll.

For instance, the PEW poll that came out a few weeks ago had clearly undersampled Hispanics, it had only 5% Hispanic sample in its poll AND it also managed to heavily contact Republican supporters because Democrats clearly weren't in the mood to answer the phone.

But once the GOP enthusiasm to respond to pollster questions subsided and all pollster respondents returned to the norm, then the picture showed basically the same race as before the debate BUT maybe closing a little as all races do in October.

Think about it, the swing state averages were influenced towards Romney by a big slew of Right-leaning polls, namely Ras, ARG, Gravis, etc, which all put out polls immediately after the 1st debate, and now after the second debate have hardly done any polls.

[Armstead]

3. Romney got a bounce, although how big a one is always open to question

I'm not going to go into the mirror image of Fox News before the first debate about denying polls.

But the direction of momentum clearly shifted to him to some degree afterward.

Now it seems to be shifting back to Obama again. My point was merely a speculative question of whether the timing will continue to break in his direction sufficiently to win.

That will (hopefully) be answered in November.

[TwilightGardener]

2. There was a time people thought Sarah Palin would win the

election for Johnny McCrazy. His poll numbers went up after the GOP convention. But as you say, timing is everything. After that it was all "In what respect, Charlie?" and America wised up.