Morning Roundup--Put on your reading glasses!

One of Sassy's heroes, Paul Krugman, just won the Nobel Prize for Economics!

Big media is afraid of Obama and is spinning the numbers to prove it.

WaPo has a new poll out with lots of good stuff in there for Obama as he continues to steadily improve his numbers. There was also this tidbit, kind of amazing how big the spread can be in the polling but then it tightens up so much on race day:

"While there are few signs of progress for McCain in the poll, recent history suggests that mid-October leads are vulnerable, although turning around a late double-digit deficit would be unprecedented in the modern era. At this stage in 1992, Bill Clinton held a 14-point advantage over incumbent George H.W. Bush in Post-ABC polling, and it was as high as 19 points before the election, which he won by six points. In mid-October 1976, Jimmy Carter had leads as big as 13 points in Gallup polling; Carter defeated incumbent Gerald Ford by two points. "

An excerpt from McCain's new stump speech for the closing weeks of the campaign ("We've got them just where we want them"? Really?):

"Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We’re 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.

"What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to do it from the sidelines."

Ah, but Nate has a really good analysis of what he thinks McCain will try to do to turn this whole thing around. This week should be really interesting/scary. I'm pasting the entire piece here:

Is Drudge Priming a McCain "Reboot" Narrative?

Something is a little bit funny when Matt Drudge is treating 1-2 point gains for McCain in the Rasmussen and Zogby tracking polls as "BREAKING" news. Naturally, Drudge ignores other results like the just-released ABC/WaPo poll that show Obama continuing to gain ground.

Drudge has a nose for news, and he knows that a one-point gain in a tracking poll is not news -- unless someone desperately wants it to be.

So here's what I think is going on.



The McCain campaign is planning on a major "reboot" of its campaign in some point in advance of Wednesday night's debate. This will take on something of the form that Bill Kristol advocates in his must-read Monday AM piece in the Times, including some combination of (i) pledging to run a positive campaign; (ii) firing/demoting Steve Schmidt and or/Rick Davis; (iii) apologizing for his campaign's tone. In fact, Kristol's column may be something of a trial balloon for this strategy.

What the McCain campaign really, really doesn't want is for this move to be portrayed as desperate stunt. McCain has already developed a reputation for being a bit erratic under pressure -- the ABC/Post poll now shows that a 48-45 plurality of voters trust Obama to handle an "unexpected major crisis" -- and Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs must be foaming at the mouth waiting to spin something like this.

The only way for McCain to do that is for him to convince the media that he already had the momentum. The campaign will probably try and claim the moral highground, perhaps contrasting McCain's repudiation of the woman who called Obama an "Arab" on Friday against John Lewis's comments from Saturday. They will suggest that McCain found his voice, and made the "maverick" move of telling off the Beltway Republicans who were urging him to go for blood. They will suggest that the reboot is a continuation of this strategy, and that -- as the Zogby poll so obviously attests to! -- voters were already responding favorably to McCain's new tone.

It won't be an easy spin war for them to win. But they'd seem to have little left to lose, and if the media is reminded of the "old" McCain, they may tend to give his narrative the benefit of the doubt.

Game Changer?: McCain is planning to visit David Letterman on Thursday.

Factoid for the Day:
In every election since the Nixon presidency, Americans have chosen the candidate they feel is more likable. After the second presidential debate, an Oct. 7 CNN poll found that viewers found Obama more likable, 65 percent to 28 percent.