Le Pew ~ Dems Panic Over One Stinky Poll - Updated

Romney’s Strong Debate Performance Erases Obama’s Lead
GOP Challenger Viewed as Candidate with New Ideas
~ Headline on Pew Polling Research Center

Did Obama Just Throw The Entire Election Away?
The Pew poll is devastating, just devastating. Before the debate, Obama had a 51 - 43 lead; now, Romney has a 49 - 45 lead. That's a simply unprecedented reversal for a candidate in October. Before Obama had leads on every policy issue and personal characteristic; now Romney leads in almost all of them. Obama's performance gave Romney a 12 point swing! I repeat: a 12 point swing.
. . . A sitting president does not recover from being obliterated on substance, style and likability in the first debate and get much of a chance to come back. He has, at a critical moment, deeply depressed his base and his supporters and independents are flocking to Romney in droves.
. . . I'm trying to see a silver lining. But when a president self-immolates on live TV, and his opponent shines with lies and smiles, and a record number of people watch, it's hard to see how a president and his party recover.
~ Nearly Hysterical Democrat Andrew Sullivan, columnist on The Daily Beast

Should Obama Supporters Start Freaking Out?
. . . The undisputed captain of Team Freakout is Newsweek’s Andrew Sullivan, the longtime Obama supporter who has written a number of cover stories advocating for his campaign. His post-debate analysis of how Obama “plummeted into near-oblivion” is so spectacularly glum that it spawned its own parody account on Twitter, @SullyPanic (sample tweet: “After Wednesday’s debate I’m leaving the Catholic church. God is dead.”)
~ Talking Points Memo

From the Fake Andrew Sullivan on Twitter:

The result? Romney's headed for a landslide! MT @greenhousenyt:Obama = weakling. Muscle-bound guy hits him & then he says hit me again.
— Andrew Sullivan (@SullyPanic) October 9, 2012

If the debate was the Phantom Menace, Obama was Jar-Jar Binks. @theprospect @sullydish
— Andrew Sullivan (@SullyPanic) October 9, 2012

I'm sorry if these aren't things an Obama supporter should say, but shouldn't the President just drop out already?
— Andrew Sullivan (@SullyPanic) October 9, 2012

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BREAKING: Andrew Sullivan's beard now a foot long and stark white; he speaks in riddles.

— 60th Street (@60th_Street) October 9, 2012

#pollercoaster

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) October 9, 2012

@benjysarlin #pollmagedon

— Fired Big Bird(@FiredBigBird) October 9, 2012

Calm down, Democrats. This is about winning the electoral college, not national polls.
. . . National tracking polls are overrated. They were overrated when they had President Obama leading the race and they are overrated now that some polls are showing Mitt Romney ahead.
There is no polling conspiracy. It’s all about perspective: The race for the White House is going to be very close and the tracking polls are going to swing back and forth for the next three weeks until election day.
~ Zerlina Maxwell, New York Daily News

DON'T THINK JUST BREAK THINGS
New Pew Poll Shows End Of Democratic Party As We Know It
~ Headline on Wonkette

OMGINDEPENDENTSPEWPEWPEW
~ comment by borninatrailer on Wonkette

I, for one, welcome our new Pollster Overlords.
~ comment by ttommyunger on Wonkette

Help us, Nate Silver, you are our only hope!
~ comment by gullywompr on Wonkette

We're all Big Bird now.
~ comment by Isyaignert on Wonkette

Obama is tanking in the Polls
. . . We needed Obama win that debate. Medicare, the Supreme Court, gay rights, tax fairness, the social safety net, all of it was on the line during the debate and Obama was either too lazy or too busy or just too arrogant to engage. He is still asking me for money. I guess I am expected to give another $10 to his wayward campaign. I don't know why I would do that. Why?
Why would I give money to a politician who can't get up for the debate that might be recorded as the debate that shaped the 21st century?
. . . his is bad people, really really really bad and Obama needs to wake the f*** up!
~ themoderateman on Daily Kos

This is bad, folks. This is really bad.
I don't know if we have time to recover.
Maybe we should have voted for Hillary. She would have shown up in that debate.
. . . I have defended the President since 2008. I have given probably more than most of you have and am currently volunteering at least twice a week. This won't continue if he sucks in his next debate.
I can't defend a guy who won't defend himself.
~ comments by willynel on Daily Kos

oh noes! we're dooooomed!
clutchs pearls, faints.
~ comment by terrypinder on Daily Kos

The sky is falling
don your tinfoil hats now !!!
~ comment by indycam on Daily Kos

This is not some fly by night Gravis pollster. Pew is the real deal. Obama really screwed the pooch. It almost looks like voters were just looking for reason to ditch him, and now they have one.
~ comment by NorthBronxDem on Daily Kos

Bounces this late in the election tend to stick
I can't believe how many people keep sticking their head in the sand. This is unequivocally bad news for Obama.
~ comment by JohnAdams999 on Daily Kos

Joe Biden, save us now!
~ comment by Calidad on Daily Kos

. . . I respect Pew... Pray to God...this time they are wrong...the overall effect on this is not good...dampens enthusiasm among dems. By gosh would the MSM hype this...
-Romney has smelled blood. He'd go in for the kill...
-Obama has one last chance...to reverse this or we are toast...
~ comment by tuma on Daily Kos

The whole topic of conversation this weekend all over the news shows was essentially, "Does Barack Obama even want to be President?".
If the feeling in the air continues to revolve around whether our guy is spent after having been one of the best janitors this nation has ever seen, than today's polls are meaningless compared to where they'll be by the end of the week.
With his debate win, Romney is given a chance to pivot now and start speaking of his vision for our greatness and blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, it could very well be that our side doubles down on attacking Romney as a flip-flopper. Doing so helps him come back at us with, "They're desperate and out of ideas, and that's why they're attacking me."
Obama's back is to the wall now. This is his last election. There are a number of ways he can screw this up, but there is only one way for him to succeed, and it's to go bigger and farther and more visionary than Romney.
~ MovieJay on Daily Kos

PANIC! PANIC! OH NOES! OMFG!
Oh, uh...that electoral college map thing. Never mind.
~ comment by Dracowyrm on Daily Kos

Why is it a "freak out" to recognize reality? . . . Obama blew the debate for those who wanted to see who wouldn't blow it. Period. It doesn't matter that we here all saw Obama trying to remain even-keeled and factual under the onslaught of Romney's rapid-fire Gish Gallop of utter bullsh*t. What matters is that a very large number of the somehow still undecided voting public saw the President shrink and wither under a more forceful and powerful Romney. We saw lies; the undecideds saw a command performance.
Why does recognizing that make us Chicken Littles and handwringers and pearl-clutchers and couch-fainters?
. . . Obama's only hope is that a few folks at the townhall broach the subject of Romney's lies, thereby throwing Obama a bone he can sink his teeth into. In the absence of that--or if Obama turns in another tepid, tired, I-wish-I-were-anywhere-else-but-here performance--he's screwed. And that's neither handwringing, pearl-clutching, nor couch-fainting; it's reality.
Obama blew it. Period. Agree with it, or don't. But for cryin' out loud stop with the "Obama got this chill the f*** out" bullsh*t, would you guys?
~ comment by Neapolitan on Daily Kos

Face it -- We might not win now
I've been working in and around politics for 25 years, and I have never seen as bad a week as Barack Obama just had.
And yet you folks go on cheerleading, as if this was part of some grand strategy, or as if Obama has some magic ace up his sleeve. I'll let you in on a little secret: there is no grand strategy, there is no ace up his sleeve, and we're staring down a very, very tough month.
. . . Look, I'd love to be more positive. But . . . we're going to get our asses kicked.
~ Johnthorpe on Daily Kos

...The problem is that a relatively passive PBO "lost" the debate with the help of MSM framing, crank snap pollsters, and Romney had a good debate strategy (lying works so f*** it) while Obama was not prepared for some of the rapid flip-flops. That is the problem!
~ comment by lastman on Daily Kos

First it was Obama had a fantastic, excellent debate. Then it was all part of a master jujitsu chess plan. Now the pollsters are corrupt.
Seriously? Really?
Look, there are pollsters out there who are crap. Rasmussen comes to mind. We Ask America. This Gravis whatever it is. But there are pollsters who have spent years building up a solid reputation for thoroughness and accuracy. You cant trash a good pollster when said pollster says something you don't want to hear. Nor can you tout a crap pollster when it shows something you like.
This is nutcase territory.
~ brooklynbadboy on Daily Kos

How much difference did the Pew poll make? We had Romney win % rising to 24.4% from 21.6% today. Without Pew, he'd have made no gain at all.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 8, 2012

. . . it’s one thing to give a poll a lot of weight, and another to become so enthralled with it that you dismiss all other evidence. If you can trust yourself to take the polls in stride, then I would encourage you to do so. If your impression of the race is changing radically every few minutes, however, then you’re best off looking at the forecasts and projections that we and our competitors publish, along with Vegas betting lines and prediction markets.
All of these methods have slightly different ways of accounting for new information, but they do involve people who are risking either money or reputation to get it right, and who have systematic ways to weigh the evidence rather than doing so on an ad hoc basis.
~ Nate Silver, 538 Blog on NYT

That’s my party: Irrational overconfidence followed by irrational despair.
~ Democratic political consultant Jim Jordan, quoted by Politico

I was talking with an old friend who is with one of the nonpartisan polling outfits (and who also happens to be a very good and fair-minded pollster). We were discussing the large shifts in some of the polls on the presidential election and the feedback he receives whenever he puts out new numbers that make one side or the other unhappy. He offered an observation so priceless that it needs to be widely shared.
When you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you,” he said. “When you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill themselves.”
I am protecting his identity because I don’t want him to get any additional phone calls. I would only add: Buck up, liberals!
~ E.J. Dionne on Washington Post

Romney Bombarded with Scathing Advice from GOP

We're in a world of hurt if we can't get that explanation to the public to the voters regarding what the choices are. He (Romney) should be very aggressive and he should be adamant in his attacks . . . he needs to be severely aggressive.
~ Sarah Palin on Fox, via Last Word

Gotta use those buzzwords. Gotta say "socialist." You gotta do that to get people's attention.
Bill O'Reilly on Fox, via Last Word

The Romney campaign's going to have to make some changes. They're going to have to go ideological! They cannot continue on this 'Obama Mr. Nice Guy' bit. They just can't do it. It isn't going to work.
. . . I'm not saying go out and say Obama's a bad guy. But he's got to be tied to this economy. His policies, his ideas, his ideology. Liberalism is still a dirty word in this country - use it!
Rush Limbaugh on his radio show

Speak Up, Mitt!
. . . It’s not enough to float like a butterfly. You have to sting like a bee. No sting, no victory.
~ William Kristol on the Weekly Standard

If you can't beat Barack Obama with this record, Then shut down the party. Shut it down, start new with new people. Because this is a gimme election, or at least it should be.
And the millions . . . I keep going back to the millions and millions of dollars paid to these political consultants.
Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns; who've run campaigns that have failed; who have message campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired. I don't understand that. I don't know why those are the people you hire.
If I'm hiring messaging people, I'm finding out, for instance, who did the original Geico gecko commercial, because that guy or gal who did that, actually knows how to brand something.
And if you're Mitt Romney, with all of your expertise and all of your knowledge about how the economy works, and you're in this, you have one shot, man. This is going to be the first line of your obituary: you won or you lost. It's all on the line for the country, and it's all on the line for you.
~ Conservative Laura Ingraham on her radio show 9-10-12

Mitt Romney should be up by five, six points.
You know the way to stop the doubters? Start winning in these polls. Start winning in significant margins and look like you’re ahead in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Then people won’t have a mini-panic.
. . . For the Romney campaign to stick their heads in the sand and say just business as usual, keep goin' along the same path - I think that is very dangerous.
~ Laura Ingraham on Fox and Friends, via Mediaite

Mitt Romney does not have the feeling, the visceral, philosophically sound feeling for what's wrong with the progressive movement in this country. He's a good man, a good fellow. He'd be a much better president than the one we've got. But he doesn't -- what I've said before about him is conservatism is a second language for him. And he is still learning it. And it's hard to learn this thing in the midst of a high-stakes presidential campaign.
~ George Will

Romney needs a busier schedule to make clear what he's fighting for. He can't afford to waste the three weeks until the first debate.
Romney needs a narrative, a story, so voters understand he's going to bring change to a country that 70% of them believe is on the wrong track.
~ Alex Castellanos on CNN Political Ticker

On Romney's 9/11 Speech to the National Guard Association
This was a wasted opportunity when he could have shown some mettle. His foreign policy message, not unlike his domestic policy message, is getting put through the Boston blender, it seems, coming out mush. That would be mush with no flavor.
Romney wants to rise above the fray, which might work if he had a hatchet man at the ready. But so far he’s not unleased VP nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to hit Obama where he is most vulnerable.
. . . Now is not the time for sweet vignettes; it’s time for him to seize the moment. That requires Romney to sharpen and beef up his message.
~ Jennifer Rubin on Washington Post

Romney Adrift
The economy’s a mess, but thanks to a hapless campaign, the GOP nominee is behind with time running out.
. . . This is a very close race and one that still could go either way. But the odds of Romney capitalizing on this economy, and the opportunity it affords, seem lower than they were before the conventions. If Republicans and Romney supporters are growing nervous, they should be.
~ Charlie Cook on National Journal

This is a true test of Romney's resolve. He's like the pilot of a plane rolling down the runway for takeoff. There's a tree line at the end of the runway that he has to clear. He's sure he'll make it. He's gaining speed, getting some lift, but he's still not high enough, and at about three-quarters down the runway, a lot of passengers are getting scared. Does Romney keep going according to plan, confident he'll clear the trees when the time comes? Or does he try some last-minute maneuver?
Romney is an experienced leader, with an executive sensibility to the core. But he's never had to make a decision like this.
~ Byrom York on Washington Examiner

Romney Memo About Poll Panic

From Business Insider:

In a new campaign memo circulated this morning, Romney's pollster Neil Newhouse warns people not to 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," Newhouse writes. "The reality of the Obama economy will reassert itself as the ultimate downfall of the Obama Presidency, and Mitt Romney will win this race."

You can read the whole memo below, but the gist of Newhouse's argument is that, regardless of what the polls say right now, the President will never be able to escape the terrible economy.

. . . The bottom line is that people don't send "don't freak out" memos unless people are in fact freaking out.

Full Memo Here on Buzzfeed

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Blah blah blah blah blah. Bottom line? Winning candidates don't write memos like this one.
~ Kos on Daily Kos

I love the smell of desperation in the morning.
~ comment by christomento on Daily Kos

Cornered Rats can be dangerous. Overkill is necessary.
~ comment by polecat on Daily Kos

They are panicking. They're now realizing that picking lyin' Ryan was a bad choice with his plans to voucherize Medicare for people under 55, privatize SS, and his archaic ideas about SSM and abortion in the case of rape or incest. Voters are also seeing how the two would only lower taxes on the very wealthy, and how that doesn't create jobs, and now they're desperately implying about Obama wanting to take "God" off of our coins. I'm stocking up on popcorn, because the debates are going to be fun!
~ comment by Jim T. on BuzzFeed

There's nothing I love more than a slow-motion train wreck.
Who brought the popcorn?
~ comment by Dr. Zoidberg on Wonkette

Shorter version: "We've got Obama right where we want him: up by 5 in Ohio."
~ comment by Wadisay on Wonkette

At least Obamas voters have a high! Romney is a downer!
~ comment by t_player on Politico

Somehow, Romney supporters think he'll pull magic out of his butt during the debates.
Good Luck with that!
~ comment by V on Yahoo News

You seen the polls? Even the FOX poll has this "community organizer" up by 6 points.....NOV is a LOCK. Bi-a-tches!!
~ comment by Tea Bagger N Charge on Yahoo News

The five phases of mourning:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The Romney campaign is going through the first phase. Hoping they would be able to get through phase 5 after November 6, 2012.
~ comment by lookolook on Politcal Wire

What do they call Romney's post-convention nothing, a plain rice cake low?
~ comment by HeraSentMe on Politcal Wire

Mitt, the President got a bounce from YOUR convention. That's not a sugar high. That's just people realizing they hate your guts.
~ comment by Pain on Political Wire

A sugar high - that's something that's full of empty calories without any substance behind it, right? Kind of an insult to say people persuaded by the DNC convention -- people you want to convince to change their minds -- are basing their votes on empty platitudes. You can see the contempt and arrogance in all the Republican leaders' statements. They think they can insult the voter and yet get the vote. Since we're so stupid and easily amused, of course.
~ comment by ccrrff on Political Wire


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Romney camp: 'Don't get too worked up about the latest polling' nbcnews.to/Qxwj7b

— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) September 10, 2012

Romney campaign releases memo from its pollster telling supporters not to panic. Translated: Romney campaign is panicking.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) September 10, 2012

Alternate Romney pollster memo title: ANYONE HIRING?
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) September 10, 2012

A quick look at the very preliminary numbers that may have the Romney camp seriously freaked talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/… via @tpm

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 8, 2012

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," - Romney pollster Neil Newhouse.

— Gregarious Ki (@BigO_LDW) September 11, 2012