I saw a curious headline from NPR this morning: "Romney Rides Momentum To Nevada, Colorado." Reuters had a similar headline this morning, touting Romney's "momentum," and Slate did the same thing yesterday.
I have no idea what they're talking about.
To be sure, the Republican saw significant, possibly even election-changing, gains after his first debate with President Obama three weeks ago, erasing the advantage the incumbent built up in September.
But what's happened since? By every measure, Obama won the second debate last week, then won again in the third debate. The polls that showed the president's lead evaporating have leveled off. Early voting totals have looked quite favorable for Democrats. In Nate Silver's model, Obama's odds of winning have gone from 61.1% two weeks ago to 68.1% yesterday.
So why simply ascribe Romney with "momentum"? Based on what, exactly? Does the Republican have momentum because he's telling the media he has momentum?
Politico's Mike Allen, who seemed to get snookered a bit yesterday, was more clear-eyed this morning.
As an antidote to the (perhaps) irrational Republican exuberance that seems to have seized D.C., we pause for the following public-service announcement. To be President, you have to win states, not debates. And Mitt Romney has a problem. Despite a great debate and what The Wall Street Journal's Neil King Jr. on Sunday called a polling "surge," Romney has not put away a single one of the must-have states. President Obama remains the favorite because he only needs to win a couple of the toss-ups. Mitt needs to win most of them.
A cold shower for the GOP: Most polling shows Romney trailing in Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa - by MORE than Obama trails in North Carolina. Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin reminded of us of the 2008 primary analogy: Whatever else Hillary Clinton had, Barack Obama had the math. And math, not momentum, gets you the big house, the bulletproof car, the cool plane.
Just to be clear, I'm not denying the fact that Romney has a very credible chance of winning this election and becoming president. My point, rather, is that the notion of Romney's "momentum" seems to be a hype-generated gift some in the media have decided to give the Republican, based on nothing in particular.
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I really enjoyed reading some of these. MSNBC does not have near the veiwers of Fox News and here's why. Msnbc is not fair and balanced. It' like watching an Obama campaign ad for hours at a time. The only people that want to watch that are Kool-aid drinking dyed in the wool liberals. Msnbc could be so much more than they are now. The solution? Just become unbiased. At the very least to the point were their bias is not so obvious.
MSNBC will become unbiased when fox does. In other words, if you don't like it here, don't log on. We are the fox antidote.
How do you know how many viewers any station has when the only people who are counted are the 54,000 Nielson families everyone who isn't a Neilson family is not given a magic box that tells Nielson what they are watching so reality is the Fox people have a majority of 54,000 viewers which is not millions of people who watch. Then you wonder why we don't believe that you are educated enough to form an opinion.
There, that's better.
America needs someone with business experience. Someone that has actually done a budget. NOT Someone that's greatest accomplishment in life was being a community organizer. We have seen first hand how that doesn't help you or him. We can not afford four more years of the same. And the greatness of America will be destroyed. Want to be another 3rd world nation? Then vote for obama. But...if you love America and want it to survive and be great again, vote obama OUT. Please don't be a racist and vote for hm because he's black. That's great but he's a failure, and that's obvious.
@turth - a bit of advice for the future:
It's hard to take anyone seriously when they can't manage to spell the word "truth" correctly.
BOL yeah the 2 times there has been a business president the country went to hell. The first one Hoover brought us the great depression the second one GWB brought us the great depression. Here is the clue a businessman makes all of the decisions on his own a president has to work with others, sadly robme has shown that he believes his word is the only one that counts and his history has shown he don't work with others well. robme can't go to congress and say if you don't do what I want then you are FIRED.