I know a lot of you are feeling down about the current state of the presidential race. I sure am... I found that thinking about it from the other guy's perspective really helped my take.
Romney just doesn't have a lot options to win this and his best hope is to lock the race where it's at, hope for an Obama implosion and low turn out, and catch good luck in OH / NV+IA+NH (not to mention VA, CO, and FL but those are less of a reach for him).
Let's face it, barring a second huge unforced error from Obama, Romney's best day in this campaign has come and gone, and he's at about a 1-point lead in the national polling aggregators.
Some say "but the undecideds will break for the challenger". BS. They just as often break for the incumbent, and the margins are often not decisive either way. More importantly, and this is just my take, anybody who was predisposed to vote against Obama was probably in the Romney camp after the first debate.
Does Romney have some great new policy proposal or attack line that has gone unnoticed for all these months and that's about to take a big hit on the Obama campaign? Seems very unlikely to me.
Romney has nowhere to go but down, and he's not in a position of strength.
Others say "but it's not a bump... the debate was over a week ago! Biden didn't put us back in the lead!" Joe laid some good groundwork, but only Obama can put us back in the lead, so get back to me on this one next Thursday or Friday. Hell, it's too damn early to tell if Joe had any effect on the polling (and I doubt that he did).
Obama has room to grow and things aren't that bad. (One lousy point!) He will almost certainly get some points back in the national head to head with some strong (not even knockout) debate performances. The RV polls give him clear leads, and just reenergizing demoralized dems will move the polling head-to-heads closer to the RVs.... pulling the LV numbers to ties or Obama leads. If he can get back to his lead that he held over the summer (lots of people basically hapy with O-man) and/or meet the predictions of "economic fundamentals", he's back in a narrow lead. Heck, even RIGHT NOW, Obama's job approval rating is 49.6% in the RCP average.... if Obama can turn those people out, he pretty much has the election.
God bless you, God bless America, and everybody chill the fuck out.