Yesterday morning we hit the fields around 8 am with a female lab named Mary and a German Shorthair pup named TK. It wasn’t long before pheasants were flying and the shotguns were blasting. In the end we brought home 15 pheasants and 1 chukar. We finished up around 11am and I was home a bit after noon.
It was also walk to school day so the misses, trooper that she is, walked the boys along with Lacey and Mojo. About a block before school Lacey’s right back leg went out so the misses had to send the boys on the rest of the way on their own and massage Lacey’s leg before turning around and heading for home. I picked both boys up and the youngest won an award for being a “Positive Prospector” at school. Our school is Prospect Valley and the Positive Prospector is an award they give to students for excellent attitudes and being a helpful student. We’re very proud of him.
It’s cold outside this morning which is great and is supposed to get even colder in the next few days. Monday morning we’re back in Vail for another doctor appointment for you know who.
Meanwhile, last night, here in Denver, the goose was cooked! Mitt Romney, who most Americans don’t know except for what they hear in negative democratic ads, clearly won the debate. The Prez appeared snarky most of the night, he didn’t look at Romney but rather looked down most of the night with a smirky smile on his face whenever Mitt said something he didn’t like. I think he thinks that if he keeps saying something, people will eventually believe it. Romeny had a good line saying he has 5 boys and they too sometimes think if they keep saying something, even if it’s not true, sooner or later Dad will believe it. Let’s be clear, Mitt Romney will not raise taxes on the middle class and will not give any tax breaks to millionaires, which is the Presidents favorite line. Great job to Romney for not letting him off the hook and coming back every time the President kept up with this lie. Even the left leaning networks like MSNBC, CNN and ABC said Romney clearly won the debate, in fact they say he crushed the O. This is the first time in a long time the President was out there in a non scripted format without a teleprompter. Face it, he hasn’t done any press conferences all year (where he has to answer real questions) but instead has gone on the great political news shows like View with Whoopi and Barbara Wa Wa and give magazines like People Magazine interviews. Here he didn’t have any spin doctors to protect him and twist the facts and frankly, he didn’t know how the handle the truth which is what Romney hit him with time after time. Now I’m sure if you are an O fan, you can’t bring yourself to face the fact that maybe, just maybe, Romney will be better for the country. But if you are an undecided independent, last night you did see who will be better for all of us and the country. And after all, it’s the independents who will decide the election, so there you have it.
Next up is the VP debate. I can hardly wait for Ryan and Biden to take the stage. I mean come on, no matter what side you’re on, you have to admit, Joe Biden is an idiot. Then the foreign policy debate, that should be interesting with the administrations recent failures in Libya and all of the Middle East. Maybe Romney does have a chance after all, despite the mainstream medias love affair with the cooked goose.
Oh well, another day, here we go, take care and God Bless.
Tom says:
Harry J Enten
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 October 2012 08.38 EDT
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Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Democratic President Barack Obama debating in Denver, Colorado. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty
It’s fairly clear that Mitt Romney “won†Wednesday night’s debate against President Obama. Not only did he win a CNN insta-poll by a record breaking 67% to 25% margin, but the press is also giving him a huge win. So what does all of this mean for the race for president?
Romney gains on an increasingly vulnerable Obama, but the president still leads.
First, general election debates are not primary debates. If you took a polling chart of the 2012 Republican primary, it would look like a w’s and m’s. Candidate preferences were so flexible that Herman Cain – a man never elected to political office who would leave the campaign because of a sexual harassment charge – led the contest a year ago. The reason Cain took the lead was because he looked good in the debates. When policy differences are small, as they are in primaries, personality matters.
Personality isn’t anywhere near as important in general elections. Voters can decide on the issues because there are true substantive differences. That’s why most voters have already locked in their choice. President Obama has seemingly held a small, but consistent lead most of this election.
We cannot expect that this or any one debate will turn an Obama edge into a large Romney lead. Romney is down by about 3 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics average. Only 5% of the electorate is truly undecided. Most of these undecided voters weren’t watching the debate and probably won’t make their choice until election day.
Second, history tells us that debates probably matter under certain circumstances. Thomas Holbrook crunched the numbers since 1988 and found that the margin between the two leading candidates changed by an average of about 4 percentage points between before the first and after the last debate. The margin between Romney and Obama was less than that heading into Wednesday night’s debate.
Now, it’s awfully difficult to figure out whether it’s a debate that is moving polling data or some other event(s) over the course of the debates season. Obama, for instance, gained ground over John McCain in 2008 partly because of the debates, but more because of a financial crisis from which we still haven’t fully recovered.
Candidates seem to gain when they were already gaining before the debate or when they are underperforming the “fundamentalsâ€. Bush picked up steam in the 1988 debates – ,continuing his rise pre-debates. Bob Dole was vastly underperforming the fundamentals in 1996: he should have been showing behind, but not by 20 points. So, it was not a huge surprise that his polling numbers improved after the debates.
That’s why I think Mitt Romney will make up some ground. Though the 5% of undecided voters may be unreachable, there’s another 5% of “soft†support. Many of these had been leaning towards Obama or saying they were “undecided†since the conventions: Obama’s one-time 1.5-point edge among likely voters doubled or even close to tripled at times during the last few weeks. Those voters are likely to come home to Romney. If they don’t, they likely never will.
Romney’s also underperforming Jacob Montgomery et al’s ensemble forecast from all the fundamental models. These models take into everything from the economy to incumbency to primary season performance. The ensemble has Romney losing, but only by 0.6 percentage points.
Another plus for Romney is that he looked to have been picking up a little steam before the debates began. Obama’s lead in the Real Clear average has shrunk from a lead close to 4.5 points back down to 3.
Third, underlying voter sentiment may not change, but enthusiasm probably will and that could change polls. You can go on Twitter and see dejection among many Democrats. Many likely voter models rely upon some level of voter interest or enthusiasm in the election. During the 2000 campaign, Gallup’s likely voter model went absolutely bonkers because of enthusiasm differences. One day, Republican enthusiasm was up because of the debates and the next, Democratic excitement went through the roof.
The registered voter numbers, however, didn’t move anywhere near as much. With Republicans potentially gaining back the enthusiasm edge they held earlier in the cycle, don’t be surprised if an already ridiculously wide likely/registered voter gap actually expands.
Fourth, and most importantly, any president whose approval rating is less than his disapproval rating remains vulnerable. This, folks, is a key point and remains tied to point four. If you read Real Clear Politics, you’ll notice that many polls that ask about the president’s approval are among adults or registered voters. Those polls are fine when enthusiasm ratings between Democrats and Republicans are near equal. They are not an accurate representation of the electorate if Republicans make a surprisingly large share of the voters come November.
I would not be surprised if a likely voter model average at this point had Obama’s approval rating below his disapproval, given the large likely voter/registered voter gap. That’s a problem for Obama because no president has won re-election with an approval rating below 50% among the voting (a smaller group than adult) electorate.
The question, then, is whether or not Romney can yank up his favorable rating above his unfavorable. If he can’t, Obama’s going to win. You don’t trade in the bad steak that doesn’t make you ill for a bad steak that may give you food poisoning. If Romney can present himself as a viable alternative, then a lot of us might be surprised by the final result.
At this point, however, my belief is that we’ll return somewhere close to where we were before the conventions: a small Obama lead of about 1.5 points. There just aren’t that many minds that Romney can change at this point. Democrats can also take heart that Republican excitement eventually rebounded a few weeks following President Bush’s 2004 debate debacle.
Still, my confidence in an Obama victory is at least somewhat shaken right now. Obama’s lead is probably not big enough for him to play the super-cautious game he did on Wednesday.