If it’s a contest between winning a debate and having a good jobs report, it’s no contest. No one cares about jobs reports. Ultimately, I don’t think Romney will benefit a whole lot from his debate performance. Elements of his debate performance will haunt him the rest of the way. But he did one very important thing. He prevented a total stampede of his candidacy that would have imperiled the Republicans’ control of the House and likely resulted in a rout in the Senate races. Another way of putting this is that Romney is still going to get his ass handed to him in the election, but the Republican Party will benefit from his debate performance because he stopped the bleeding.
Before the debate, I thought it was likely that the Dems would pick up at least two and perhaps as many as four Senate seats, and that they would easily retake the House. Now, I think we may net one Senate seat and probably won’t retake the House. But things are fluid. They have tightened up, but most of the momentum is still pushing against the GOP. One good reason to get involved personally at the local level is that the shape of the final result will have a massive impact on what the Democrats are able to do over the next two years. So, go out and find a campaign to work on over the next five weeks.
