"...Looks worrisome for Romney"

Why?  What in particular?

"Romney is targeting eight states," Jonathan Chait writes. "Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. No Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. This is surely not because Romney is husbanding scarce cash."

Campaign aides also told Fox News yesterday that they basically have so much money they have to come up with ways to get it out the door, Brewster’s Millions–style, before election day. ...Chait, Daily Intel

Why?  Well, the "value of that money is on the day after the election? Zero.”

And it’s probably not because they want outside super-PACs to spend in those states, either — they can’t legally coordinate, and the super-PACs will take their cues from the Romney campaign about where to fight. (The GOP super-PACs have already pulled out of Michigan and Pennsylvania.)

The reason this looks worrisome for Romney is that he’s pursuing an electoral-college strategy that requires him nearly to run the table of competitive states. The states where Romney is not competing (and which aren’t obviously Republican, either) add up to 247 electoral votes. The eight states where Romney is competing add up to a neat 100 electoral votes, of which Romney needs 79 and Obama just 23. If you play with the electoral possibilities, you can see that this would mean Obama could win with Florida alone or Ohio plus a small state or Virginia plus a couple small states, and so on. ...Chait, Daily Intel

And all this time I've been worried about whether Romney is human or a bot.  Turns out that doesn't matter.

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Nate Silver also uses the word "worrisome" in connection with Romney.  Here's his take -- in part:

The three national tracking polls that were published on Friday all moved toward President Obama, probably reflecting momentum from the Democratic convention.

In the Gallup national tracking poll, Mr. Obama moved into a three-point lead over Mitt Romney, up from one point on Thursday.

What’s a bit more worrisome for Mr. Romney is that Gallup’s reporting of the head-to-head results in its poll occurs over a lengthy seven-day window, meaning that only a minority of the interviews in the poll were conducted before the major speeches at the Democratic convention.

In fact, most of the interviews in the poll were conducted just after the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., a period in which Mr. Romney should have been enjoying a convention bounce of his own.

Gallup’s approval ratings, however, are published over a three-day window, meaning that they will be quicker to respond to shifts in opinion. Mr. Obama’s approval ratings shot up to 52 percent in the version of poll published on Friday, while his disapproval ratings declined to 43 percent. The FiveThirtyEight forecast model does not use approval ratings directly, but this is a sign that there could be more good news for Mr. Obama in the head-to-head portion of the poll in the days ahead. ...538, NYT

Comments

[Commonist]

It has to be persistent, however. If it is, Romney needs a dead girl/live boy scandal or some sort of gangbuster debate performance.

There will be ad avalanches, but they have diminishing returns and the Romney campaigns cash supremacy hasn't given him any edge yet.