The turn -- in the media at least -- towards the possibility of an Obama victory is making campaign organizers nervous.
Obama’s advisers view complacency as a special threat because they have built so much of their strategy around a vast field operation to register new voters, urge them to the polls or persuade that tiny band of undecided Americans to choose Obama. The effort is entering crunch time now, with registration deadlines looming and early voting underway in a few states. But it is an effort that depends heavily on the energy and enthusiasm of thousands of field workers and volunteers across the country. Anything that could suppress that enthusiasm — like the idea that Romney is sunk — makes nerves jangle in Obama’s Chicago headquarters. ...WaPo
But there is no mention of True the Vote.
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign seems determined to look at the bright side...
Romney brushed aside questions about the state of his campaign in an interview scheduled to air Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Asked by anchor Scott Pelley how he planned to turn around his campaign, Romney responded: “Well, it doesn’t need a turnaround. We’ve got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president [of] the United States.”...WaPo
Well, not exactly tied.
Still, the campaigns are equally nervous, edgy.
Romney advisers now interpret the state of the race from two somewhat contradictory perspectives. On the one hand, they see national tracking polls that a week ago showed Obama in the lead immediately after his convention but that tightened dramatically after that. Other national polls give Obama a lead.
The other view of the race comes from recent polls in the battleground states that consistently show Romney running behind. Especially troubling are Obama’s narrow leads in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, all vital to Romney’s chances of winning. If presidential campaigns are really a series of state-by-state contests, Romney’s path to 270 electoral votes is far more problematic than Obama’s at this moment.
But Romney advisers see a rush to judgment about the state of the campaign by pundits and commentators, and they dismiss suggestions that the campaign has taken a decisive turn. That view is shared in Chicago among Obama’s top advisers, who believe they are in a stronger position than Romney but who expect the race to be close and hard-fought until November. ...WaPo
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