2012 Presidential Debate Video from New York Times - Obama vs Romney via PBS

The Second Presidential Debate - really more of a Town Hall Meeting - between President Obama and Mitt Romney:    Video from Youtube via New York Times

Convention Bounce for Obama puts him back in the lead

Although some media outlets are still reporting a "dead heat", it's pretty clear that Obama is enjoying a post-convention bounce and probably remains a few points ahead of Romney.   If the election were held today, Obama would be the very likely winner both in terms of total vote and, more importantly, the electoral vote.

2012 Electoral votes may come into play again, though at this time it appears Obama's likely to take both the popular and the electoral vote, the latter by a larger margin.

Many of us have our fingers crossed that we will not again see a fiasco like the Gore v Bush election.   Gore won the popular vote in that election by about 500,000 votes nationally, but lost in the electoral college when all of Florida's electoral votes went to GW Bush after a series of court challenges that wound up in the Supreme Court.    Many fail to note that the exit polls from that election were *very* accurate in suggesting that Gore "won" the election, but in addition to other less important errors, the ballots in Palm Beach county was so confusing that people who thought they voted for Gore wound up as "overvotes" and were discarded - most because they had a vote for both Gore and for Pat Buchanon.    

Romney or Bachman or ? for the Republican Nomination

As the debt ceiling / US budget theatrics continue in Washington (prediction - compromises coming in a few days to avert an S&P downgrade) , the race for the Republican presidential nomination continues in a somewhat lackluster fashion with several potential candidates on the sidelines waiting to see if they can muster enough support to throw their hat into the ring.

However Republicans must be concerned that none of the current crop appear likely to defeat Obama unless the economy suffers significantly greater setbacks in the next year. It's alarming to think that some radical Republicans may have this scenario in mind as they continue to stall on budget compromises and raising the debt ceiling, hoping to harm the economy enough to defeat Obama but not enough to send us into a tailspin. That calculation would not only be unpatriotic, it would be potentially disastrous for the country.

The current best bet appears to be that Mitt Romney will sort of plod into the Republican nomination with Michelle Bachmann pulling in the Tea Party folks, leaving moderate Republicans a choice between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney who are polling about equally in scenarios where Perry's in the ring (he has not announced yet but is very likely to do so if his numbers stay as high as now. RealClearPolitics has Romney at 18%, Perry at 17% in a race where all the strong potential candidates are placed in the ring. With only *announced* candidates, Romney's in a strong lead at 27% with Bachmann second with 18% , Ron Paul third with 11%.

Look for Palin to stay out of the race and hope for a VP spot on the likely Romney or Perry ticket. Look for Bachmann to *get* the VP spot on the Romney or Perry ticket, giving the Republicans a similar strategy to McCain / Palin but with much stronger candidates on the ticket.

In our view Obama's still in the driver's seat with respect to the 2012 election. Barring a serious economic setback, Americans are unlikely to want yet another major "change" in the White House so soon. Obama's kept his core constituency happy with only modest levels of alienation of those on the far left who naively felt Obama as President would act very consistently with Obama as young Chicago organizer. We're likely to see more liberal "progressive" politics from Obama in a second term, but it's clear that President Obama will continue to keep moderate democrats fairly happy while he continues to alienate the far left and right. It's a great political strategy and it won't change for the 2012 election.