As one who polled the 2008 presidential race extensively, it dawned on me, looking at the various "swing state" surveys taken recently, that many pollsters might be making a significant error that results in President Barack Obama with a lead, when perhaps the lead in reality belongs to Mitt Romney.
This is a tale of two cities. No, not Dickens' phlegmatic London and passionate Paris. Nor the two neighborhoods Charles Murray contrasted in his recent bestseller "Coming Apart" -- prosperous but isolated Belmont (actually, Mitt Romney's home for decades) and needy and disorganized Fishtown.
Perhaps the rain made the teleprompter unreadable. That's one thought I had on pondering Barack Obama's comments to a rain-soaked rally in Roanoke, Va., last Friday.
Congress came back to D.C. this week from its August recess and should have been ready to strap on their seat belts and get to work doing the legislation that they failed to do all year long.
There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as, in the spring, it appeared that forces supporting Mitt Romney would be able to raise about as much money as those supporting Barack Obama. There's even more now that it seems likely that the pro-Romney side will raise and spend more money than the pro-Obama side.
Within days of SEAL Team Six's killing of Osama on that midnight mission in Pakistan, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, reading all about the raid in the press, went to the White House to tell President Obama's national security adviser pungently to "shut the (bleep) up."
Unless something unexpected takes place, Florida can already claim the top spot in deciding recent presidential nominations, both for Republicans and Democrats, and is poised to be, along with a handful of states, a pivotal swing state in the November elections.
