The debates are too late for Romney

Markos Moulitsas wrote a nice post on how narrative works in presidential campaigns, using Romney as an example:

From Day 1, all of Mitt Romney's foes had a clear narrative about him—he was a callous, heartless, elitist, vulture capitalist. In other words, "a dick." 

The stage was set by Occupy with their "99 percent" narrative, which allowed Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich to get mileage with their "vulture capitalist" attacks against Romney before the party establishment shut them down.
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And why is that narrative important? Because as people become aware of such narratives, they then try to decide whether it's legit. If you can reinforce a negative narrative, you're winning.

The first step in changing the trajectory of a campaign is to lay out a new narrative, a narrative that can reinforce people's preconceptions (Alinsky's rule number 2: "Never go outside the experience of your people.") but work to your advantage. When people talk about the debates as Romney's last chance to turn this around they are referring to the way debates can be key to communicating a narrative. As Paul Waldman points out, a debate can turn an underlying critique into an open criticism that explains the whole campaign:

what happened was that reporters decided those were the key moments, and kept writing and talking about them in the subsequent days and weeks. Not coincidentally, the moments that get chosen are those that reinforce the conclusions the press has already come to about a candidate's character weaknesses.

The first debate is scheduled for October 3rd, just under a week away. Romney has not settled on a narrative for Obama, or even for his own campaign:

While Obama doles out his sustained-applause lines freely, Romney is still honing his message. The GOP nominee has rolled out tougher rhetoric on China as a currency manipulator in recent days in order to tug at Ohioans who have been hit by outsourced jobs. He also speaks in front of a tally board that features the historic level of national indebtedness.

Romney is not building any coherent narrative this week, he has nothing to build on next Wednesday. He's still auditioning new lines of attack. With nothing to build on, he has no chance to use the debates to change anything about the election.

Medicare could win the House for Dems

A new Gallup poll, completed before Romney's 47% tape aired, show Obama with a growing advantage on Medicare, 50% to 44% in swing states, larger nationally. A new Reuters poll is showing Romney support collapsing among seniors:

Romney's double-digit advantages among older voters on the issues of healthcare and Medicare - the nation's health insurance program for those over 65 and the disabled - also have evaporated, and Obama has begun to build an advantage in both areas.

This kind of collapse, where a core constituency of one party becomes disenchanted with the party's platform, usually shows up as a collapse of party id and a growth of independents, then in a growth of the opposition party's id. And sure enough, that is what we see Republican id collapsing in Huffpost's party id trend:





This large change in party id of suggests a wave election, and Nancy Pelosi now puts the Democrat's chances of picking up the 25 seats they need to win the House at 60%. Her strategy? "Medicare, Medicare, Medicare."

Romney's done, Senate's held, House?

The campaign will downplay their chances, and they have to keep the pressure up all the way through, but the Presidential election has been over since July, and the Senate was locked down over the Democratic convention. So the strategic question for the Obama campaign is how can they use Romney to help us take back the House?

Romney's 47% video, and his doubling down on that view of the electorate, gives Obama the opportunity to frame him and the Republican party as a Goldwater extremists, when the Democrats won the largest share of seats since the New Deal. Talk of improving House chances has erupted across the Democratic Internet, sparked by Sam Wang's house outlook giving Democrats a 74% chance of taking over (Dylan Matthews at the Post dug into Wang's data a bit more):

In summer polls leading up to the 2012 conventions, Republicans were behindDemocrats by a median of 2%, a 9-point swing from 2010. Consequently, many seats won in that Republican wave are now at risk

Karl Rove's American Crossroads appears to be pulling back from Romney to focus down-ballot. Josh Marshall of TPM posted a note from a correspondent suggesting TPM shift focus to the House. Nate Silver pointed out in August that the GOP majority was at risk, and since then polls have moved to suggest the Democratic wave he saw as a possibility. The Obama campaign has seen a party ID shift in their polling (they lower the Democratic numbers internally in case the shift is a mirage), which is another indication of a wave. The Huffington Post House outlook has more Republican than Democratic races to watch,  and as more congressional polling becomes available we should be able to test Wang's predictions from the national polls.

Post convention, last chances for Romney

Conventions are one of the few opportunities a presidential candidate has to change how they are perceived by the broad American public, and with that change the trajectory of the election.  It is clear that Romney has wasted his convention, neither the convention nor his choice of Ryan changed anything about the way he is perceived by the electorate. Instead both reinforced the story the Obama campaign has been telling about Romney. Romney's remaining opportunities to significantly impact the election are the debates, but with no groundwork laid for a new story of Romney's candidacy he faces an impossible task. With the polls at status quo Romney loses.

Meanwhile the Obama campaign is more and more confident that they have this thing sown up. It's hard to argue with them, though Rahm and Democratic insiders I've talked to warn of hubris. The natural growth of minority share of the electorate, combined with Romney's disastrous performance among Hispanics, put this election out of reach for the Republicans. The election appears to be close, and will be fought on the ground to the last day, but the Obama campaign has a margin for error and Romney is out of opportunities to take that away.

I would bet the Democratic convention organizers are shifting emphasis from engaging Romney to outlining what Obama intends to do with another four years. Obama may use convention starting tomorrow as an occasion to set a course for America, rather than to reintroduce himself to the public.