This whole thing is starting to take on a level of importance that I don't ever remember these debates having; I am beyond irritated with the media, which is allowing Romney to play with house money, and putting Obama in a position I'm not sure he's ever been in: having his electoral hopes riding on what happens in this 90-minute debate.

Because you know that unless Obama runs away with this tonight, it's going to be some kind of mighty struggle to overcome the message the media is going to be blasting endlessly.

The way the media has treated these debates and much of the campaign has been so egregiously and malignantly bad that I actually find myself rooting for Obama.  Hello?  Did you just faint?  Here, let me fan you a little...

Charlie Pierce really said it for me, in response to the media's treatment of the fake Paul Ryan soup kitchen photo op:

Now this, this right here is the kind of thing that must make Al Gore want to dive to the bottom of a vat of Jack Daniels and drink his way to the surface again. For two years, his attempt to become president of the United States was bedeviled by journalistic malpractice based on things he hadn't said, things he hadn't claimed to do, and all around the general theme that he was a fake and a phony and a fraud. How lasting was the damage? How many idiots did you hear in the last ten days referring to how Gore "sighed" during that debate with C-Plus Augustus, despite the fact that, as Bob Somerby tirelessly points out, this alleged "sighing" didn't matter at all at the time, but only became important when it was fitted over the following two weeks into the narrative that already existed. Now, though, Gore has to watch a Republican ticket bring fakery, phoniness and fraudulence to an almost epic level, and get away largely clean.

Huh.

The problem was even if this is Obama's fault, not saying it was, as far as screw-ups, it's pretty damn small.

Somehow a terrorist attack is the president's fault in 2012, he's weak they say, but in 2001 it was a total shock that no one could have predicted.

How anyone could trust Romney and his Neocon advisors, is beyond me.

This is the same crowd that botched 9-11 in the first place....

The same crowd who let Bin Laden get away.....

The same crowd that pushed us into a war in Iraq knowing there were no WMD (that is what Blix's reports showed in the months leading up to the invasion)...

The same crowd that has basically been wrong about every major foreign policy issue over the last few years.....

The same crowd willing to sate religious extremists who want to see Armageddon the Middle East....

The same crowd that wants to bomb Iran even though by all accounts it would not be effective in stopping any nuclear weapons capability for more than a few months, and would only accelerate the efforts.....

I'm not that kind of voter, because I don't think pols care much about me at all, but I do understand that mindset from my early days as a voter, decades ago, when we all seemed to care so very much.

We might have considered owning a gun if our dogs had not proven to detour crime around us as much as they do as well.  We lived in a rough neighborhood in Colorado Springs.  The neighborhoods around Fort Carson tend to be rough.  We had two German Shepherds though and nothing happened to our home or any of us in that neighborhood, nothing.  I opened the door once to someone who obviously meant me harm and my dog cut around me to the screen door and the guy took off running.

If he'd just for once give people a reason to appreciate the government, that would be a start.  He could say, "I believe that one of the responsibilities of government is to help create the conditions under which people are able to lift themselves up, and to help them when they falter.  Social Security and Medicare have done more to keep older people out of poverty than any private-sector, vulture capitalist scheme; Medicaid has helped millions of families, many of them hard-working people who just want the chance to get ahead.  School breakfast and lunch programs have helped feed growing children whose families cannot keep up with the rising cost of basic, healthy foods and don't have enough to eat at home.  When we are well-fed, properly clothed and housed, and healthy, we, as a society and as an economy benefit."

On women, he could take a cue from Biden, and express his respect for women having the right to make their own decisions.  He could hit even harder and say, "From right-wing pundits calling young women who want birth control 'whores' and 'sluts,' to Republican members of Congress, including Mr. Ryan, attempting to define 'forcible' rape, and declaring that women don't get pregnant if they have 'really' been raped, I can't find a single bit of respect for women, not one bit, which means the claims that these people respect life is hypocrisy of the worst kind."

On respect for life?  "Some day, I'd like a Republican to explain to me how the same people who want to restrict a woman's right to choose are the same people who will fight tooth and nail for people to have the right not to wear seat belts, or motorcycle and bike helmets.  The same people who want to get rid of regulations that ensure that our workplaces are safe, our water clean, our prescriptions safe to take, our food safe to eat - how does this represent a respect for life?"

This will never happen - these words will never be said.  Too many of these kinds of issues Obama is supremely uncomfortable with; he doesn't state his views on them with conviction, and it shows.

Back to the swing states, I don't know the reputation of YouGov but they just released a slew of individual swing state polls mostly favoring Obama: