The Narrative, the Bandwagon, and the Wave

Yesterday Alec MacGillis wrote about how news media love the narrative of a close election, and how for weeks reporting has been tilted to keep the narrative alive. And Michael Tomasky wrote about the way the Romney campaign is whipping up the impression that Mittens has the Big Mo and Obama is fading. The latter is, of course, an attempt to build a “bandwagon” effect that will cause wavering voters to fall in line behind Romney. See also Jonathan Chait:

Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.

As I mentioned yesterday, people analyzing all the polls together say that Mitt’s post-Denver surge sputtered to a halt early last week, and since then the President’s numbers have slightly improved. And it’s not unreasonable to think Monday’s debate probably helped the President a bit.

Further, Kos argues that many polls are making assumptions about “likely” voters that favor Romney, but there are reasons (which Kos provides) to believe the assumptions are wrong and the President will do better than the polling suggests. We’ll see. I’m personally trying very hard to be realistic and not comfort myself with wishful thinking. It’s way too close now.

But then there are righties. One rightie blogger after another today is writing about the coming Romney tidal wave. “Could this be a wave election?” asked Polipundit. He’s convinced himself that the liberal media is lying to him about the mood of the electorate, and that not only will Romney win in a landslide, the Senate will return to Republican hands as well. Robert Stacy McCain mocks Nate Silver as the director of the Democrat Graveyard Whistling Choir. You run into this on rightie blog after rightie blog; they believe that not only is Romney going to win (possible, but by no means certain) but win big (not possible; if he wins, it will be by a hair).

And of course, if Nate Silver’s projections turn out to be right, they’re going to scream “election fraud!” until they all turn blue and their lungs fall out.