several new polls, a lot of which we re not big fans of so that s why we haven t been promoting them too much, but they do show something in common. a convention bounce for the president. and the romney campaign is out with a new memo, frankly a very defensive memo today from their pollster who writes, quote, don t first line, don t get too worked up about the latest polling. while some voters will feel a bit of a sugar high from the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly. the reality of the obama economy will re-assert itself as the ultimate downfall of the obama presidency and mitt romney will win this race. let s bring in our monday panel. dan balls, chief correspond a dent for the washington post who just marked his 1500th front page story for that illustrious paper. i have michelle bernard and susan ferreccio.
let s bring back the panel. susan, does the romney campaign need to provide more specifics on their tax plan before the debate so that they take away that talking point for the president before the first debate? well, first they were criticizing romney because his tax plan was too complicated. it had 54 points. 59. then he gets up there and he breaks his whole economic plan into five points. and now everyone s saying he was getting criticism from republicans at the time for not being simple enough. you can t be too complicated when you re talking about the tax code. i think it sounds fine to me. i think this is more do you think romney needs to do more in? are we going to see a big policy speech before the first debate? we need to see a big policy speech before the debate. he needs to fill in those details. it feels like they know it. the debates have to provide
we ve got to give the man that is something else. congratulations. susan, i want to start with you. just the first line of this memo screams we re losing, does it not? except if you read through the whole memo. they make excellent points but they bury the lead. when you talk to pollsters and they talk about the upcoming elections, one of the most important things is energy and enthusiasm. most who are most enthusiastic are republican voters. what this boils down it is who shows up to vote. if republicans are more enthusiastic, you re more likely to get a much stronger turnout. do you think that s the theory of the case? there are no swing voters left? no. i think that they would be following th fooling themselves if they thought that. i think they feel they have to hammer in on the economy because that s the only issue where the romney campaign seems to have an argument that people might be willing to listen to. we ve said it time and time again now.
anybody would have written, whether it was neil new house. it suggests there has been a small change as a result of the convention. we don t know how much and we don t obviously know whether it s lasting. susan, the big ush u of course to me when i look at this is that at this moment in time when you look at bill clinton when you look at when the other party was on the verge of winning the presidency, at this moment in time we were talking about new states. the fact of the matter is it s the same nine states we ve had in tossup. they re advertising in wisconsin. some of us are wondering what took so long. no pennsylvania and no michigan. they have a narrow path. that s true. it s so early right now. it s only just a couple of days after the convention for the democrats and we really have to wait to see what some polls leak like. i m with you. september 15th is when you measure the bounce. that s exactly right. one of the ways i want to measure the bounce is not head to he