It's been an "interesting" 36 hours here in metro NYC. Last night, amid the high winds, driving rain and sounds of trees blowing over, we could see transformers exploding, looking something like greenlightening in the night sky. Given all nature's theatrics, we feel blessed to have sustained no damage greater than some pretTy big downed trees -- and our thoughts and prayers go out to neighbors and colleagues whose damage is so much worse than a power outage and highly unreliable Internet access.
Around here, Halloween has been "cancelled," but it's likely to be a pretty scary day for the Obama campaign, given the numbers in Ohio -- which shows that the GOP has pretty much closed the gap in early voting with the Democrats, even though they are turning out "low propensity" voters, while Democrats are simply cannibalizing their election day voter pool by turning out their "high propensity" voters early (http://washingtonexaminer.com/ohio-shocker-gop-closes-early-voting-gap-boosting-romney/article/2509838).
My sense is that President Obama's disaster tour efforts may boost his approval numbers a bit -- but people's minds are already made up about his leadership. Dem talking heads are trying to politicize the hurricane by denouncing Governor Romney's efforts to put state governments, rather than federal government, in the forefront of disaster planning and relief. Good luck with that one -- it reeks of desperation (and wouldnt you rather have an informed, energetic governor like Christie in charge anyway?) And thinking that attack will work at this late date reminds me of VP Dan Quayle's optimism that the report of 3.7% growth several days before the election would make a difference. It didn't;aborting decisions had already been made.
Note that President Obama -- the biggest red-tape regulator the presidency has ever known -- is trying to boost his appeal in this natural disaster by promising to "cut" the burdensome red tape that he promotes in every other context. If less regulation makes sense now, why doesn't it make sense the rest of the time?