This new ad from the Romney campaign is perhaps the best one it has produced yet on the economy:

Here’s my question: Is the Obama campaign doing a good enough job in rebutting the core argument that appears to be helping Romney surge? Has the Obama team been direct enough in taking on on Romney’s claim that he understands how bad things are for the middle class and that he’s got a plan to make things better? According to Dem pollster Stan Greenberg’s research, the framing Romney uses above has succeeded in speaking to the economic pain being endured by one key demographic — unmarried women, who are crucial to Obama’s coalition.

I’d like to see the Obama campaign argue more forcefully that Romney is selling people a bill of goods, and that it’s a bill of goods that has been peddled to the American people before. Yes, Obama sometimes says that what Romney is offering is “snake oil,” and that we can’t afford to go back to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

But I wonder if the Obama team could be a bit more direct in anticipating Romney’s argument and preparing voters to hear it before rebutting it — and in referencing Obama’s GOP predecessor, too. For instance: You’ve probably heard my opponent tell you that things are really bad, and that he’s got a plan to make things a whole lot better. Well, guess what — we still have a lot more work to do. But know this: When he tells you that his ideas will improve your lives, he’s selling you a bill of goods. Remember the last time a Republican president told you that cutting taxes on the rich and rolling back government would magically produce growth and shared prosperity? All we got was deficits as far as the eye can see. Why would you buy what he’s selling this time around? We are going in the right direction. Let's not change course now — it could stall or reverse the progress we’re making.

As Greenberg notes, Obama also has to be clearer about what he will do in his second term to improve people’s lives, while drawing a more passionate contrast between Obama’s “we’re all in this together” and Romney’s “you’re on your own” values.

People want to be leveled with about the economy. They are open to the argument that we are recovering ever so slowly and that fixing it will not be easy. With memories of the Bush years still fresh, they may be open to the argument that Romney is selling them a bill of goods.

Readers, you tell me: How is the pushback out there in the states? What are you seeing?

The other day, writing about the battle for the House, Evan McMorris Santoro memorably observed that progressives are “furiously chiseling away at the Tea Party Mt. Rushmore.” In other words, Dems are working very hard to defeat some of the most prominent and outsized Tea Party members of Congress — such as Steve King and Joe Walsh — who are known for extreme positions and whacked out public statements.

Interestingly, at a time when it looks like Dems will not recapture the House, it turns out that some of these members are vulnerable. Indeed, the liberal CREDO Super PAC, which is organizing against Tea Partyers, notices something interesting: A few days ago, National Republicans sank a surprisingly large amount of cash into defending these members.

On October 5th, FEC filings show, the NRCC sank a total of over $2.5 million into the races featuring many members of what CREDO has dubbed the “Tea Party Ten.” Among them: Steve King of Iowa, Joe Walsh of Illinois, Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, Frank Guinta of New Hampshire, Chip Cravaak of Minnesota, and Mike Coffman of Colorado.

Of those, Stuart Rothenberg has rated Walsh favored to lose against Tammy Duckworth. He has rated Coffman and Cravaak pure Toss Ups, and he has rated King and Guinta Toss Ups/Tilt Republican. Allen West of Florida also falls into that latter category. Sean Duffy seems safer, having been ranked Lean Republican. Meanwhile, Tea Party warrior queen Michele Bachmann — who would be the biggest prize of all — is favored to hold her seat.

Asked for comment, NRCC spokesman Paul Lindsay emailed: “We’ll continue to defend our Members against the surge of outside spending from labor groups and other Democratic special interests that are investing heavily in many of these races in order to try to put Nancy Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair.”

The CREDO Super Pac is organizing on the ground in some of these races. The group says it has knocked on over 30,000 doors and has made over 400,000 phone calls. This isn’t a conventional Super PAC; as a grassroots operation it has raised far less than the mega Super PACs playing in the presidential races, but it is investing that money in get out the vote efforts, rather than TV ads.

Despite a surge of optimism a few weeks back, Democrats appear likely to fall short of winning back the House. But progressives are hoping that by knocking off a few prize Tea Partyers, they will help fuel the narrative that the Tea Party is on the wane.

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UPDATE: Headline changed to address objections to my poor taste.

With the gender gap shrinking as Mitt Romney surges, Dems are hoping Romney’s comments about abortion to the Des Moines Register yesterday have given them a shot at renewing their pitch for women and reopening that gap. Romney told the paper this:

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

A Romney spokesperson promptly walked that back: “Gov. Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.”

The Obama campaign held a conference call this morning to hit Romney over the reversal, arguing that his comments showed he’s obscuring the extreme positions he took on women’s issues to get through the primary. Importantly, the Obama camp tied this to the House GOP, noting that Romney running mate Paul Ryan has co-sponsored various extreme abortion bills in the House.

“Women can’t trust Mitt Romney, and the American people can’t trust him to be honest and direct about where he stands,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, said on the call, adding that Romney “wants to get rid of women’s access to birth control,” that he wants to “get rid of Planned Parenthood,” and to “overturn Roe.”

“This Congress has repeatedly taken aim at taking women back decades,” Richards continued. “Who is in the White House makes an enormous difference. President Obama has stood up to the Tea Party Congress and said, `We’re not going to get rid of those things.’”

There seems to be a debate underway over whether the Obama campaign should portray Romney as “severely conservative” or as a “flip flopper,” with some noting that these are at odds with each other. But really, there needn’t be any conflict here. Romney took a number of positions to get through the primary that are extreme. He is now trying to obscure and moderate those positions to win the general election. One can point both of those things out without contradiction. And by the way, this is true on issue after issue after issue, from abortion to tax cuts to immigration.

The real question is whether people will fall for it. If there’s one thing the debate showed, it’s that Romney has proven extremely adept at obscuring the true nature of his actual agenda. And yet, the pre-debate gender gap does seem to show that his actual positions on issues important to women did give them pause. That was mitigated by Mitt’s excellent debate performance, in which he did a very good job speaking to the economic concerns of unmarried women, a key constituency in Obama’s coalition.

But Romney is, in fact, on record taking a number of positions on abortion and women’s health that will again alienate them — that is, if the Obama campaign can successfully punch through all the evasions and obfuscations and remind them what those positions really are.

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UPDATE: Let me clarify a bit. There’s no contradiction in arguing both of the following: First, Romney took extreme positions to get through the primary that he’d be expected to honor as president — and very likely would honor if he wins. Second, Romney is now flip flopping away from those positions; he’s trying to obscure and cover them up to get through the general.

This race began as a toss up. It is now a toss up. Barring some unforeseen event, it will remain a toss up until the end. Which it was always going to be from the start.

Politico has a big story this morning documenting the widespread alarm among Obama supporters about the dramatic tightening in the polls we’re seeing right now. Dem strategist Jim Jordan captures the prevailing sentiments well:

“That’s my party: Irrational overconfidence followed by irrational despair.”

It’s true that Obama seemed to be widening his lead to a significant margin in the days leading up to the debate. But a lot of that may have reflected the bump Obama received from his convention. Yes, Obama’s debate performance was a disaster. But in many ways, the crucial element at the debate was not just Obama’s terrible showing; it was Mitt Romney’s excellent one. After months of operating from a failed theory of the race — which led him to make the race only about Obama — Romney made a strong affirmative case for himself and his policies. It was full of distortions and evasions about the true nature of his actual agenda, but it was unquestionably a politcally effective presentation of the case for his candidacy, rather than simply an indictment of the Obama presidency.

We will never know whether the polls would have tightened less than they have now if Obama hadn’t failed so miserably to rebut Romney’s case for himself. And it’s true that Romney’s surge has to some degree defied expectations. But a tightening was always inevitable. This race was never going to be easy for Obama to win. The fundamentals have proven durable: A weak recovery, which ensures a very tough contest with perhaps a slight edge to the incumbent.

Here, courtesy of Dan Balz, is how Obama advisers view the race:

In Ohio...they say that they still believe the president holds a real lead and that they remain narrowly ahead in a number of other states. They argue that the big margins of two weeks ago were always destined to tighten, given everything that is known about these states from past campaigns. The debates, they say, accelerated a process that was likely to happen sometime in October.

But from their research, the race has begun to settle down. Romney is not continuing to gain ground. “Romney has consolidated some of the gains he was going to get anyway,” said White House senior adviser David Plouffe. “We weren’t going to win battlegrounds by 10 points.”

This may sound like spin, but the Obama team has predicted a tight finish for months. Plouffe told me way back before the conventions that the Obama team believed this will be exceptionally close until the end. He added then that if Obama can hold a slim two to three point lead in enough key states, the remaining undecided voters won’t break to Romney in the numbers he’ll need. Given what we know right now, this is still eminently doable. Yes, it’s possible that Romney’s bounce will continue and make him the confirmed favorite. But for now, all indications are that this has simply become the very close race it was always likely to become.

* Bain’s ties to China complicate Romney’s message: The New York Times reports that even as Romney continues to bash Obama as soft on China, Romney has over $2 million invested in Bain funds with big stakes in a company that closed an auto parts plant in Michigan and is now manufacturing the same parts in China. This nugget may be key:

Mr. Romney’s campaign insists he has no control over his investments since they are held in a blind trust. That said, a confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: “Strong fundamentals” like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

The Obama campaign may see this as an opening to revive the Bain narrative, and hammer it today to prevent Romney from closing the gap in Ohio, which has been pounded by outsourcing and has seen a rebound in the auto industry that has helped keep the jobless rate below the national average.

* How Biden can win the debate: Must read from Matt Miller, who lays out a template for the arguments Biden should make about Romney’s murky, unknowable values and the well-known values of today’s Republican Party that will dictate how he rules. How Biden should tie the “47 percent” remarks to GOP entitlement policies:

“My opponent sees these programs as breeding ‘dependency.’ We’ve heard Governor Romney say much the same thing behind closed doors. This may have been a legitimate debate...in the 19th century. But shredding our safety net is not what America needs at a time when global competition and rapid technological change are leaving Americans increasingly vulnerable.”

* Romney’s bounce lives, but will it last? A balanced assessment from Nate Silver:

The forecast model is not quite ready to jump on board with the notion that the race has become a literal toss-up; Mr. Romney will need to maintain his bounce for a few more days, or extend it into high-quality polls of swing states, before we can be surer about that. But we are ready to conclude that one night in Denver undid most of the advantage Mr. Obama had appeared to gain in September.

A batch of swing state polls is due out today; they will begin to tell us whether Romney’s bounce — which looks to be a bit higher than three points, not quite as large as Obama’s pre-convention lead — is durable or receding. Though Romney is edging ahead in national polling averages, we won’t know how real that is until the polling no longer includes the two or three days just after the debate.

* Obama hanging on to edge in key states: Nate Cohn looks at the polls and documents that Romney has yet to show that his bounce has completely wiped out Obama’s edge in Ohio and other key battlegrounds. If Romney’s bounce holds, the race will be a dead heat, and will be decided by whether he can finally edge ahead in them.

* Unions working hard in Ohio: Rosalind Helderman has a nicely reported look at the on the ground organizing that labor is doing in Ohio, to shore up Obama’s small lead there. One key outsanding question: Did the labor/Dem repeal of the state law restricting public employee bargaining rights lay the groundwork for an organizational edge that will persist into this fall’s election?

* Nancy Pelosi: It’s all about unmarried women: Pelosi gives Joe Biden one word of advice for the debate: “Women.” She points out that unmarried women are key to this election, which means he and Obama should hammer home messages about health care, the Lily Ledbetter Act, and the Violence Against Women Act, which Joe Biden authored.

As Stan Greenberg told me yesterday, Obama failed at the debate to connect with unmarried women and explain to them clearly how he would improve their lives.

* Obama camp should keep hitting on Medicaid: As Steve Benen notes, we need more messaging like that in the Obama ad stressing the likelihood of Romney/Ryan Medicaid cuts. It draws a sharp moral contrast on the question of how the two sides’ visions would impact real people’s lives.

* And Dems drawing hard line on taxes? David Firestone on Chuck Schumer’s speech yesterday, in which he insisted that Dems should not back down in allowing the tax cuts for the rich to expire when the “fiscal cliff” talks begin in earnest. As Firestone notes, Dems have all the leverage here. It would be insane (if entirely predictable) for them to squander it by going along with the GOP push to lower rates while ending deductions. The goal of tax reform should be more progressivity.

What else?

* The Obama camp is up with a new ad in seven swing states going hard at Mitt Romney over proposed Ryan Medicaid cuts, a sign Obama may retool with a renewed emphasis on protecting the safety net.

* Good catch by Eric Kleefeld: Behold the GOP candidate’s son, Josh Romney, on Obama’s debate performance: “as a father, he learned how to debate an obstinate child.”

* Interesting point from David Dayen on the Obama camp’s Big Bird ad: It could not cite a single Wall Street malfeasant the Obama administration prosecuted.

* This quote, from a pollster to E.J. Dionne, perfectly captures the folly of the liberal freakout over the poll gap closing:

“When you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you. When you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill themselves.”

* An incumbent president leads by high single digits. A challenger defeats him in a debate, and his lead vanishes. And then ... the challenger goes down to defeat. Steve Benen walks us through the 2004 polling.

* Or, as Ben White tweeted:

Rs getting too stoked on current numbers should just constantly repeat “President John Kerry” to themselves

* Relatedly, a must read from Kevin Drum: How the poll freakout represents a liberal “hack gap” and may yet produce an Obama defeat that should have been entirely avoidable.

* Markos Moulitsas on why the fundamentals of the campaign still tilt in Obama’s favor, a case that’s helped by the new CNN poll showing him up four among likely voters in Ohio.

* Ari Berman on the Ohio secretary of state’s decision to appeal a decision reinstating early voting rights, and how this voter supression push isn’t exactly a coincidence in the state that may decide the election.

* Josh Marshall asks reporters whether they mind being lied to about Romney’s tax plan, and suggests a quick way to get up to speed on how to see through all the falsehoods.

* A counterintuitive take from Nate Cohn on today’s Gallup numbers, which found Romney leading by two among likely voters: They may be more ominous for Romney than for Obama.

* The polling on Obama’s faulty debate performance that Stan Greenberg spoke to me about earlier today is now online for your viewing, er, pleasure.

* Sam Stein on the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s new “Call Out The Vote” program, which hopes to deliver targeted calls to one million voters for Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and others.

In other PCCC news, their petition to collect signatures protesting Romney’s threat to take the hatchet to Big Bird is here.

* And Dana Milbank on Romney's foreign policy speech: “one long gargle-and-rinse of his previous positions.” Given the nonstop lies, evasions and contortions, I continue to wonder what precedent a Romney victory would set.

What else?