Romney's performance at last Wednesday's presidential debate, where he crushed President Barack Obama, has reset the race. Polls released over the weekend confirm the upset staged by the Republican nominee in Denver: going into the debate Romney trailed Obama by two points nationally. The margin stayed as it is, only that one poll has Romney in the lead. A small yet telling difference. Romney has many reasons to flash a smile, and not just because of his impressive showing at the debate. He has opened up a lead in important swing states such as Virginia, Florida and Colorado; the number of volunteers who have signed up for his campaign has shot up by 63 percent (!) since Wednesday. He has 300,000 new fans on his Facebook page; his campaign has raised an additional $12 million since Wednesday. The big question: Can Romney build on this momentum in a way that carries him over the top on Nov. 6? Romney has successfully convinced swing voters to regard him as a plausible alternative to the current White House occupant. Now he has to close the deal and win their vote, not just have them consider him a viable option. Romney has another thing going for him. Throughout the GOP primaries he had to subscribe to extreme right-wing rhetoric to appeal to his political base. Now he has moved to the center, and keeps repeating the fact that he worked with Democrats during his Massachusetts governorship. Romney, who had described himself as "severely conservative" during the nomination contest, now casts himself as a much more moderate candidate to sway centrist voters. This is a good way to appeal to independent voters and he seems to have found his comfort zone. But things are not over for the president. Far from it. He has some reason to be optimistic despite his flat performance on Wednesday. He is still leading in some battleground states and has raked in more than $181 million in September the highest monthly fundraising tally in the 2012 election cycle and a particularly significant development in light of the fact that the Republicans have been the ones who have boasted the most robust fundraising machine for quite some time. And with the U.S. still scratching its head over what Romney ate before the debate or where Obama was exactly during that 90-minute exchange the Bureau of Labor Statistics published a new report on Friday showing payroll unemployment levels dropped from 8.1% to 7.8% in September. Many analysts have been second-guessing the accuracy of the latest data, which show 114,000 new jobs were added last month. On Friday, Romney flat-out rejected the new numbers, claiming that the actual unemployment level stood at 11% because millions of American who have given up looking for jobs are no longer counted as part of the workforce. But this is not just a debate about numbers. The difference between 7.8% to 8.1% centers on symbolism. Since Franklin Roosevelt, no president has managed to win re-election with unemployment higher than 8%. It is no wonder, then, that each campaign has its own interpretation of the new report.
