Dana Milbank: “Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom famously predicted that the candidate would use an Etch-a-Sketch approach in the general election to erase his previous positions. But nobody predicted that the entire exercise would occur in the space of one week — and just a month before the election. Stranger yet, Romney hasn’t been shifting all his views to the center in recent days. While his domestic policies are moderating, his foreign policy is moving to more of a neocon hard line. The only consistency is inconsistency: Whatever Romney’s positions were, they are no longer.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams: “Biden’s laugh is utterly brutal because it takes Paul Ryan, the marathon-exaggerating, dumbbell-curling, wannabe manly man and does the absolute worst thing imaginable to a guy like that. It points at him and makes him a fool. It says, “Yeah, tell me another one, Backwards Baseball Cap.” It’s at once furious and dismissive. It understands that at the heart of humor there’s a howl of pain. That why it’s the favorite weapon of choice of the trod-upon. And it says to the American voters the most undermining thing imaginable: “You see this fella next to me? What a goddamn joke.”