Jonathan Bernstein: The ‘momentum’ myth: “Since he’s not actually, well, leading, Romney partisans have relied on the idea that Romney has momentum: Even if he isn’t actually ahead yet, he is certain to take a commanding lead any minute now. But that “momentum” appears to have been entirely an invention of Republican spinners. It’s certainly true that Romney made impressive gains on Barack Obama in roughly the first week of October, probably in most part as a consequence of the first debate. But after that, the contest has been almost completely flat. For example, the Pollster trend line shows the race a dead heat on October 8 — and that since then, any movement has been only by small fractions of a percentage point. Nate Silver’s “nowcast” bottomed out for the president on October 12, and since then he’s recovered quite a bit. There’s simply nothing in the last twelve days to indicate movement towards Romney. ”

Jonathan Chait: Romney Says He’s Winning — It’s a Bluff: “If you look closely at the boasts emanating from Romney’s allies, you can detect a lot of hedging and weasel-words. Rob Portman calls Ohio a “dead heat,” which is a way of calling a race close without saying it’s tied. A Romney source tells Mike Allen that Wisconsin leans their way owing to Governor Scott Walker’s “turnout operation.” That is campaign speak for “we’re not winning, but we hope to make it up through turnout.” Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.”

US News: Mitt-mentum? Not So Fast: “This data-driven view of the race flies in the face of the bluff which the Romney campaign has been running, trying to use bravado to project an air of inevitability around his campaign in the race’s close. New York’s Jonathan Chait was among the first to puncture this meme, with others hitting similar noteshere, here, here, and here. And there’s evidence that this pushback is getting some traction. Whereas Politico’s Mike Allen opened his “Playbook”yesterday noting that “for the first time in six years, Romney folks emailed, ‘We’re going to win,’” he opened this morning’swith “an antidote to the (perhaps) irrational Republican exuberance,” noting Mitt’s electoral map problem.”

Dan Hodges: Nate Silver, the geeky statistician who is singlehandedly dismantling the myth of Mitt-mentum: “This strategy has taken various forms. In the wake of the final presidential debate – which Obama won by a country mile – an army of Romney strategists were dispatched to spread the word that the debate didn’t matter, it was all too late, and Romney’s “momentum” was carrying him to victory. “President Obama regained some lost ground,” said CNN contributor William Bennett, a former official in the George H W Bush administration, “but the damage had already been done. Mitt Romney now carries the momentum into the home stretch.” Friendly media outlets were primed to push the same message: “Brand new polls are proving Governor Romney continues to gain momentum,” Fox New’s independently minded analyst Sean Hannity gushed breathlessly yesterday, citing a Gallup poll that actually showed Romney’s lead contracting. We’ve even had the spectacle of Romney campaign officials starting to brief reporters on their transition plans and possible cabinet appointments. Picking members of your new administration; you don’t get much bigger mo than that. And then, slap bang in the middle of all this surging and sprinting, up pops that geeky killjoy Silver. “In polls, Romney’s momentum seems to have stopped,” he announced in a blog yesterday.”

NYTimes.com: “Cultivating the image that he is a winner, his aides say, could be Mr. Romney’s best strategy for actually winning.”

Mark Blumenthal: “While the [first] debate certainly boosted Romney’s standing in the polls, trends over the past two weeks have been negligible, with the leader seesawing nationally within a range of roughly one percentage point. Over the same period, the standings within the key battleground states have also remained constant. Other poll tracking models have shown the same patterns.”

Robert Wright: Romney Momentum Update: Still Zilch (at Best): “Yesterday I noted that, with two days of post-debate tracking poll results now in, it was starting to look as if that final presidential debate had killed the momentum Mitt Romney seemed to have going into it. Now, with three days of tracking poll results in, things look, if anything, a bit worse for Romney than they looked yesterday.”

Brendan Nyhan: The momentum behind a misleading narrative: “The notion that Romney still had “momentum” weeks after his early October gains in the polls has now been debunked by numerous commentators and academics. And while that pushback is increasingly reflected in campaign-trail accounts, it is worth taking a closer look at why coverage of Romney’s “momentum” went wrong and what it tells us about the weaknesses of campaign journalism.”

Michael Tomasky: Reality vs. “Reality”: “And so, after their side’s third consecutive debate loss, conservatives are the ones feeling confident. They are creating a reality. They’re talking up Romney’s supposedly unstoppable momentum now that he’s survived the debates without making one of those Gerry Ford-style goofs (that’s the bar now for the presidency?). They’re tweeting things about Silver, sharpening their knives, contemplating his November 7 takedown. They’re not quite measuring the drapes, but they’re getting their rulers out of storage… Conservatives know all this. But they’re constructing an opposite reality. This is at the heart of everything going on right now, I think. It’s what they can do that liberals can’t really do. They’ve always done it. “Romney is going to win” in 2012 isn’t so different from “We’ll be hailed as liberators” in 2003. They say something and try to make it so, and the media go for it time and time again.”

Sam Wang: The Princeton Election Consortium: “I would then give the following verdict: Indeed the race is close, but it seems stable. For the last week, there is no evidence that conditions have been moving toward Romney. There is always the chance that I may have to eat my words – but that will require movement that is not yet apparent in polls… In summary: Ro-mentum! Update: Via Marginal Revolution: for about $1,250 it is evidently possible to manipulate InTrade. This morning’s swing toward Romney was caused by one trader’s manipulation. Ro-mentum!!”

Nate Silver: “Part of the confusion (and part of the reason behind the perception that Mr. Romney is still gaining ground in the race) may be because of the headlines that accompany polls.”

So, of course, you can see what the largest problem is for the shysters on Team Romney and their Republican cheerleaders: Nate Silver. 

The Raw Story: Nate Silver is wrong because he is ‘thin and effeminate’: “Conservative darling Dean Chambers, founder of the website unskewedpolls.com that purports to recalibrate political surveys to rid them of liberal bias, argued that New York Times polling guru Nate Silver cannot be trusted because he is a weak, little girly-man. In a post for Examiner.com, Chambers sought to discredit Silver’s recent statistical analysis that showed Romney flatlining in the presidential race. …How could Chambers tell that Silver is an untrustworthy liberal? His lack of overt masculinity, of course.”

“Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he’s made out to be. His political analyses are average at best and his projections, at least this year, are extremely biased in favor of the Democrats.”

Exhibit A: Dean Chambers, ladies and gentlemen:

Nate Silver summarizes: