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Track, but it's now in the low 50s as opposed to the mid-60s where it was six months ago. so, you know, look, no one's ready -- no one is on the brink of closing this deal right now. neither of them. they're both in a very, very tight race, the president's still slightly ahead. but that's, again, that's why this debate matters so much because no one's exactly ready to close anything. >> right. >> but it is romney having to -- acknowledge the cliche, close the deal on his plausible run here. >> yes. i agree with that. totally. >> yeah. so let's talk about, willie, an issue that's definitely goi...

Very clearly on the president because of the failure before and because of the erosion across the battleground states. >> yeah. john heilemann yesterday said something i've also been saying. as we get further away from the first debate, barack obama's failure took on sort of an urban legend. had an urban legend feel to it where the night of the debate you're going, boy, he's off. you know, i had a guy, a big democrat yesterday come up to me going i think the president's suffering from depression. really? he just had an off night. reagan had an off night in '84. but it did really change the dyn...

Plausible alternative. made him a plausible alternative. and as a result, you now have places like ohio and other states very much in play for governor romney. the president of the united states, again, from speaking to people yesterday and looking at the internals of their own polls, appeared not to want the job as much as governor romney did. and it had a huge ripple effect apparently within this country. so we're at the point now where tonight is just as you indicated as important debate as we've had since 1980. >> mark, do you agree that one thing the president does have going for him toni...

Before the debate. >> and john, the most important thing there too, talk about it, we've been talking about for a year now, that the president can't get over 50%. so this abc news/washington post poll shows he's cracking 50% in a lot of the key areas. again, i think this romney surge is real in florida. i think it's going to be real in north carolina. i think it's real in virginia. i do think that mitt romney's making some great gains. but again, we've got a different poll every day, and you look at the abc news washington post poll yesterday, he's over 50% and strong for the first time in a l...

Stylistically, you had mitt romney on his toes in that debate. i think the president's going to do very well stylistically tonight, jon meacham. the question is whether that's going to be enough stylistically whether people are really going to be saying what are the specifics? what are you going to do different over the next four years you didn't do over the last four years? and how does that change the dynamics of the race? >> yeah. and it's a trickier format than the one-on-one in denver because you have the audience asking the -- the town hall asking the questions gets a little more complic...