With An Eye On Charlotte, Interpreting Romney's Results-Free Convention

Pollsters are finding little evidence that Mitt Romney's blandly-vanilla acceptance speech, or for that matter, the GOP convention itself netted the party much in the way of measurable, fresh support.

Mitt Romney appears to have gotten little or no bounce from last week’s Republican National Convention, according to new polling.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sunday showed Romney erased a 4-point deficit during his convention and is now tied with President Obama at 45 percent.

But Gallup’s daily tracking poll on Sunday showed Romney had lost 2 points to the president, since the start of the GOP convention, and a separate Gallup poll published on Monday revealed voters’ lukewarm reactions to the convention and Romney’s performance in Tampa.

Not too surprising, as Romney's C- address left the Wall Street Journal editorial board fretful.

And it didn't help that the convention's lasting takeaway Clint Eastwood telling an empty chair to 'go *#@! itself,' and not a Romney market basket of plans or a single memorable, cliche-free TV ad theme.

In fact, Eastwood's cringe-worthy improv - - even Scott Walker said he flinched - - failed to make Mitt Romney's day or even the campaign's official wrap-up video.

Maybe it dragged a Romney bounce to the cutting room floor, too.

So assuming there are undecided, swing or independent voters still out there to be won over and recruited, the Democrats, batting last, have the more favorable schedule to accomplish two things

1. Articulating more program and policy specifics for curious voters than did Romney, et al, (other than, 'Obama bad, Romney good').

2. Framing Romney (and Ryan) for viewers and voters just the way the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers worried that Romney did not do for or about himself:

By failing to explain his own agenda, Mr. Romney has left an opening for Democrats and Mr. Obama to define it instead...

These Democratic attacks will be caricatures or worse. But they will have a blank canvass on which to paint because Mr. Romney did so little to explain what he would do and how it would help improve the economy...

We'll see. Nothing is promised in politics, leads and trends can appear and disappear as fast as you can say 'sub-three hour marathon,' and two months to go until the election is a political eternity.

If Obama comes out of his convention with a measurable polling bounce, then Democrats can claim some momentum, and a boost for their convention that appears to have eluded the GOP.

If Obama comes out of Charlotte without a bounce, then we can assume that people's minds are indeed nearly all made up, that groups and campaigns are about to waste a billion dollars on meaningless ads, and that the election could be won or lost to outside events, or weird stumbles, completely unpredictable today.