Despite a chorus of dissent for the concept of electoral momentum, I think the idea has meaning. Put differently, if Mitt Romney has a figurative wind at his back, what is its literal incarnation?

I position electoral momentum within the news cycle, which I have said is neither "24 hour" nor instantaneous. One news cycle is the focus by news media on a single topic/thread/meme (t/t/m) until a related t/t/m emerges with the potency to displace the former -- this is an inflection point, and it moves polls.

The release around Sept 17 of Mitt Romney's "47%" video was a clear inflection point that was widely felt to have secured re-election for the president. But while there was an unmistakable polling trend in favour of Barack Obama following this, another inflection point occurred on Oct 3 as a result of a discrete event -- the 90 minute Colorado debate. When the cameras in Colorado were shut off, Mitt Romney's prospects began to climb daily for more than a week. This begs the key question: why did a great mass of voters only begin to think more favourably of Mitt Romney on Oct 7, for instance? Why did another mass of voters not feel more favourably toward Romney on Oct 7, but did so on Oct 9?

The answer, I believe, is simple if you view the news cycle as a weekly TV drama. From the voter's vantage point, both the 47% video and the Oct 3 debate (and Romney's Benghazi remarks, for that matter) are dramas not unlike an episode of Grey's Anatomy, or other program. Over each week, these voters cross paths with a selection of their acquaintances once: e.g., taking a kid to a ballet recital, attending an ad hoc meeting at work, having lunch with a colleague. These encounters require a topic of conversation, and -- just as Grey's gossip can fill this role, so too can political developments. Thus, there is a multiplier -- the initial news development recurs in a cascade of conversations across the electorate. These conversations educate those who missed the initial news, affirm views, change views, expand knowledge, etc. From the initial pebble toss there is a ripple over about a week.

The Colorado debate t/t/m multiplier, like all trends, faded away, helped in part by the strong Democratic performances in the vice presidential and remaining two presidential debates. But while it lasted, an enormous number of people's views were changed -- in my opinion -- by trusted acquaintances, while at lunches and outside ballet rehearsals.

Edit -- this post is a focused re-write of my Oct 10 post "The very long news cycle"

Mitt Romney's strong performance in the first presidential debate this year did not, as of today, cause a spike in his poll results, but rather a steady increase. Which begs the question: if 40 million people watched the 90 minute debate, why would some voters wait a week to change their mind?

I think the answer is in the dynamic of the news cycle.


People use the term "24 hour news cycle", but I think a better analogy is the weekly TV drama. If you're in a part of the population that likes Grey's Anatomy, for example, then perhaps your friends are as well. And after each weekly episode -- and particularly after an emotionally riveting episode -- you don't just turn off the experience at the end of the hour. You talk about it at work the next day. And if your kid has ballet on Thursdays, you talk about it with the adults there. And with the other friends you encounter on the weekend. For the Grey's Anatomy segment, the ripple lasts precisely a week -- until the next episode, at which time interest in the previous episode dies.

Similarly, Mitt Romney's debate performance experienced a multiplier over the last week, likely through millions of conversations as people who encounter other politically-engaged acquaintances need a topic for their conversation.

The same occurred with the 47% video, which had a negative multiplier effect for Mitt Romney, as did his Libya remarks, which were only interrupted by the 47% video. But if there had been an unrelated interruption to the news cycle -- in the example above, perhaps a Grey's Anatomy actor got married -- the previous story would die.

Hours before the VP debate, the game is different. If Biden wins conclusively, the "strong Romney debate / weak Obama debate" story will die and Romney's numbers, I think, will stop moving up. If Ryan wins or the result is inconclusive, the debate story remains ascendant and Romney's trajectory continues. And if a major political event occurs, on the level of the Benghazi attack, the debate story will die.

From the Sky Down is no starmaker machinery, but the naked intelligence of four North Dubliners who earned billions and altered world events because they decided reinvention must keep happening. The construction of the song, One, is depicted over 12 concurrent minutes from a failed bridge in Mysterious Ways. The unadorned lead singer told TIFF, "No one wants to see how they make sausages," and it's perhaps untrue in this case because the audience understands that, at TIFF, stardom is identical to prices at Wal Mart and odour at KFC; it is a metal-desk trade show of film editors and screenwriters and other ugly, methodical, and disciplined people who shake like a wet dog when pixie dust is applied. He, the lead singer, said that Sid Viscious and all the others were products of art school. I don't know if I understand what that means -- Paul Hewson and company are products of places like Cedarwood Park, Ballymun. I spent my third birthday on that street. U2 was not art at all, but the musical version of Lance Armstrong's annual cycle of test mountains.




For some reason, Brian Mulroney worked the room.



.

A blonde, bushy ponytail pulls his mop straight, revealing a pale forehead – a billboard endorsement for white-bread. His round glasses belong on the nose of a pre-Confederation country doctor. His hillbilly sideburns do not.

His name is Mr. Lonely and he plays a tinny piano for northern Ontario's most accomplished glam rock-star – an organist in a canuck-cabaret.

When he plays, it is as two parts.

His head is all-stoic. Far from the bawdy majesty centre stage, it sways and nods softly, channelling the two-dimensional spirit of Schroeder. But his concentration is no cartoon; his eardrums, his eyes, his throat – all go together as though joined with copper.

That part of him is as spiritually solid as a maple; as a tree whose crooked twigs skip and quiver with every rising wind.

Ten crooked twigs: tapping and sliding, stabbing and soaring. Their little frenzy powers the outward spectacle.

And then, when the encores are over and the bathrooms get busy, Mr. Lonely is often found near the door, fingers, hands, head, hair – all hopelessly lost amongst the glittery groupies.

-- Mr. Lonely, aka, Todd Lumley, is a Canadian pianist best known for his work with Hawksley Workman. In December 2001, I passed him on a street in Paris, but did not introduce myself. I wrote this in 2006.

My 2009 Timex Ironman watch has two features that my 1988 version did not: an "Indiglo" back-light and something called an "occasion" tracker. What it does not have is a music player, Bluetooth/wifi/USB, a high resolution display, memory or apps. The price was about the same.

Over the same period, portable music advanced from the cassette-playing Walkman to the iPod Nano. I appreciate that one company might stick with its strong brand, but how can no competitor emerge over the same era?

I wrote several years ago my affinity for what I called "fridge books" -- tablets. I think watches offer an opportunity for innovation -- an unexploited piece of real estate on human flesh. As a micro-dashboard, these smart watches will connect to and complement smart phones, conveying information at a glance; when it takes a tenth of a second to look at something, withdrawing and unlocking your phone does actually add up. A smart watch may show:

• The song you're listening to on your phone (and let you skip it)
• Who is calling you
• Which cardinal direction is your mapped destination
• The next step in your route
• The temperature
• How far you have jogged
• Who and what from your circle is close to you (4Square, Geodelic/Around me, etc.)
• A pro sports score
• News headlines
• Where your phone is

It just seems silly that we don't have high-rez colour touch interfaces just to tell us the time; at least not on our wrist. Add in a new category of micro-push content, and demand for innovative new watches will be there.

[Re-printed from an email I just sent]

Not too dramatic inside.

Thinner must be a reaction to the iPad and Kindle/Kobo -- commuters will prefer less fuss.

Glossy magazine-style photo above the fold differentiates from the ugly Kindle visuals.

Quick bites on the cover reflect how we read news online (140 characters?).

Odd thing: the Life section alone has the glossy treatment throughout. Wonder why. Facts & Arguments and Lives Lived on the back cannot be flagship sections -- this is community paper content. I would have used glossy on sports, cars or real estate -- anything where one salivates over a stolen base or aspires to a high priced BMW or home/cottage renovation. Given the decision to go glossy, they pushed it with a funky graphic on L2 -- but why? It supported only a psychologist's opinion on child rearing? Doesn't make sense. Maybe the double page RBC ad in the middle sold them on a glossy Life?

B- overall. But glad they're not dinosaurs. I'm excited to get an iPad one day and see what G&M does there. A nice template would retain the relevance of the masthead; otherwise, you just google individual journalists not publications.

I still consider myself a Liberal, but the moral is weakening. We haven't had a leader for a while who has figured out how to do well at his job. All he needs to do is to win. Win a debate; win at competing photo ops; win on principle ... just win something. Winning a lot of things wins you an election.

Our Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is spending $9B to replace our fleet of F18 fighters, which will not be usable in ten years. The decision was made by cabinet without a competitive bid process.

Predictably, the Liberals smell a chance for a win. In a difficult economy with a soaring debt, how could the government throw billions of taxpayer dollars at such a thing; I mean, do we even face attack by air? Whom do we typically attack by air? Aren't we more of a search-and-rescue nation, than Top Guns?

Well, this is exactly why Mr. Harper will come out ahead on this issue. Perhaps he's even baiting Mr. Ignatieff, whose brilliance at studying human rights and history has not translated to triangulation and political sword fights. Here's why Harper and his Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, will win:

• We are at war, The Afghanistan mission has galvanized support for the armed forces and, though we are nothing like the Americans, there is a sense of providing soldiers with the right equipment to do their job well. The fact that this war is scheduled to end for us far before these planes would be delivered is not too relevant; the war is based on a threat that is not ending.
• Our military was not well funded for many years. In particular, some of the rescue of Canada's fiscal solvency in 1995 came at the expense of the military's budget. Canadians recognize that we have a poorly funded military; they accepted that during our transition from an imperial/colonial power supporting mother Britain to a liberal nation of peace-keepers. But pendulums swing back and this one is now.
• Given our military's central place in our history, stretching from Vimy Ridge to Normandy, Desert Storm and Bosnia, the public will support a leader who takes actions to strengthen the Forces.
• Canadians are broadly supportive of Harper's aggressive defence of our arctic sovereignty. That clearly takes more than snowmobiles and rifles; yes, it takes a strong Navy with icebreakers, but world class fighter jets making periodic passes over remote sovereign regions is arguably the height of patriotism. Opposing that is the visceral image of limpness. 
• The Liberals would have done roughly the same thing; perhaps they would have had the illusion of multiple tenders, or perhaps they would have postponed the announcement to coincide with the release of a deficit reduction statistic, but I think people recognize that a Liberal government is unlikely to end the fighter capability of our Air Force. 
• If the Liberals did meddle in such a need (not necessarily a strategic defence need, but a requirement for maintaining an air attack capability), it would repeat the foolish 1993 kept campaign promise to cancel the replacement of an outdated helicopter force. Our helicopters became a joke following that; but they didn't make a Tom Cruise movie about SAR helicopters; to have a fighter jets that break when they try to fight would be tragic.
• As I wrote recently, voters like strong leaders. Unfortunately, this principle has been abused by at least one draft-dodging U.S. President who landed on an Aircraft Carrier within sight of San Francisco during a war. However, Harper has never come across as a war monger, and woe is the politician who favours a weakened military.