If you look at the two largest Super PACs on the Romney side, they have raised $122 million. By July they had, anyway. And in contrast, the two largest supporting Super PACs that are supporting Obama have raised only $30 million by that period, so it’s a very big differential. But it doesn’t begin to explain how much of a gap there is in money. There’s an even bigger gap in other kinds of outside groups that are not Super PACs — there are nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors and there the differential is just overwhelming. Obama is being completely out-raised in these secret donations which are piling in for Romney at this point.

— The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer on Fresh Air

What these guys realize is that you can dig up all of this negative information, but if it’s coming from a Romney press release about Gingrich, let’s say, it’s going to have a lot less gravity with people than if it comes out in a newspaper like The New York Times or it comes out on MSNBC or CNN. So a lot of what the opposition research is about is getting the information to reporters, getting them to report it, and putting the imprimatur of an objective outlet around it. So this is the warfare that’s going on between these campaigns.

— Joe Hagan on how opposition researchers use the media to influence negative ads.

Journalist Joe Hagan says the upcoming election will be “the ugliest campaign ever.” He details how superPACs have changed the election game, bringing an unprecedented flood of outside money to fund opposition research and negative ads. (photo courtesy of New York Magazine)

Alexander Payne talks about casting George Clooney in The Descendents: “He’s right for The Descendants because he’s the right age, he’s the right look — one of those handsome rich guys out in Hawaii. And also emotionally [right] for the part — because we film viewers have detected in Clooney’s work a certain charming detachment from emotions … how he looks at the proceedings going on around him with a certain twinkle in his eye. … I thought that would be accurate for the character of someone who’s grown detached from the emotions of his own life and has to grow to be more connected and aware and in touch with his own feelings.” [complete interview here]

nodirectionhope:

Dir: Alexander Payne (1999 - 2011)

Tomorrow: Alexander Payne.

We’re in a period of incredible volatility. The last time our country went through a period like this, you could argue, was in the years after World War II, when between 1946 and 1952, the House changed hands repeatedly. …But I think it means the public’s impatient, the public’s worried, the public’s lurching a little bit from side to side saying ‘We’ll take a chance on you. No. We don’t like what you’ve done. We’ll take a chance on the other guy.’ And I think what it means in the short-term is it’s a very cautionary tale for John Boehner and the Republicans and I think John Boehner’s well aware of this. They have to be very careful with how they handle their majority or they’ll lose it.

— Todd Purdum on the massive changes taking place in American politics

Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum on the likely House majority leader, John Boehner: “I think John Boehner knows very well, because of his own experience, that it’s one thing to get a majority … [but] it’s very, very hard to retain a majority if all you do is say no. And I think he and the advisers around him know they have to put something in front of the House and in front of the American people that they can be for, as opposed to just being against.”

How To Follow The Election on NPR

Here’s all the info about what NPR is doing tonight for election coverage. Enjoy!