Here’s another reason to be cautiously optimistic about the way the political winds are blowing: With Dems seemingly on track to hang on to the Senate — and with Obama’s electoral edge perhaps holding — the prospects are brightening for an overhaul of the filibuster.

Senator Jeff Merkley, the co-author of a package of filibuster reforms, has secured commitments from nine leading Dem Senate candidates to throw themselves behind fixing the filibuster if they are elected.

Merkley is circulating an email raising money for the nine Senators, who include Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine and Heidi Heitkamp. “These nine candidates running for the Senate right now have committed to helping me fix the broken Senate by reforming the filibuster,” the email says.

If Dems do hold the Senate, we could be looking at a more progressive Democratic caucus next year, thanks to this year’s crop of unexpectedly solid progressive candidates. This could result in more pressure on the Dem leadership to actually go through with reform.

Merkley is calling for reforms that, among other things, would force the filibustering party to play a much more public role in obstructing the majority — perhaps making it politically less appetizing. The Senate has already adopted one proposed reform, the elimination of the secret hold.

This spring, Harry Reid caused a stir when he said he’d finally seen the light on the need for real reform. Republicans are skeptical that Reid is serious about changing the filibuster, and there’s some grounds for that skepticism. However, it’s also possible that the unprecedented GOP obstructionism of the last four years may have persuaded Reid, as David Dayen put it recently, that the Senate has become a “super majority institution” that is “governed by a tyranny of the minority” and is “horrendously broken.”

Obviously Mitt Romney could still be elected president, and take along enough Republicans to give GOP control of the Senate. If Dems lose the White House and hold the Senate, their appetite for filibuster reform may well diminish. But if Dems hold both the White House and the Upper Chamber, reform may become a real possibility. It would be an ironic outcome if the very plot hatched by GOP leaders to deny Obama a second term — abusing the rules and rendering the institution dysfunctional to turn his presidency into a failure — is what finally created the political will among Dems to take steps towards ending such dysfunction and abuse for good.

President Obama’s achilles heel in this election is his performance with white voters. If he falls below 40 percent, his prospects for reelection are endangered. Given the tight race Iowa, and the seemingly tight race in Michigan, one theory is that Obama has slipped below the critical mark for white support. It’s part of the reason the Romney campaign is loudly touting its efforts to “expand” the electoral map and put President Obama on the defensive in several key states. To wit, the Restore Our Future Super PAC has launched a $1.8 million ad buy in Minnesota and New Mexico — two relatively safe states for Obama — and the Romney campaign itself has made moves in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Unfortunately for Team Romney, a poll released this afternoon, from Marquette Law School, throws a little water on this theory. In Wisconsin, Marquette — one of the most reputable pollsters in the state — shows Obama with an 8 point lead over Romney, 51 percent to 43 percent.

Still, this is only one poll, and others show a closer race in core Democratic states. A Detroit News poll has Obama with just a 3 point advantage in Michigan (48–45), a Mason-Dixon poll has him with a similar advantage in Minnesota (47–44), and a Pennsylvania poll from Franklin & Marshall shows Obama ahead by 4 points (49–45) in a state that he won by double-digits in 2008.

If these polls are an accurate picture of the race, then we’re looking at a fundamental shift in the election. A world where Obama is falling behind in blue states like Michigan and Minnesota is one where his support among white voters is actually collapsing.

But judging from the polling averages, Marquette — which implies steady performance with white voters — seems generally closer to the mark. In states with similar demographics to Wisconsin, Obama is still leading. In In Minnesota, Obama has a 6.9 point lead over Romney; in Michigan, it’s also 6.9 points; in Pennsylvania, it’s 4.9 points; and in Wisconsin, it’s 4 points, with Obama breaking 50 percent.

As with last week’s “momentum” narrative, Team Romney’s declaration that they are “expanding the map” has more to do with perception than reality. Barring something catastrophic, there’s no way Romney can close the gap in Minnesota or Michigan. Indeed, far from showing confidence, Romney is revealing the extent to which he’s worried about his path to 270 electoral votes.

The most valuable state on the board is Ohio, Without it, Romney has to run the table everywhere to win the presidency. And so far in the state, Obama has maintained a small but resilient advantage — a 2.4 point lead according to the Pollster average, and an identical one in the Real Clear Politics average. Doing something as simple as taking a median of the most recent polls — which drops the outliers from consideration — leaves you with an Obama lead of 2.5 points.

If Romney had leads in Virginia and Colorado, things would look a little different, but he doesn’t. The contest in both states is a dead heat. Romney is aching for a secure path to the presidency, and his push to “expand the map” is a clear sign he doesn’t have one.

Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer at The American Prospect , where he writes a blog .

With polling averages showing that Obama holds a small but meaningful edge in the electoral college in enough states to put him well past 270, Republicans have fallen back on a prediction: A last minute shift in the electorate will put Mitt Romney over the top.

As Mike Allen put it this morning, many Republicans “fear Romney’s momentum has stalled” and are now banking on “some tectonic shift in the country hasn’t been fully detected by pollsters or explained by the press.” This is a variation of the other argument Romney supporters have been making for some time — that a last minute break Romney’s way will ensure another outcome like 1980.

The question, though, is whether the rise in early voting is making this scenario more and more remote.

On a conference call with reporters, David Axelrod derided the “myth of the wave that it’s all going to break in his favor.” He added: “This professed momentum from the Romney campaign is really faux-mentum.”

Obama advisers cited two factors that they say makes the “last minute wave” theory bogus. They argued that Obama’s early voting edge all but ensures that Romney needs to rack up massive margins among the remaining voters. If this is so, it makes the “last minute wave” theory less and less plausible.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters that campaign calculations show that Obama’s lead in early voting in North Carolina, Nevada, and Iowa mean that Romney has to win from 54 to 60 percent of the election-day vote in those states to prevail.

The idea that early voting reduces the chances of a last minute tectonic shift is one that hasn’t gotten enough attention, and is worth thinking about.

Axelrod also made a case against the wave I hadn’t heard before: He said undecided voters in the battleground states are tilting towards Obama. “In many of these states, look at structure of undecided vote that remains,” Axelrod said. “They almost uniformly have a more positive view of the President than they do of Governor Romney.”

I’m double checking to see if the data bears that out. For now, keep in mind what Axelrod said the other day: In six days, we’ll know who’s bluffing.

With the two campaigns locked in a struggle over Obama’s auto rescue, a central issue in Ohio, today’s New York Times/CBS/Quinnipiac poll finds Obama holding a lead in the state among likely voters, 50-45. The race is probably tighter than that; the Real Clear Politics average puts Obama’s lead at 2.4 points.

But a peek into the internals of today’s poll suggests why Romney continues to struggle to close the gap in Ohio — and why he is mounting a dishonest, last-ditch campaign to rewrite the history of the auto bailout.

For one thing, Romney has decidely not shaken his “47 percent” problem in Ohio. Only 44 percent think Romney cares about the needs and problems of people like them; 52 percent say he does not. By contrast, Obama’s numbers on this question are 62-36. Obama holds a big advantage on who would help the middle class, 54-42.

What’s more, Romney is not winning over blue collar whites in Ohio at anywhere near the rate he’s winning them nationally. The poll finds that Obama is running nearly even with Romney among white Ohio voters without college degrees. It’s always dangerous to read too much into one poll. But it seems fair to speculate that Obama’s auto-bailout — which helped save an industry linked to one in eight Ohio jobs — and the Obama camp’s nonstop attacks on Romney for opposing it could help explain these numbers, and Romney’s general inability to close the gap.

Romney is trying to deal with this by running new ads touting himself as the true friend of the auto industry and casting the auto rescue as a sellout to China. But fact checkers — and the Ohio press — have widely called out his ads as false. And another finding in today’s NYT/CBS poll suggests this could be problematic: Only 45 percent think Romney is honest and trustworthy, versus 50 percent who don’t; for Obama those numbers are 54-42.

And so, Ohioans may be more inclined to believe what Obama is telling them about the auto bailout than what Romney is telling them about it. The Obama camp is using Romney’s ads — and Romney’s overall dissembling about his own opposition to the auto rescue — to raise doubts about Romney’s character, integrity, honesty, and whether he can really be trusted to look out for Ohioans’ interests. The fact that Romney’s numbers on honesty are upside down underscores what a major gamble Romney’s new auto bailout deception campaign represents.

* Obama leads in key battlegrounds: The new New York Times/CBS/Quinnipiac polls show Obama up by five in Ohio, but also by two in Virginia (49-47), and one in Florida (48-47). Obama leads among early voters in Ohio (60-34) and in Florida 50-44). This reflects, again, an overlooked dynamic: The race is tighter in Virginia (where Obama has now edged ahead in the Real Clear Politics average) and Florida than it is in Ohio. And Romney probably needs all three to win.

* Romney has not put away either Virginia or Florida: Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Chris Cillizza, who notes that the averages clearly show that Romney is far from taking either Virginia or Florida off the board. Also: As Cillizza points out, with time a now-precious commodity, Romney has scheduled stops in both states. If you want to know which states are really in play, watch the candidates’ movements.

* What about Minnesota? Related to the above: Zeke Miller points out that Romney’s final campaign swing does not include a stop in Minnesota, which casts doubt on whether the Romney camp really believes it’s in play. However, stops are set for Pennsylvania and Michigan, either because the Romney camp really thinks they are winnable, or because without Ohio, there's no other route to 270.

* What about Pennsylvania?As Nate Cohn demonstrates, despite the rumblings about Pennsylvania, the math dictates that Romney would need to put in an extraordinary performance in Pennsylvania to overcome Obama’s advantage among black voters and Philadelphia suburbanites.

* Obama video makes case he’s on track to reelection: The Obama campaign has released a new Web video on the state of the race, including this claim from campaign manager Jim Messina:

We are ahead or tied in every single battleground state. That means that Mitt Romney has to win not only all the toss-ups, but also a couple of states where we have a clear lead, in order to have any chance of winning the presidency.

According to averages, the only swing state where Romney clearly leads is North Carolina. Romney is up one in Florida, and Virgina is tied. Obama is up in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nevada. So if you believe the averages, in addition to North Carolina, Romney does have to win a host of states where he’s either tied or behind. Obama has more maneuvering room: If he wins just the states where he’s leading, he secures reelection, and he also obviously has a shot at all the ones that are tied.

This calculus changes if Romney can put Michigan, Pennsylvania or Minnesota in play; also, we need to see a good Wisconsin poll.

* All tied up nationally: The New York Times and CBS also have a new national poll finding the race effectively tied, with Obama at 48 and Romney at 47. Romney has a six point lead on the economy, but Obama holds a nine point lead on who will help the middle class — also an economic metric. This poll is perfectly consistent with polling averages that have showed a dead heat for weeks.

* Truth is Romney’s first casualty: Dana Milbank has an excellent takedown of Romney’s dishonesty on the auto-bailout and on his Jeep-to-China lie. This sums it up perfectly:

The fast-and-loose with Jeep points to a troubling Romney instinct: When the stakes are high, as they are for him in must-win Ohio, the truth is often the first casualty.

The Romney TV ad Milbank references is dishonest enough, but his new radio ad on the same topic is far worse.

* And a note on Romney’s disaster event: As David Firestone notes, no matter how many cans of soup Romney hands out, federal disaster response requires money, and Romney’s ideological hostility towards federal assistance would lead him to cut that funding. And by the way: Romney won’t answer reporters’ questions about whether he would eliminate FEMA.

What else?

* Tomorrow Obama will tour Hurricane Sandy disaster sites with Governor Chris Christie, after Christie heavily praised Obama’s response this morning.

* Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is refusing to answer reporters’ questions whether he would support eliminating FEMA. How is that not a bigger deal?

* Must read from Jonathan Cohn on what Sandy tells us about glib GOP return-it-to-the-states retoric and about why the federal government matters.

* I also recommend David Dayen’s similar take on the importance of government — and on how easy it is for one bad story to overshadow the good ones.

* That new Romney radio ad also suggested indirectly that GM is moving American jobs to China, prompting this harsh response from the company:

“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,” GM spokesman Greg Martin said. “No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

As Sam Stein drily notes, Romney’s “highly dubious television and radio ads” have “managed to offend both car companies.” Indeed, at this point, turnaround whiz Mitt Romney is at odds with executives at GM and Chrysler over what turned their own companies around.

* Is the map really expanding? Charlie Cook says that credible private polling indicates clear leads for Obama in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Florida, North Carolina and Virginia are now “even money contests.”

* At a Romney “storm relief” event today, John McCain tore into Obama’s handling of Libya, which doesn’t all that relevant to storm relief.

* No end to it: Romney surrogate Norm Coleman privately assures Ohioans that Roe v. Wade is safe under President Romney, prompting Evan McMorris Santoro to remark that the push for Ohio has Romney’s campaign “saying a lot of things to a lot of people.”

* You’ll be startled to hear that social conservatives backing Romney have gone mum on Coleman’s Roe v. Wade promise.

* Mike Tomasky on Romney’s new claim to be the bipartisan conciliator in this race, and how dependent it is (paradoxically enough) on the Congressional GOP’s routine obstruction of Obama.

* Marcy Wheeler finds new levels of absurdity in Romney’s Jeep-to-China claims, ones that directly undermine Romney’s “turnaround whiz” routine.

* Interesting suggestion from GOP strategist Ed Rollins: The final crush of negative ads might lose their potency, given the ubiquitous imagery of Hurricane Sandy’s wreckage. Something tells me the Super PACs won’t be paying this one any mind...

* Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin get all the attention, but another GOP Senate candidate worth talking about is Arizona’s Jeff Flake, who has repeatedly voted against disaster prevention and response, even measures his own party supports.

* And a new Suffolk poll finds Elizabeth Warren leading Scott Brown 53-46, a finding that contradicts yesterday’s Boston Globe poll finding a tie. Keep an eye on the average, which puts Warren up 4.5 points.

What else?