Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan, and John Podhoretz (but not the ever-sensible James Fallows) are asking: should the President’s supporters panic? Based on how campaigns generally behave, definitely not. At least wait until the weekend. I know that seems like an eternity. Let me explain.

Romney fans hope for last week’s trends to continue all the way to Election Day. The Popular Meta-Margin for President Obama hit a high on October 3-4 (+6.2%), from which it has fallen to a near-low (+1.8%) in just 6 days. At the current rate of fall, on November 6th Romney’s popular vote margin will be a 60%-40% win.

Um, obviously that is unlikely to happen. What is wrong with the reasoning?

For one thing, now is exactly the time when a shock to the campaign should start to settle out. In the case of past large swings, getting enough state polls takes 10-12 days. Here are two prime specimens, the Ryan VP nomination and the 2008 Palin VP nomination.

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Based on the short-term prediction calculation that we set up on September 29th, Obama’s current re-elect probability is 93%. And yes, you know what I think about InTrade. They are as hysterical as Chris Matthews.

Where is the race headed next? I don’t know. I do know that our brilliant media can only focus on one thing at a time. That one thing is about to be Biden v. Ryan.