Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Tammy Baldwin pulls into lead while Tommy Thompson rests

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' WI-Sen: Two different polls have good news in the Wisconsin Senate race, where previous polls following the GOP primary have all given Republican ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson a lead. Both of the polls giving Dem Tammy Baldwin the lead are Democratic-sponsored polls, though, so keep that caveat in mind. One is a poll from the Feldman Group for the Baldwin campaign; they give her a 50-45 lead. (They also give us trendlines by way of reference to an August poll which, naturally, they didn't release, seeing it had Baldwin trailing 50-44.)

I'd be a little skeptical, but we've got confirmation from a good second source: PPP, though here it's on behalf of DFA, rather than on their own accord. This poll puts Baldwin ahead of Thompson 48-45, though it has one very surprising result: Baldwin is actually running ahead of Barack Obama, who's leading Mitt Romney 49-48. (I'm having trouble visualizing what a Romney/Baldwin voter looks like.) This poll gives Thompson terrible 40/53 favorables, so more so than a convention bounce, this may reflect that steady ads hitting Thompson on his DC-insider-ness by third-party groups may be taking a toll. At any rate, we'll get some more confirmation later this week, from both PPP again (this time on their own) and from Marquette Law.

Also a potential explanation for Thompson's sudden reversal of fortune: his campaign has been unusually quiet for the last few weeks, while Baldwin's has been highly active. The Wisconsin State Journal calculates that Thompson has only had three public appearances since he won the nomination, while Baldwin has had at least 24 in the same period. You might think the septuagenarian Thompson needs some time to physically recuperate after the bitter primary, but according to observers, it sounds more like he's trying to fix financial damage from the primary, focusing on refilling his coffers. (In the pre-primary FEC report, Thompson had only about 10% as much cash on hand as Baldwin.)