Wisconsin joins the battle

Last week I wondered why the Romney campaign seemed to be ignoring Wisconsin, given that polling showed a tight race. It's not as if Mitt Romney has many avenues for victory, but there are even fewer without Wisconsin.

Well, Wisconsin TV viewers will no longer be spared the horrors of grainy attack ads.

Mitt Romney has slapped down about $360,000 for his first week of Wisconsin TV ads, signaling a serious if not overwhelming play for the traditionally Democratic-leaning state.

$360,000 is less a serious play, and more of a probing attack, testing the waters to see if they have a legit chance in the state. Their tentativeness suggests that their internal numbers don't look anywhere near as good as the public polling has. And given that the most recent public poll went into the field nearly a month ago, we don't even have fresh public numbers to evaluate.

The Obama campaign isn't taking anything for granted.

[A] source tracking 2012 TV maneuverings tells me the Obama campaign is about to go up big' possibly bigger than Team Romney.

The Obama campaign is booking seven days of airtime, from Sept. 13 to Sept. 19. Where the Romney campaign has released one ad, Obama has made reservations for three: two 30-second ads and one 60-second ad.

With Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Mexico and even Nevada apparently off the table, the Republican playing field is getting smaller and smaller. Wisconsin seems the obvious pivot, if only to keep pretending that Republicans still have a viable path to the White House.