* The Tax Policy Center issues a lengthy rebuttal to its critics on the right, going through all their objections one by one. And guess what: Mitt Romney’s tax plan still doesn’t add up.

* As David Firestone notes, it’s odd that Romney expects voters to just trust him about his tax returns, but it’s odder still that his “just trust me” attitude extends to his entire campaign. (ICYMI: My take here.)

* Great point from Jonathan Bernstein: Romney’s “just trust me” candidacy should seriously worry Republicans, too, for both political and policy reasons, and it’s a failure on the GOP’s part, too.

* Important stuff from Ron Brownstein on how Paul Ryan’s plan is “aimed more at retrenching Washington than balancing the budget.”

* The Obama campaign will continue to pound away for the foreseeable future at the fact that Paul Ryan’s budget contains the same Medicare “cuts” Romney is decrying — allowing Camp Obama to hit both Romney and Ryan on policy and hypocrisy alike.

* Did Paul Ryan request stimulus funds for his district? It all depends on what “request stimulus funds” actually means.

* After Romney’s televised whiteboard Medicare lesson today, in which he claimed Obama would bankrupt the program, the Obama campaign released its own version of Romney’s whiteboard, and the battle will continue.

* Is Ryan putting Wisconsin in play for Romney? CNN’s new poll prompts it to move the state to “toss up” status, though NBC never had the state out of toss-up on their map.

* Suzy Khimm on polling that shows how important Medicare will be in this election — and that seniors favor Obama on the issue. This means the Ryan pick will now make Medicare absolutely central.

* The White House acknowledges that Medicare reforms are needed, just not ones that will transform it into a voucher program, and it’ll be interesting to see if Obama says something more specific soon, given the sudden elevation of the issue.

* Florida Senate candidate Connie Mack won’t say whether he supports Ryan's plan to quasi-voucherize Medicare; keep an eye on how down-ticket GOP candidates handle the Ryan proposal.

* And Digby on the, er, historical echos of Governor Jan Brewer’s executive order barring state agencies from giving drivers’ licenses and other public benefits to beneficiaries of Obama’s immigration policy. States’ rights!

What else?

I spent some time this week interviewing undecided voters in the suburbs of Denver, which will figure heavily in deciding who wins the crucial swing state of Colorado. Many of these voters are forming a view of the race and the economy that’s a bit more in sync with Obama’s framing of the situation.

That said, it’s also striking how open these voters — even ones who voted for Obama last time — are to a change, and how much they want to hear more from Mitt Romney about why he is the right alternative. Yet they mostly don’t understand what alternative Romney is offering.

Overall, most voters I spoke to, even those who lean Republican, have absorbed a long view of the Obama presidency. They think he was dealt an extraordinarily tough hand and that he’s probably done the best he could under the circumstances. They reject the idea that Obama’s response to those circumstances was a failure — as Romney has charged — only professing disappointment in him for falling short of their expectations, which they have since calibrated.

Jeff, an independent who works at a foundation in Denver but lives in outlying Wheat Ridge, voted for Obama last time but now says he’s undecided and is leaning marginally towards Romney. He sounded a refrain I heard often: “I think he did the best he could. It was a tough position to be in. I think anybody would have had great difficulty.”

Jeff is fully aware of Romney’s arguments — his pledge to get the economy going through tax cuts and deregulation — but doesn’t buy them yet. “It’s been tried before, and failed,” he said. “There’s no fresh approach from Romney that I see.” It’s because Jeff doesn’t believe that Romney could do better on the economy that Obama’s one term of experience remains a reason to vote for him again — it’s “on the job training” that Romney lacks. But Jeff thinks things have stagnated and he could vote for Romney: “I can be swayed either way.”

Sue, a personal trainer and Democrat from Lakewood who voted for Obama last time, is exactly the sort he needs again — yet she remains undecided. She repeatedly claimed Obama had inherited a terrible situation. “It takes a lot more time than four years to turn a big ship,” she said. “There were a lot of big issues he needed to deal with.”

Sue, too, was conversent in Romney’s arguments about the economy, but didn’t believe them. “I don’t beleve he has a magic lamp, where he can make a wish and it just happens,” she said. And yet she said her own personal situation had not improved, and that she was fully open to voting for Romney if he gave her a good reason to.

Another independent from Wheat Ridge professed himself “disappointed” in Obama and said he was seriously considering Romney. But of Obama, he added: “He was doomed from the start.”

In a remarkable bit of political theater, Mitt Romney carefully divulged a bit more information about his tax returns, confirming for the first time that for the past 10 years, he has paid at least 13 percent in taxes.

Romney, asked some time ago by ABC News whether he had ever paid less than the 13.9 percent he paid in 2010, said he didn’t know, and promised to go back and check. After taking a pounding from Obama and Dems, Romney appeared to have decided not to make good on that vow.

But today Romney offered what was clearly a carefully scripted reply, claiming that “over the past 10 years, I never paid less than 13 percent.” But in the process, Romney denounced those who keep clamoring to see his returns, adding: “The fascination with the taxes I paid, I find to be very small minded compared to the broad issues we face.”

Buzzfeed has the video:

The problem with this response, of course, is that it only gives Dems another hook to call for the release of his returns, by challenging him to prove his claim.

What we’re looking at here is an extraordinary gamble by the Romney camp — call it the “just trust me” campaign. In essence, Romney is betting he can withhold huge amounts of detail about his finances and his major policy proposals without the public knowing or caring about it enough to matter.

On taxes, this lack of transparency goes beyond the amounts he paid; tax experts think the returns could shed light on Romney’s various offshore accounts and any techniques — fully legal, but perhaps difficult to explain politically — he used to keep his rates low. Romney has stuck to this stance even though multiple Republicans, including his longtime backer and fundraiser Jon Huntsman Sr., have called on him to come clean with the American people.

That’s only the begining. Romney won’t reveal the names of his major bundlers, even though he’s taken a drubbing from major editorial boards for failing to do so. Romney has claimed he wants to eliminate whole government programs and agencies, but has freely admitted he won’t specify which ones, because so doing could be political problematic. Romney did let a bit of detail slip about which programs and agencies he’d consolidate or eliminate, but only in a closed-door fundraiser that was overheard by reporters.

Romney has proposed a tax overhaul that he vows will be revenue neutral, but he won’t say which loopholes and deductions he’d close to ensure that his plan’s deep tax cuts on the rich will be paid for without hiking the middle class’s tax burden. And not only that, but Romney and his running mate have freely confirmed in interviews that they see no need to reveal these details until after the election — after which, they claim, it can all be worked out with Congress. And so on.

Dems are betting that all this lack of transparency will undermine the public’s willingness to trust him; today’s revelation will only give Dems another chance to pummel Romney to come clean. But Romney appears to be betting that he can muddle his way through to victory despite the merciless incoming he continues to take, because voters disillusioned by the bad economy will want an alternative so badly that they won’t be too picky about the details.

In one sense, Romney is throwing down the gauntlet before the news media. He is betting that the media will either fail to hold him accountable for his refusal to share basic info about his finances and policies with the American people before they choose their president — or that those efforts won’t matter, because the public simply won’t be informed enough either way to know the difference or just won’t care at all. In other words, Romney is betting on media incompetence — its inability to inform the public — or on voter apathy, or on a combination of both, to allow him to skate through.

Taken all together, it’s a remarkable display. Jay Rosen has dubbed the Romney effort the “post truth campaign.” It’s also the post transparency campaign. If it works — and it very well could work — think of the precedent it will set.

Artur Davis’ decision to speak at the Republican National Convention dovetails well with the GOP’s attempt to capitalize on disappointment with President Obama. Davis, who represented Alabama’s 7th Congressional District from 2007 to 2011, was one of Obama’s earliest supporters and the first politician outside of Illinois to endorse the former senator’s presidential bid.

In 2009, seeking to replicate Obama’s success (on a smaller scale), Artur announced his candidacy for governor of Alabama. If he won, he would have been the first African American governor of Alabama, and the first to win a gubernatorial seat in the Deep South. But for Davis to win, he needed to broaden his appeal beyond the state’s predominantly black Democratic Party, and attract support from Alabama’s white, conservative majority.

In practice, this meant opposing the priorities of the now-President Barack Obama. Davis supported the stimulus, but was a vocal critic of the health care bill, and eventually voted against it. He did as much as possible to distance himself from Alabama’s Democratic establishment — in his race for the party nomination, he avoided prominent African American groups, and tried as much as possible to convince whites (on both sides) that he could be their first black governor.

The result of this manuevering was a landslide loss. His opponent Ron Sparks, a white Democrat, took 62.44 percent of the vote to Davis’ 37.56 percent. Davis had so alienated African Americans with his opposition to health care reform that, when it came time to vote, he lost the black vote — in a Democratic primary — by huge margins.

Davis, like Joe Liberman before him (and Zell Miller before that), can tell a credible story of ideological alienation. He thought the Democratic Party was a big tent, but now — under Barack Obama — it is a haven for intolerant leftism. This isn’t the most accurate description of what happened — voters rejected him for standing against their interests, not because he was too conservative — but it’s compelling, as far as these things go.

Obviously, this won’t convince black voters to oppose the president. But this isn’t meant for them. To highlight the defection of a prominent African American supporter of Obama is to send a subtle message to indecisive whites — it’s okay if you’re disappointed with Obama, you can vote against him with a clean and unprejudiced conscience.

Jamelle Bouie is a staff writer at The American Prospect. You can find his blog here.

Today’s Post has a big story quoting a number of bipartisan deficit experts who are very upset that the tone of the debate over Medicare in Campaign 2012 has taken a nasty turn. One after another, they complain that both candidates are making a serious discussion about Medicare’s long term problems — and the deficit — impossible.

Can we please talk about this?

The problem is not that both candidates are equally responsible for making this debate impossible. Rather, one candidate is far more than the other for making this debate impossible. The candidate who is far more responsible is Mitt Romney.

There is no comparison between the claims Romney is making and the claims Democrats are making. Dems are making two main assertions: They argue that Romney and Paul Ryan would “end Medicare as we know it,” and that people could die as a result of the GOP agenda. The first of those claims is a legitimate topic for argument, but it’s not factually false. The plan actually would gradually end Medicare’s core mission as it’s been defined for decades, and replace it with a differently organized program. Meanwhile, Republicans keep arguing that the Ryan plan would not change anything for people over 55. But the GOP plan to repeal Obamacare would change things for those people, driving up their health care costs.

The second charge is a harsh one, to be sure. But as Paul Krugman writes, it’s not unreasonable to assume that people could die as a result of repealing Obamacare, depriving untold numbers of people of insurance, as well as deep cuts to Medicaid and other social programs. Policy changes have actual real world consequences for real people.

Romney, meanwhile, is making claims that are designed to obfuscate, rather than clarify, the differences between the candidates. The Romney camp continues to claim Obama “raided” Medicare for $716 billion to pay for Obamacare, casting Obama as the real threat to Medicare and to seniors. But those savings are wrung from providers, not benefits, and Obamacare lowers costs for the very same seniors Romney and Ryan are pretending to defend from the alleged “cuts” to Medicare.

Some news organizations are beginning to subject the Romney/Ryan Medicare claims to serious scrutiny. The Associated Press has a great piece today detailing that Romney’s vow to undo those savings would actually make the program insolvent faster. As the AP piece demonstrates, the Romney position is completely untenable.

More broadly, the GOP ticket is proposing a tax plan that they say they is revenue neutral without telling you how its deep tax cuts for the rich would be paid for. And only one side is actually willing to take real steps towards compromise on the deficit. As the supercommittee talks showed, Dems are willing to accept Medicare cuts — to a fault, in the minds of liberals — in exchange for tax hikes on the rich. Republicans are not willing to accept tax hikes on the rich in exchange for Medicare cuts.

Here’s hoping for more reporting that shows there really is no equivalence between the two sides on this.

* Dems fight back, and whining ensues: Yes, the Dems’ charges against Romney are harsh. But as Dana Milbank details, all that’s really happening is that they are hitting back hard, whereas in the past, they too often assumned a fetal position. Apparently it’s irksome in some quarters that Dems aren’t playing to type this time around.

* Obama reelect reality check of the day: Gallup finds that Obama’s numbers on the economy remain absolutely terrible, with only 36 percent approving of his performance in this area. As I’ve been saying here, Obama’s team may be merely hoping to fight Romney to a draw on the economy, in order to win in other areas.

* Obama hits “trickle down snake oil”: Obama, in Iowa, harshly attacks the Romney plan to spread prosperity by cutting taxes on the rich and doing away with regulatory responses to the nation’s most pressing problems:

“They have tried to sell this trickle-down snake oil before. It didn’t work then; it won’t work now.”

If Obama is to fight Romney to a draw on the economy, persuading voters that we’ve already tried Romney’s approach before will be crucial.

* Obama leads in Pennsylvania, but race is tightening: A new Franklin and Marshall poll finds that Obama leads by six in the state, 44-38, but that’s down from a 12 point lead in June. As Christian Heinze notes, Romney is beating Obama narrowly on the economy, ­­ but he’s being dragged down by his dismal ­­his favorable numbers — and by Obama’s clear edge on which candidate cares about ordinary people.

The dynamic here is similar to what we’ve seen in other swing states and nationally: Obama and Romney are roughly tied on the economy, but Obama holds a clear lead on personal attributes and empathy. Neither side is advertising in the state, suggesting neither thinks its in play, but that could change if the numbers keep tightening.

* Dems use Medicare to go on offense in House races: The DCCC is up with its first ad hitting a vulnerable GOP incumbent over Medicare, pointing out that he voted for the Paul Ryan plan. Dem polling has found the target, GOP Rep. Dan Benishek in Michigan’s first district, to be vulnerable, and this will be a test case to see whether Romney’s elevation of the architect of the GOP plan to end Medicare as we know it will resonate in down ticket races.

* Jobless claims inch up, but remain stable: Steve Benen has it in chart form.

* Can battle over Medicare help with Obama gender gap? E.J. Dionne talks to on-the-ground Dem organizers and fleshes out whether the elevation of Ryan can help Obama with a specific demographic: Non-college white women. This demographic, which prioritizes health care as an issue, may be key for Obama, because it could help limit expected large losses among non-college whites generally, exacerbating a gender gap that has emerged as unexpectedly pivotal to his hopes of winning reelection, given his struggles among male voters.

* And a new effort to “Swift Boat” Obama: Scott Shane has the goods on a new campaign by former special operations and CIA officers attacking Obama for allegedly taking too much credit for the Bin Laden killing and for leaks under his administration. While there has been bipartisan criticism of the leaks, it appears that the group’s video shows footage of Obama’s announcement of the killing that deliberately edits out his praise for military men and women — which, of course, makes it a bit easier to portray him as hogging credit for himself.

What else?