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Ryan down."
• "Right now the Romney campaign is running away from some of their positions like unwanted stepchildren," Axelrod said.
• Thursday was a rare day when the political activities of the running mates were taking center stage and those of Obama and Romney were seen as secondary. But with just 26 days left until the election and the race still tight, neither Obama nor Romney was completely ceding the spotlight. The president was hunting for votes in Florida while his GOP opponent devoted time to North Carolina, another battleground.
• Thursday's debate, moderated by Martha Raddatz of ABC News, will cover both foreign and domestic topics. The debate is to be divided into nine 10-minute segments. At the outset, Raddatz will ask an opening question, and each candidate will have two minutes to respond.
• Romney and Obama both predicted strong performances by their No. 2s.
• "I think Paul Ryan will do great," Romney told supporters at a town hall meeting Wednesday in Mount Vernon, Ohio.
• He said the debates offer people a rare chance to see the candidates directly, unfiltered by misleading and negative ads.
• The GOP nominee said he'd seen some of the anti-Romney TV ads running in Ohio that morning, and added, "It's a good thing I don't do that very often because my blood pressure would be very high."
• Obama, in a radio interview Wednesday with Tom Joyner, said he'd been "too polite" in his debate with Romney -- a sure sign that Biden won't be going easy on Ryan. And that Obama won't make the same mistake in the next two presidential debates, on Tuesday in Hempstead, N.Y., and Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.
• "We've got four weeks left in the election, and we're going to take it to him," Obama said.
• Later, in an interview with "ABC World News," Obama minimized the importance of his poor first debate performance, saying: "Gov. Romney had a good night. I had a bad night. It's not the first time I've had a bad night."
• He added, "What's important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven't changed."
• The president, who had tried to lower expectations for his own performance ahead of last week's debate, predicted in his radio interview that Biden would be "terrific."
• Ryan signaled he's ready for whatever Biden sends his way.
• "I'm not intimidated, I'm actually excited about it," he said on CNN.

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