It turns out, you can be pretty snarky in 140 characters. I've been on Twitter for a couple of years now (follow me at twitter.com/dbernstein), and use it for a variety of purposes: breaking bits of political news; passing along news or commentary of interest; linking to my articles and blog posts; offering brief observations and commentary; interacting with readers and political junkies; and of course, cracking humorous one-liners.

Two weeks ago, after the last round of polls on the Massachusetts Governor race began, I wrote:

...pretty much nobody seriously thinks that anybody is ahead by a comfortable margin in the Massachusetts governor's race.

Second: Every independent poll since Labor Day -- check that, since June -- has shown Deval Patrick leading with margins ranging from 1 percentage point (Globe/UNH) to 7, as in the Suffolk University poll that came out earlier this week.

For a long time now, whenever I'm asked who I think will win the Massachusetts Governor's race, I've said the same thing: I think Deval Patrick -- to my surprise -- has a slight advantage, with perhaps a 55% chance of winning.

Today, with the new Boston Globe/UNH poll, I am -- to my further surprise -- recalbrating that analysis.

"KC" asks:

Who do you think will win the governor's race? What do you think the final breakdown will be?

For quite some time, I've been saying that it's about a 55% chance that Deval Patrick will win. I'll stick with that -- I still think it could easily go either way, and frankly the only reason I give the edge to Patrick is that I think it's more likely his team will do the right things in the final two weeks than Baker (who should by all rights be ahead by 15 points).

Two questions about Bill Galvin in a single Ask Me Anything Day!

"Kevin L." asks:

Do you think Galvin will ever sit down and discuss the SOC issues in a Candidates Forum?

"MPP" asks:

Attorney General Martha Coakley announced Thursday that her office is investigating allegations that Tim Cahill used taxpayer resources to fund ads aimed at bolstering his candidacy.

"Stephen" asks:

Why don't you think that the CEO of Hill Holliday sending the scripts of the Lottery ads to the Cahill campaign - months before they actually aired - is a "smoking gun"?

A Cahill campaign staffer sending a script TO Hill Holiday would be a smoking gun. A Cahill campaign staffer replying to Hill Holiday giving approval of a suggested script, or suggesting changes to a suggested script, would be a smoking gun.

To start out our fun-filled Ask Me Anything Day, "routsalainan" asks:

Can Weaver et al ever work in national politics again? I'm anticipating a positive response so I guess the companion question would be who would trust these guys besides McCain?

The Yobgoblins, as I call them (the consultants who ditched Tim Cahill and are now being sued by him) will be fine -- they committed sabotage on behalf of Republican party interests, and that sort of behavior always gets rewarded.

My rule of thumb for candidates accused of campaign shenanigans/illegalities would be this: Publicly say that you take this sort of thing very seriously, that you certainly hope and expect that nobody on your staff behaved badly, but you're going to take a few days to look into it to satisfy yourself, and the public, that nothing inappropriate took place.

Thank goodness Paul Loscocco finally did something interesting enough to write about, so I can have fun with his name. (Side note: If the Flaherty/Yoon "ticket" was called Floon, then the independent governor ticket was "Cacocco".)

What he did, of course, was humiliate his running-mate Tim Cahill by bailing on him a month before election day to endorse another candidate -- specifically, the one he originally wanted to be running-mate for, but who turned him away: Charlie Baker.

The new Boston Globe/UNH poll has the Massachusetts governor race at a dead heat, with Deval Patrick at 35%, Charlie Baker 34%, Tim Cahill 11%, Jill Stein 4%, and 14% undecided among likely voters. That's obviously going to give a morale boost to the Baker camp, but I have a strong sense that the Patrick brain trust is not too unhappy with it -- perception of an even race is what they need to gin up interest and involvement from their supporters.

Just a few thoughts about the Tim Cahill thing, while waiting for the Globe poll on the race expected in tomorrow's paper....

From my understanding, what happened this week with the departure of top staff wasn't so much a change in the operation of the campaign, as a public airing of the change in the operation of the campaign that had already been happening -- which is the shifting of power from the outside, national people to the inside, long-time Cahill people.

The new Suffolk/Ch.7 poll just out shows the Massachusetts governor's race pretty much where it was in May: Deval Patrick leads with 42%, Charlie Baker is behind at 34%, Tim Cahill is well behind but not irrelevant with 14%, and Jill Stein lags at 4%.

Truthfully, as far as I can tell, not much has changed in this race since summer of 2009, with the lone exception of the big RGA ad blitz in the spring that flipped Baker and Cahill's positions in the polls.

I'll be on WGBH-TV's Greater Boston tonight, previewing tomorrow's WGBH gubernatorial debate -- and tomorrow I'll be on WGBH radio doing analysis immediately after the debate. Please tune in, just in case I come up with any pearls of wisdom. Here are a few thoughts for now:

--On the issue of who gets to participate in debates, I tend to be a lot less worked up about it than some other folks.

I thought Tim Cahill did very well in last night's debate -- partly for the very reason that the Globe and Herald gave as his detriment, which was that he laid low during the most heated exchanges between Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker. One of Cahill's strategies in this campaign is to take advantage of the classic political formula: Candidate A attacks Candidate B = advantage for Candidate C.

OK, all of us Bay State pundits and analysts got to take it easy since Memorial Day, by responding to every question about the governor's race with the same answer: "Nobody pays attention until Labor Day." Trite, but essentially true -- and indeed the dynamic of the race seems essentially unchanged since Spring. But, now that Labor Day is behind us, and we have a televised debate tonight kicking off the 7-week race to election day, I should really do the obligatory 'where things stand' analysis.