Two key data points and a message for worried DEMs and other Obama supporters:

1) In today’s Gallup poll President Obama’s job approval rating is 54%, the highest he’s ever had in that poll.

2) Also, in CBS’s snap poll overnight, while it did show improved numbers for Romney on the question of who you think can most help the country (from 30% to 63%), for the president the same figure went from 53% to 69%, still a 6-point edge.

The president’s got most of the country with him. I believe he can keep the people with him. Even though he didn’t do as well in the debate as we hoped he would–I think he was befuddled, unfortunately caught off guard by Romney’s ambidextrous shape-shifting and unabashed dissembling, as TPM’s Brian Beutler’s written–but I would add the president has no small reservoir of goodwill, the truth, and a skillful campaign, all on his side. My message is don’t panic, keep doing what we’ve been doing, especially all the truthtelling and fact-checking that the campaign has done all day–with the blogger community, including this one, pushing out that information–and things will be okay. And we get another crack at Romney/Ryan next week. It’s still a race, but the president remains in a strong position.

*Thanks to the late Douglas Adams for his book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its valuable nostrum, “Don’t Panic.”