A Kennedy-Nixon photofinish or a Johnson-Goldwater blowout?

The Romney campaign's mammoth ineptitude remains the political story of the week, probably of the summer, and most likely of the entire presidential contest. Politico compresses the swell:

[Romney's impressive fundraising] has done little to tamp down longstanding concerns within the GOP about the insularity and rigidness of the Romney camp. Those gripes are now being aired in public, as center-right staples from The Wall Street Journal editorial page to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham lament what they view as an uninspired, passive campaign.

With that, an aside. H.L. Mencken once described democracy as "a self-limiting disease." He went on to theorize that it might even be "self-devouring":

One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself--its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain.

Just one more brief word: Democracy, Mencken concluded, is "incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing."

No doubt, just about anyone reading a blind synopsis of Mencken's 1920s appraisal would mistake it for a contemporary assessment of the Romney campaign, imbued as the latter is with a "self-devouring" inclination, a "curious distrust of itself," and an awesome willingness to "abandon its whole philosophy" at one mere note of right-wing nagging. The reader might reasonably object to characterizing all this as "incomparable" idiocy and amusement, however, given Tom Dewey's epic tutorials on how not to run a presidential campaign. But that's a minor objection, perhaps somewhat pedantic, and we can overlook it.

The larger point, or observation, to be made is that the Beltway commentariat assiduously, monolithically persists in forecasting a tense, riveting, nail-biting humdinger of a close and even razor-thin race. It's touch and go, folks. Oh man it's tight. This'll go right down to the wire. There's simply no way of knowing who will triumph. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. For heaven's sake stay tuned. OK. We would anyway. But their prognosticative masturbation is based on ... what exactly?

Romney's accelerating implosions? His habitual gaffes? His increasingly conspicuous ethical void? His utter unsuitability for retail politics? His persistent lag in the battleground states? His mysterious, ultrasecretive riches? His momentously amateurish and bumbling staff? Above all, his almost comic inability to ever, ever improve at this politics thing?

Add Romney's constants of incompetence to Obama's fixed professionalism and you begin to see more of a Johnson-Goldwater blowout than a Kennedy-Nixon photofinish. I believed that six months ago, I believe it now, and I believe I'll be proved correct.

Comments

[japa21]

It will fall somewhere in between, leaning toward the LBJ-Goldwater scenario. Popular vote will be closer than the electoral college vote simply because of the high percentages of anti-Obama voters in some states closing the gap a little.

This is atcually the time when Romney should be closest to Obama. Yet, looking at state by state polls, he has made little to no progress since he sewed up the nomination. I fully expect the Republican convention to actually be a negative for him and the GOP as a whole, and that instead of a post convention bounce there will be a post convention drop. Which will then be followed by a large post convention bounce for Obama.

[Robert Lipscomb]

I caught a bit of Obama's speech yesterday, and there it was.

He bgan the paragrapgh by smartly listing all the good things in Obamacare that he will not let the GOP take away from everyone (pitch perfect phrasing). Then he tacked on something like, "And I won't let them replace Medicare with vouchers!"

Yep, there you have it. Obama has completely wrong-footed Romney on Obama(Romney)care and deftly tied it to killing Medicare - all in one concise paragrapgh that anyone this side of the Tea Party can understand and embrace.

Strangely, no one on MSNBC even noticed.

To PM's point, it is hard for me to believe that 2012 America will give an LBJ landslide to someone who is 50% African while unemployment is around 8%, but five percentage points (or more) in the general election will be the equivalent.

[PM]

I should clarify. The popular vote is irrelevant. It is, as always, the electoral count that matters, and it is in this that I anticipate a marked lop-sidedness.
Sorry, I should have dropped that in earlier; I'm in a bit of a rush this morning.
PM

[Turgidson]

In a sane world it would be a LBJ type of asskicking or worse.

To borrow a phrase from the Big Lebowski, "say what you will about Goldwaterism, dude. At least it's an ETHOS!"

Goldwater actually did believe in stuff. And as stark-raving mad as he must have seemed at the time (I wasn't born yet), the GOP writ large is considerably more unhinged now, and Romney is an empty, soulless vessel in their pursuit of power.

[Josh]

I think the closest comparison may be something like what happened with Harry Reid in 2010. Reid had no business winning re-election (in terms of his polling numbers and overall unpopularity), but of course he did. He won by a greater margin than he did in 2006, because his opponent was profoundly incompetent and he knew how to run a winning campaign.

[oldgulph]

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the primaries.

When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

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