The bad news is that Florida--the single greatest state beneficiary of New Deal and Great Society and Obamian social programs, from Social Security to Medicare to ObamaCare--remains a geopolitical monument to exceptional human ignorance.
Sure, Romney & Ryan would re-blow holes in Medicare's prescription drug program and they would end ObamaCare's free preventive care for seniors and they would butcher the financial security of Florida's present retirees' younger brothers and sisters and children and grandchildren and great-granchildren. But that's OK. Floridians just don't like black Democratic presidents; so much so, they're willing to vote against their own interests and to betray their own families as well as countless generations of coming Americans.
Or, as Nate Silver puts it, "The forecast model continues to give a slight edge to Mr. Romney in Florida.... [T]he polls in Florida have historically done a good job of predicting the result."
The good news, however, is more uplifting than the bad is dispiriting. From a week's worth of polling, Silver's conclusion is twofold: "Romney is no longer improving his position in the race," and ...
Whether Mr. Obama has any momentum of his own ... is less clear. To me, it looks more like a gradual reversion to the mean than anything all that assertive.... Obama has led in the polling averages all year in states that would allow him to win the Electoral College, and that remains the case now.
In sum, the debates, especially the first, were but a neurotic disruption in the short run and merely a historical curiosity in the longer term of the Obama-continuum--thus still suggesting that Americans' marginal sanity will, in 10 days, prevail.
I continue to believe this election gets Democrats 3. The economy will blossom over the next four years - plus. People will like Obamacare once they know it. Demographics will continue to trend toward Democrats.
I am not a huge fan of the Clintons, but they have "IT". For two elections, many Democrats have voted for Obama inspite of him being black - or not at all. When Hillary is nominated, many independents and Republicans will vote for her because she is a woman.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | October 27, 2012 at 08:51 AM
Obama's ground game is supposedly particularly amazing in Florida, so I think he might still eke it out by the skin of his teeth there now that polls are almost showing a dead heat.
But the fact that Florida, in particular, is even close...makes me particularly fearful for the future of mankind. Of all the states where choosing that fraudulent, lying sack of shit Granny-Starver for VP should have been a death knell, it should have been Florida. The Ryan plan polls about as well as anthrax when it is accurately and dispassionately explained. And yet, here we are. The gray hairs are willing to believe that nice young man would never Starve Granny. Even though it's right there in writing, and has been voted on in the House TWICE. Because NOW he says he'll protect Medicare from Obamacare or some such nonsense.
Boggles the mind how successful those con artists were in fudging the facts on Medicare and how readily people bought their snake oil.
Oh, and because some non-negligible number of the gray hairs just don't really like the idea of a colored being in the White House.
Egad. Obama better fucking win this.
Posted by: Turgidson | October 27, 2012 at 02:10 PM