In a preview of tonight's foreign policy debate, Politico nicely summarizes the domestic situation:
[I]n private conversations, the two campaigns agree on the state of the race as of this weekend: Obama has the edge right now because it appears he’s up, albeit narrowly, throughout the Midwest: Iowa, Wisconsin and, most importantly, Ohio....
At the same time, Romney is doing better than ever in Florida, is a slight favorite in Colorado and is back to near-even in Virginia.
Which, for Romney, is all well and good, except that a "Midwest swing-state sweep" for Obama "makes it almost impossible to chart a Romney win," adds Politico.
We've only two weeks to go, and though that authentic Electoral College landslide which many, including myself, once predicted for Obama now seems out of reach, many of the same prognosticators, including myself, do hereby redefine "landslide" to mean 270 or better, notwithstanding better's slightness.
Why not? If George Orwell Mitt Romney can twist his greater-deficit-detonation plan into a deficit-reduction scheme, what's a little Jeffersonian cheating in Electoral College math? It neither picks our pockets nor breaks our legs.
True, Romney is due for another cretinous gaffe which, along with his other political pathologies, any judicious electorate would rightly interpret as yet another sign of his profound unsuitability for the presidency. It's been a week since his (self-)electrifying gotcha-ism on Libya. Mitt is way overdue for another slug in the foot. But, let's be realistic. Two years of Mitt's cognitive blundering and a soul-sapping ethical vacuum that would make Lucifer envious couldn't possibly compare unfavorably to a mere 90 minutes of Obama's sleepwalking, hence the electorate would undoubtedly dimiss any additional Romney gaffe-explosions tonight.
Confessional from the Obama 6% over/under guy.
In late September the long-term trend lines were clearly to a 6% or higher. Then came the debate.
I disagree with those who assert that the upward shift in September was an aberration or that the recent drop was a simple "reversion to the mean" statistical model.
Something really flipped.
Obama and the Dems got hammered in 2010 because they projected an image of not being properly focused on jobs - not getting it. I can only guess that his debate performance pushed that button again - and in contrast to the image of the Dems being completely focused on that coming out of the conventions.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | October 22, 2012 at 09:56 AM
Having reviewed various statements by the Romney campaign touching on recent events in Egypt there are a couple of questions I would like put to him. The first is, who, if he had been president, would Mitt Romney have appointed to be elected to be the government of Egypt? This derives from Romney's assertion that the Obama administration did not sufficiently interfere in the Egyptian elections or the Iranian still born revolution or any other part of the middle east to suit him. The second question would be: if you believe you have the right to interfere in other countries elections, shouldn't they have the right to interfere in yours?
Posted by: Peter G | October 22, 2012 at 10:48 AM