I don’t think Romney ever had it in the bag, but in my mind what would have (or should have) sunk him was his “Corporations are people, my friend,” comment. Corporations aren’t people- they are collections of people, working for another collection of people. Corporations shouldn’t have a political voice- because those people *already *have a voice. Why should someone have more free speech just because they have a bunch of people working for them?
He wasn’t talking about corporations having a political voice, he was talking about tax rates. A heckler suggested that he raise taxes on corporations, and he said “corporations are people” meaning that if a corporation’s taxes were raised, people would ultimately have to pay (since, as you say, corporations are collections of people). This was pretty stupid (everyone knows that some people are directly affected by corporate taxes, the issue is which people) and he said it in an immensely stupider way, but it didn’t have anything to do with the whole corporate speech debate.
I agree with most of the other posters. The “binders full of women” was just a funny and awkward way of saying what he was trying to say. I don’t remember anyone on the left seriously criticizing him for that. The 47% and corporations are people certainly hurt him, but maybe cost him 1% of the vote.
As far as “having it in the bag” I disagree. There was a time after the first debate where you thought Romney might just win, but Obama got his sea legs back and was all in all a better politician and a more polished candidate. Plus he had the advantage of incumbency and the economy had recovered since he took office, although some might argue more slowly than it should have.
I do agree that the “unskewing polls” was Romney’s big thing that was going to be why he would win. The polls were wrong, all of them suffered from the same flaw which was…something…and they all underestimated Romney’s strength. IIRC, he had an acceptance speech and a big fireworks party planned and was generally stunned when he lost. That was the GOP hope on election night that this skewed poll theory would be correct. It obviously wasn’t.
(my underlining) I think you meant Obama, but no worries.
That said, Its no surprise that he had an acceptance speech and fireworks ready. That’s just standard issue for a big election. I suspect even Mondale had them at the ready.
What he didn’t have at the ready was a concession speech.
To be fair, for something at this level you do sometimes need a little bit of self-psyching that you are really going all the way – otherwise most normal people would run away from it all. Many “coaches” kn competitive fields will say that if you are planning for what to do if you lose, you are planning to lose, so don’t let even your mother think she saw you flinch or sweat.
No, he was portraying Willard’s own view of the situation, that all those polls were underestimating him.