The big news of the day today is Mother Jones releasing secretly taped video of Mitt Romney telling a private party of donors that 47% of Americans are worthless, lazyass freeloaders just looking to get something for nothing.
Among that, it’s recently come out that Romney’s own campaign staffers are blaming his Chief Strategist for his gaffe-laden campaign. Combine that with claiming the wealthy pay too much in taxes while refusing to expose his own returns, his lying-through-his-teeth running mate, and his politicization of the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens, I’d say Obama may have this one in the bag. I don’t even need to mention the slew of other embarrassments, such as the whole dressage horse debacle.
Listen…do you hear that? silence It’s the sound of the fat lady not singing. It’s not over until it’s over, and Obama would be foolish to think it’s in the bag and he can let up. It’s over when the votes are tallied and a winner is declared…until then, it’s still anyone’s race. There is plenty of time for some deep, dark secret or scandal to come out about Obama or key members of his administration that could turn this thing around if they got traction with the public…or, for the economy to do a nose dive and cause a large shift in voters. Or, simply for a lot of the polls to be found to be incorrect.
I’d hold off on the celebrations and back patting until AFTER the election, even if Mother Jones says differently…
Every quantitive forecaster is predicting an Obama win, so you’d hardly be going out on a limb in agreeing with them. Romney has an uphill battle, and it’s not being helped by the drip, drip, drip of the gaffe du jour. Romney needs to take command of the narrative and drive the election the way he wants it to go. His campaign has done a spectacular job of NOT being able to do that.
It is too early, though, to post this in GD when it should be in the Elections forum.
If Obama was up by 6 or 7, then maybe. But 3 points is easily swung.
Romney has at least a 25% shot right now, and I know I wouldn’t be sleeping easy the night before the election knowing there was that high a chance of President Romney.
You never know, they might debunk Obama’s birth certificate after all.
Seriously though, maybe gas prices will go bananas or… it is hard to imagine what it would take for a Romney win (the GOP appears to be pinning their hopes on a dazzling debate performance, hur hur), but it could still happen. It’s not in the bag.
If I hadn’t personally experienced two Bush II terms I’d say Romney’s chances of being killed by a solid uranium metorite hurled at him by Cthulhu Himself from His vacation home on Neptune were better than his being selected to warm The Big Chair. As much as I find the guy astoundingly loathsome and plutocratic, I also can’t say with any certainty the majority of the country would agree that he is a bad idea no matter how you feel about Obama.
But I will say that if Mitt does win it, he will not be the one to blame if the US slips further into a crumbling dystopia. The responsibility for that will rest squarely on the shoulders of the electorate who have lost the capacity for critical thought.
Just a little too early. The Super PACs can still park the Death Star over the battleground states and run Jeremiah Wright 24/7 in October. Obama could make a colossal gaffe in the debates. Still, as Dan Rather would say, Romney’s back is against the wall, the bill collector is at the door, and his shirt tail is on fire.
I’m actually kind of puzzled about how many people are ready to write off Romney. He isn’t doing that badly, he’s within a point or two of Obama in enough states that if the polls shifted even a little in his direction, he’d have the electoral votes to win.
If I had to put money down, I’d put it on Obama. But I wouldn’t want to put a lot of money down either.
Most puzzling is the Romney campaign itself, which has been acting like its doomed for more then a month, despite the fact that polling only put him a point or two behind.
I think the gloom and doom in the Romney camp stems from their internal polling. In trying to cobble together 270 EVs, they’re seeing just how steep the hill is. They’ve given up on PA and MI, and they’re seeing the Big Three (OH, VA, FL) as a sweep they need but can’t get. The campaigns themselves know the outcome of elections long before the rest of us do.
Yes, it would be “hasty” to put this one in the win column for Obama yet, although I eagerly await all the crow to be served up the day after an Obama win. It will be delicious.
It was a given that this election was going to be close, so being within a couple of percentage points isn’t an achievement. People are writing him off because for a while now he’s been unable to get out of his own way or the way of current events.
Because their initial plan didn’t work. They figured that if they presented Romney as a competent-looking alternative to Obama on economic issues, voters would flock to Romney and they’d win. That hasn’t happened: Obama has maintained his lead and he’s now polling with Romney on economic issues. So they’ve decided they need to shake things up to give Romney a chance to win. To this point their attempts to shake things up have generally backfired. Things could still change, but they’re in a different and more difficult position than they obviously thought they were in. Not being Obama isn’t enough, in part because people don’t have Obama as much as Republicans think and because they don’t blame Obama as much for the state of the economy or trust Romney’s ideas about it as much as the Republicans expected.
Why? Is internal polling better then other polling for some reason?
I read an article a while back that polling firms were systematically over-estimating the white turnout for 2012, while both campaigns were using more reasonable estimates in their internal polls, which is why the Romney campaign seemed so desperate. According to the political scientist they quoted, polling firms were using a model that assumed white turnout would be a higher proportion of 2012 voters then those in 2010.
That turnout model does seem obviously ridiculous, so on the one hand, that would certainly explain a lot of the Romney campaigns strange behaviour over the least month or two. On the other hand, I sort of assume polling firms know their business, and so it seems unlikely to me they’d make such a mistake.
I don’t know if the methodology is better but they can target the sample and the questions to find out what they really want to know, like whether any specific lines of attack have any traction among the voters. They’re probably finding out that everything they do isn’t moving any of the needles that they’re watching and they’re getting frustrated.
It’s not over until it’s over, and Obama would be foolish to think it’s in the bag and he can let up. It’s over when the votes are tallied and a winner is declared…until then, it’s still anyone’s race. There is plenty of time for some deep, dark secret or scandal to come out about Obama or key members of his administration that could turn this thing around if they got traction with the public…or, for the economy to do a nose dive and cause a large shift in voters. Or, simply for a lot of the polls to be found to be incorrect.
