Right out of the Clintoon playbook. For 0bama to be even at this stage with high-persistent unemployment, a breathtaking federal debt growing at a frightening pace, it is amazing for him to be even nationally and in the lead in the swing-states where the ads have run. The 0bama money has been well spent. Others have commented on how Romney assailed his primary opponents. Look back a few months, Romney was behind in some cases double digits a week before an important primary and yet managed a double digit win. Can he hope to pull it off for the big prize? 0bama may be an incompetent POTUS, but he is a proven campaigner who managed to get Electoral College votes from Indiana and other formerly reliably red states. Polling in 2008 consistently had McLame behind. In 1980, it was Reagan behind. Is it 1980, 1996, or 2008 re-dux? Romney is on the Dole path. Both Dole (Kemp) and McLame (Palin) went wide right on the VP choice, but it was too little and too late.
“For 0bama to be even at this stage with high-persistent unemployment, a breathtaking federal debt growing at a frightening pace, it is amazing for him to be even nationally and in the lead in the swing-states where the ads have run.”
I don’t believe for a minute any of the numbers out there; the Dems have been pummeled in most races since Obama’s election, often in states he won.
Here in NJ it looks like the “shovel-ready” jobs of the stimulus from 3 years ago are getting underway to give the illusion that things are moving again economically, but it won’t work. Too many jobs lost, too many home foreclosures, too many businesses shuttered up; it is impossible to mask anymore. Even the traditional Dem constituencies are doing poorly here; the cities are in terrible shape financially, and many of the municipal employees they’ve been laying off were the affirmative action hires of the last few years (under the last in, first out policies of the police, fire, and teacher unions).
I see no projections with Obama losing NJ, but that certainly is a possibility; Christie won NJ a year after Obama carried it, and remains very popular for his anti-socialist policies (regardless of his views on other issues, he was elected out of economic desperation and has worked well with it). People who would vote Democrat is good times obviously are making a connection to the personal impact of Dem policies on their own livelihood, and there has been a backlash. Obama’s election was a fluke against a horrible candidate in a horrible economy, and the same dynamic now works against him.