Even with the correction to .6% I smell a rat. I’m in Cook County and around blacks and liberal whites all day and Obama’s enthusiasm level here was incredibly low.
Deep down, I want to believe something nefarious, but the first logical thought to a 0.6% chance of running the table actually happening is that the polls were wrong, not that they were right and shenanigans happened.
I think that several campaign factors may have been at play:
1. Romney went passive in the last few weeks instead of staying aggressive. He tried to coast to the finish instead of engaging Obama directly.
2. The MSM became a news suppression profession. Reporting has become distorting, breaking news has become blocking news. Romney's passivity didn't make the MSM report the news they didn't want to report.
3. Hurricane Sandy gave the MSM the opportunity to suck the oxygen out of the room in the last weeks. News about Romney disappeared from the national dialog, while Obama was made large. Chris Christie was just the cherry on top, but it would have happened anyway. Even Chris Matthews was happy that the storm happened.
4. Romney never built a team. He offered a vision, but he didn't build a tangible way to get there. The GOP House and Senate are still operating in silos, with each chamber undermining the other instead of unifying on a coordinated message and strategy the way the Democrats do. Romney should have demonstrated his CEO skills on the stump by appearing with GOP leadership repeatedly. Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, and DeMint were absent during the campaign, while Obama had Bill Clinton stumping for him.
I'm not suggesting that Boehner and McConnell could fill the role that Clinton did, but they would at least show the people how an integrated Romney administration would operate. I fear that Congress will still be fractured, with Boehner and McConnell marching to the beat of different drummers.
I'd go to these four points (and others) before assuming that the Rasmussen polls were right and something else happened.
-PJ