BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
Mitt Romney greeting supporters in Ohio.
Posted on 09/23/2012 2:30:54 PM PDT by neverdem
BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
Mitt Romney greeting supporters in Ohio.
If voters went to the polls this minute, President Obama would win. Tomorrow? Perhaps.
Six weeks from now? Not so much. Despite the hyperventilating over each and every poll and dramatic pronouncement from the Obama campaign, Mitt Romney enters the home stretch in much better shape politically than they or the media believe.
It won’t be easy and it won’t be pretty, but the objective reality of the campaign is fundamentally different than the political landscape seen through the filter of cable news and online coverage.
If you read the usual horse race coverage of the last few weeks, you’d be convinced that Romney’s campaign had entirely collapsed and that Obama would be safe staying home for the next 45 days and playing a few dozen rounds of golf in the crisp fall air of Washington, D.C.
From the “47%” fund-raiser video to the Libya announcement to Clint Eastwood to Paul Ryan, it seems that every week, the press declares Romney has made a fateful slip that has nailed his campaign in the coffin, once and for all.
After all, the Beltway media “Gang of 500” said so, right?
But these stories from the hermetic world of political media reporters are never quite as deadly as their breathless prose would suggest. Instead, Romney has kept grinding it out, pushing through tough coverage and Team Obama’s increasingly shrill and desperate attacks. He’s a better candidate than the anonymous critics on his own side would suggest, mainly because he has a key attribute many lack: guts.
National polling on the race is a distorted mirror, and even that shows a tie game. Romney and Obama are close to tied in the swing states, and with swing voters.
Plus, there’s this little-noticed problem: Far too many of the public and media polls have set their likely voter screens and models to something looking more optimistic than the 2008 turnout model, which even Obama’s most dedicated partisans think is highly unlikely.
Considering that Obama won a crushing, decisive electoral and popular vote victory in 2008, it’s not surprising he’s kept the Democratic base intact.
But the rest of America figured something out about him: He’s a charming communicator, but a mediocre President. That’s why his job approval, the right-track wrong-track numbers and his ratings on the economy match up with his failed economic record.
Presidents’ final ballot percentages typically run behind their job approval numbers. With his hovering below 50%, Obama has almost no room for error, and the economy is not his ally. He is not, contrary to the belief of some in the press, immune from the laws of political physics.
Add it up: 1% growth, 8% unemployment, $4-per-gallon gas. Record numbers of Americans who have abandoned even looking for work. Record declines in household incomes. Home values still wheezing. The stories of “funemployment” are long passed, and the picture isn’t improving in the minds of most Americans.
Yes, it’s true: In the past few days, there have been a handful of polls showing increased economic optimism.
Obama’s team suggests — rather strenuously, and rather disingenuously — that 8% unemployment is the “new normal,” insisting that Americans give him credit for inheriting an economy beset with headwinds from President George W. Bush.
It’s an argument that has worn thin with the electorate. And with two more jobs reports to come, Obama can pretend that the new normal is just fine, but that doesn’t make the life of a trucker in Racine, Wisc., paying close to $5 a gallon for diesel, feel better.
It doesn’t cushion the shock to a mom in Toledo, when she’s paying much more than she paid two years ago for groceries.
It doesn’t help the middle-manager in the Orlando suburbs accept the fact that his mortgage is underwater and his current job pays 25% less than his last.
These kinds of stories don’t make the daily coverage, but they make up a large, restless and deeply unhappy fraction of the American electorate. Friday’s unemployment numbers, showing jobless rates rising in most of the swing states and frozen in others, adds to Romney’s argument that America needs a new approach to economic growth.
Spin cannot cover the deep, ingrained sense of pessimism that the economy — and the nation — is fundamentally off track. Swing state voters are more typically affected by this than the national surveys reflect, and the “new normal” isn’t cutting it.
In the latest survey by the center-right Resurgent Republic poll, Obama’s approval ratings on the economy among groups he desperately needs to win in the swing states are soft: just 46% overall, 37% with independents and 34% with white, non-college voters.
Chest-thumping “Obama can’t lose” types need to reexamine the basic campaign dynamics.
One area of the economy that will be pumping in the next seven weeks is television. Romney has bought a whole heaping helping of it. Obama’s numbers over the summer and the convention window have been largely driven by spending over $200 million on television, much of it slamming Romney as a heartless bastard boss from Hell.
Some believe that spending will prove definitive, in much the same way the 2004 Bush campaign definitively defined John Kerry. But considering that all the spending only pushed Romney’s favorables down about 5%, that would represent the worst return on investment in media history.
Now is the time when Romney’s media buys are coming into full swing, and voters in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia and elsewhere will begin to see the Republican nominee addressing their economic fears, telling the story of his life and offering an alternative vision for America. If he keeps up the energy and tone he’s shown since the 47% story broke — fast, going right at Obama’s record and philosophy and having some fun with this otherwise agonizing process, the TV ads will reinforce the energy of the campaign in the closing weeks to his benefit.
The crapulous daily gotcha coverage will have a harder time breaking through an avalanche of TV spots.
The post-hoc vision of Obama’s 2008 campaign forgets that by this point, Sen. John McCain was largely broke, off the air in key states and had a campaign in deep trouble.
Romney doesn’t share that fate. Obama isn’t going to have a geriatric punching bag to swing at in the cut-and-thrust of the last seven weeks. He’s in some of the weakest shape of any incumbent President, with unemployment, a soft economy and overseas chaos dragging at his campaign.
And Obama was in an enviable position in 2008: He could (and did) hammer McCain tirelessly over an economic crisis the senator was unprepared to discuss, defend or explain. Back then, the electorate was tired of eight years of Bush; Obama used that fatigue to help sink McCain, relentlessly hitting a message of Bush administration failings on war and the economy.
It was shocking, in some ways, that he didn’t do even better in 2008.
Now, Romney has all the economic ammunition to indict and convict the President on the economy, on Obama’s college-freshman understanding of markets and his eat-the-rich class warfare.
And Obama has to run against his own record of failure. New promises of miracles aren’t going to be as well-received as before. He has to run against what was promised in 2008 and the painful reality of 2012. He has to run against the crushing debt he’s accumulated, his ineffective stimulus and his deeply unpopular health care reform plan.
In 2008, he could rail against the Iraq War, promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and confidently claim he would make the world love America because they would love him.
Today, the Middle East is in flames, Iran is four years closer to having a nuclear weapon, our alliance with Israel is frayed, Europe is flirting with financial disaster and Japan and China are flirting with a little war. Our ambassador to Libya was murdered, the administration caught utterly flat-footed.
Don’t be so sure that’s not going to give anxious independent voters a bit of extra pause when they are in a private place with their ballots.
In 2008, Obama was everything to everyone: He was an economic savior, promising millions of green jobs and an industrial revival that would lead the world. He was a fiscal hawk with a heart of gold, promising to cut the deficit in half, all while extending coverage to millions with a brand new health care program. He was a cure for the cancer of partisan division in Washington.
He was a racial healer, a walking salve for the wounds of slavery and Jim Crow. He was the post-American, post-ethnic, post-everything global citizen who would restore our standing after two wars and quiet thousands of years of strife in the Middle East.
He was also sadly unprepared for the job.
Americans now know this. Every day, they see and feel the difference between the promises of 2008 and the stark, grinding pain of an economy gasping for life.
The mechanics of the campaign matter, but the vast distance between the Obama America was promised and the President we got still spell defeat for the Democratic ticket this November.
Mitt Romney may not be the perfect candidate, but he doesn’t have to be. The fundamentals of this election, outside the media bubble, are on his side for a victory in November.
Wilson is a national Republican media and strategy consultant.
Woa when was this?
The odious Boston Globe just posted a new poll from Ohio on their web page,(lead story, of course) showing Obama with a five point lead in Ohio.
The Globe ONLY posts negative stories of Romney, and positive ones about Obama.
A prudent boxer who doesn’t want to get his face smashed just throws a towel in the ring before a bout. The Bishop can still do it.
there is no way most people destest what this country is turning into.....I just can't see bammey get re crowned....
then again, we got the takers, the faker conservatives, and the paid off....
I deal with long range planning all the time.
I am full of hope that Romney begets President Ryan with VP West.
The depth of the bench, as shown at the RNC was impressive I thought.
Get Romney in, let Ryan moderate his left list a little and let’s keep Boner and Co. on the line for more replacements in 2014.
A good business man sets the vision and strategy and gets good people to execute.
This is what I expect to see out of Mitt. Failure to run a good business get’s you writing those three letters.
G
You're welcome. It was my pleasure to post after finding it in the NY Daily News which had been a reliably lefty rag until recently. Mortimer Zuckerman owns it. He was a big Obama supporter in 2008, but he's turned on him with a vengeance.
Romney Can Still Overcome Obama's Dishonest, Divisive Campaign
He owns U.S. News & World Report too.
The 4 horsemen are riding us to the apocolypse.
Harry Reid
Nancy Pelosi
Hillary Clinton
Hussein Obama.
The Daily News is a toilet bowl liberal rag. I don’t need them to tell me this.
I’m not at all convinced and pretty much am betting on Obama going down in flames—if but for turn-out alone. Romney is a better candidate than McCain and Obama in 2012 is much weaker and far less attractive than in 2008.
This is Romney’s to lose. Obama is going on the dustbin of history.
As they say, “Figures lie and liars figure”
Do you live in a Blues State, tiki? Sounds like it. And, if so, this is good news.
I don't think it's a theory. I think it's true because just about all of the criticism of Obama's policies is described as racism.
Polls can easily be manipulated. You want it to show O ahead? Then just make your calls in democratic areas 3-1. There are times in the day when they are more likely to get a democrat on the phone. Tell the pollster what results you want and they will make their calls to give you the answer you want.
Thank you Chuzzlewit. I’ve been saying that for over a week now, here on Free Republic. The debates will be the tell-tale sign. If Romney comes out of the chute firing with both barrels from the git-go, sets Obama back on his heels and rattles him, Romney will win the debate AND the election.
“November is good since that’s when most people are going to vote for president.”
Its also the most distant date from April 15th. What a coincidence.
Is it possible that this could backfire on the media and the Obama team. Could people who would vote for Obama say: “I’m busy” or “I’m too tired to go to the polls; Obama is going to win anyway. He doesn’t need my vote, I’m staying home.” Is that a possibility? I say, moreso than the anti-Obama voters staying home. They can’t wait to vote.
I would like to hear what some of you think.
“I have a theory, it might be BS but it is plausible to me. I think that people just aren’t saying that they will not vote for Obama. I think the racism thing is so strong that no one wants to be accused of it and they just aren’t talking about it.”
In 2008, the theory du jour was, “People don’t want the pollsters to think they are racists, so they tell them they will vote for Obama but in the privacy of the voting booth, they’ll vote for McCain”
I know I read it a dozen times, right here on F.R.
“A prudent boxer who doesn’t want to get his face smashed just throws a towel in the ring before a bout. The Bishop can still do it.”
In yours and my dreams.
Is it too late to replace him with a conservative?
“Get Romney in, let Ryan moderate his left list a little and let’s keep Boner and Co. on the line for more replacements in 2014.”
V.P.s attend state funerals, break ties in the senate, take over if the pres kicks the bucket, other than that.................can’t think of a single thing.
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