From what I can tell it looks like our side and our pundits made two big mistakes.
A) We all went under the mantra of it’s the economy stupid and figured that much of America would see Obama as worse than Carter. And many of us had that 1980 election imprinted on our brains. Hence we also figured that some portion of unemployed blacks would be frustrated and sit this one out.
But we underestimated the fact that the Dems with early voting in all these states now have in some cases the entire month of October to cart every black voter with an Obamaphone to the polls. Before early voting, they couldn’t get all these people there on election day.
B) By the end of the campaign, I and many other white suburbanites had fallen in love with Romney. He won us over as a decent and hardworking guy who was prepared.
But rural white America apparently didn’t show up at the polls this week. For whatever the reasons (Mitt’s name or wealth or Mormonism) these folks couldn’t relate to Romney so they stayed home.
I would never have predicted this based on the enthusiasm Mitt was getting in the big city suburban areas. But it happened. Maybe Bush got those voters in 2004 because so many in the military are from rural areas and the families and relatives of our military personnel wanted to support our then CIC during wartime.
I think Romney had it a month ago, but then the MSM went into overdrive and started painting a positive picture of the economy, and then Sandy and Fatso Christie sealed the deal. A lot of voters waited until the very end, and they almost all broke for Obama.