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A walk down memory lane:

Strong support from young and minority voters propelled Barack Obama on the road to the White House, exit polls showed Tuesday.
Voters in the 18 to 24 age group broke 68 percent for Obama to 30 percent for John McCain, according to the exit polling. Those in the 25 to 29 age bracket went 69 percent to 29 percent in Obama's favor.
The only age group where McCain prevailed was 65 and over, and that by just a 10-percentage-point margin, 54 percent to 44 percent, the exit polls showed.

Romney just put the kibosh on his campaign - the trick with getting people to vote for you is not to commit to details until after you are elected, especially when we are talking about Social Security, the third rail of politics. Ryan destroyed any shot he had at the presidency with his stance on Social Security. There's a reason why the GOP is called the stupid party - we keep on dynamiting our voters instead of attacking the Democratic voter base. Paul Ryan's obviously got movie star looks. So did Dan Quayle.

Older (and overwhelmingly) voters have arranged their finances (i.e. spent like drunken sailors) around the expectation that Social Security would be there for them when they retired. By attacking that retirement income, Ryan is political poison on a national level. No other conservative politician has come up with a detailed proposal that guts Social Security. That Romney picked the one guy who did so is pretty telling - it's an indication that he's a great problem solver but a lousy politician*. Romney's unwise comment in London was a shining example of how the guy doesn't have a political bone in his body.

Ultimately, it's all about demographics. Retirees are whiter than the average American. So they will tend to vote for the GOP, just out of ethnic affinity. However, they also tend to have fond memories of FDR (the rock-bottom worst president in our history), who inaugurated the massive expansion of Federal government that has culminated in the out-of-control bureaucracy and freebie-dispenser - domestically and abroad - that we have today. By targeting Social Security, Ryan will remind them of why they thought FDR was such a great (not to mention generous) guy (with other people's money). And that will lead to Obama's re-election.

* Don't get me wrong - if Romney's elected, he'll do a better job than Obama. The problem is that getting elected is the hard part - the one sure way to become a failed politician is to not get elected in the first place.