Don’t Count Mitt Out
(Sigh.) First, we had the conventional wisdom that Barack Obama was in trouble. Now, he is said to be on the ascent since presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney seems stalled. Some pundits suggest recent polls and Electoral College projections indicate Obama is destined to beat Romney.
One teeny-weenie bit of advice: don’t count Romney out yet.
First, forget Fox News pundit Dick Morris’ claim that “the media is trying to create a sense of momentum and of inevitability about the Obama candidacy.” Morris writes that he has seen state-by-state polls of a firm he has known and respected for years, and they show Romney well positioned in key states.
Fair enough about secret polls. But anyone in the news media, or who worked for it and — I’m sure— Morris himself knows, it’s utter bilge that “the media” is “trying to create” a sense of momentum and inevitability. There’s no big media conspiracy with editors and reporters trying “to create” an image to elect Obama. News outlets and reporters compete with one another. If you believe the Morris assertion, then let me tell you about a nice, furry bunny that’ll hop into your house on Easter and hide candied eggs.
A recent daily tracking poll by Rasmussen —a favorite firm of GOPers — put Obama with a slight lead over Romney, 47 to 45 percent. So is Rasmussen part of this “media” that is “trying to create a sense of momentum and inevitability” — or do we just exclude the ones that don’t fit into institutional defining? Actually, there’s speculation Rasmussen is the firm Morris is talking about.
Lockstep partisanship is lucrative and affirms a partisan choir’s existing political biases, but it’s better to listen to clinical analysts who don’t have partisan axes to grind, such as the University of Virginia’s highly accurate Larry Sabato. Sabato repeatedly stresses that this race is a question mark, will go down to the wire and hinges on the economy and how it’s perceived. Here’s one of his tweets: “For Nov. 6, Romney’s British blunders are less important than 1.5 percent GDP growth.”
Here are a just a few reasons why pundits falling into the trap of joining in on the moment’s fashionable narrative may wish to hold back on implying Romney is toast:
Obama’s 2008 Coalition Erosion: Yes, Obama has a higher likability rating, but he’s leaking 2008 supporters. Gallup wrote this about a new poll: “Eighty-six percent of voters who say they voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are backing Obama again this year, a smaller proportion than the 92 percent of 2008 John McCain voters who are supporting 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Nine percent of 2008 Obama voters have switched to supporting Romney this year, while 5 percent of McCain voters have switched to Obama.”
Republicans Unify Around Romney: So much for primary predictions that the GOP wouldn’t get behind Romney. The desire to get Obama out trumps (excuse the expression) all. The GOP’s coalition is back in place.
Don’t Underestimate Romney in Debates: In some primary debates he ruthlessly focused in message, content and attack.
Big Bucks: Once again, Team Romney trounced Team Obama in monthly fundraising. NBC’s First Read wonders whether a sea of negative advertising will hit a “saturation point,” but Romney’s campaign war chest will negate some traditional incumbency advantages.
Republican Media and Social Media Cohesiveness: Douglas Brinkley’s excellent new book on Walter Cronkite reminds us of when conservatives felt frozen out in broadcasting and unable to get their message out. Talk radio, Fox News and social media narrowcast messages and help keep partisans thinking “right” in line.
History’s Poetry: History often creates ironies or neat narratives. Will America’s first African-American President turn out to be a one-termer who voters booted out and deemed a failure? Or will he turn out to be returned to office to serve two terms, confirmation that his first term was, in personal terms at least, acceptable? Will the rhythm of recent history continue the trend giving GOPers control of the White House the bulk of the time?
Conventional Wisdom is Ephemeral: It’s really pack punditry, which is OK — except voters don’t always follow it.
Copyright 2012 Joe Gandelman. This weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Photo: Jamie Roach / Shutterstock.com
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I know that you’re playing devil’s advocate here, Joe, but absent a huge economic blowup — as opposed to the glacial improvements we’ve seen over the last several months — Romney is toast whereas he should have a comfortable lead considering how beleaguered Obama would seem to be.
Pew is perhaps the most reliable big-picture poll (and certainly not the one that Dickhead Morris alluded to) because of its careful methodology. Some 51 percent of people in its most recent poll say they support or lean toward Obama while 41 percent say they support or lean toward Romney. This is pretty much the same result in the previous seven Pew polls despite the Republican and his wealthy surrogates outspending the incumbent and hammering away on the economy.
Romney basically needs to GET MOVING. His own campaign is not going well, and it’s not just the gaffes that the press loves.
Like it or not, presidential campaigns require charisma, they require excitement, and Romney’s campaign simply does not have it and shows no sign of getting it. They are not going to win independents by being stuffy and boring. Every winning president since George HW Bush motivated voters through charisma & inspiration, and Romney has neither.
It’s early, it is pre-convention, but if they don’t start making Romney likable, they’re doomed.
Barky:
Mission impossible.
What we can expect is for Romney to tack toward the center after the convention with a series of gale-force flip-flops in an effort to distance himself from the knuckle draggers who have taken over the GOP and are extremely unpopular among most of the independents that he needs to win.
Given the challenged thinking abilities of the electorate, democrats would be utter fools to coast at any given moment in almost any election.
Current polls have Romney trailing in Virginia and Colorado. Mitten’s is turning the race into a big loss(at this time). The negative coattails could change the Congress.
While I think most in the media would rather see Obama as president than Romney, I doubt there is a conspiracy to push him at this point. The media loves a close race even more than they like Obama, so we’ll probably continue to see the usual horse race style of reporting with breathless day-to-day attention to flubs and gaffes, magnification of small events as major ones, ignoring actual policies, etc.
In the end I think Obama wins because Romney just isn’t a very good candidate.
Romney is living proof that conservatives don’t ever learn a lesson. In fact, not just him, but the entire crop of candidates that tried to unseat him as nominee. Bush and company got to run their game pretty much unfettered for 6 years. The results are in, and pretty much damn the policies that were put in place. One completely unnecessary war, one financial meltdown, one exploded national debt, massive loss of face around the world, and abandonment of our civil liberties and the Geneva Convention. I could mention some lesser evils like mucking up the education system, gutting our regulatory agencies, and the rampant gerrymandering blatantly designed to work the voters, but whatever.
Things got really really weird when the conservatives took over. This country had a spiritual shift the likes of which I have never even heard of, and it was not for the better. Its like the conservatives actually started believing all the garbage they came up with to be propoganda to win votes, then implemented it. As I said, the results are in. And to top it all off, even with the VERY recent and VERY expensive history lesson brought to us courtesy of the Bush years, Romney is basically saying he wants to do it all over again. It just boggles the mind.
DaGoat:
It speaks volumes about the the national GOP sliding further into eclipse (yes it will win a slew of congressional races and probably keep a House majority) that the best it could come up with was an empty suit like Romney.
It is an open secret that many party faithfuls are holding their noses, yet he is an improvement when compared to Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Perry and Trump.
Cough, cough:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/new-anti-romney-ad-same-steelworker-tougher-message/2012/08/07/ac9afe2c-e0ab-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_blog.html
Mitt Romney has the same problem that John Kerry did. Yes, John Kerry! He’s had to re-package himself so many different ways to win a nomination that he is quite possibly the shiftiest candidate the Republicans have put forward in decades. It’s nearly impossible to tell his views on ANYTHING. His stated view whether it be economy, healthcare, gun control, education, etc. is almost always opposite of what he’s actually done. I have a problem with that. That’s not an endorsement of Obama, but Obama has going for him what W had going for him and that is: YOU KNOW WHERE HE STANDS.
What I get from Romney is: “Hi, I’m Mitch Romney and I’m a conservative” Wink. Wink. “I’m not really a conservative. I’m probably just as liberal as Obama.”
Lastly, his critics attack him about his tax returns (which they are going to do, they’re politicians) and he produces the shittiest argument of all times. “Put up or shut up!” Really? If he has nothing to hide, he should release his tax returns.
I’m sorry. Mitt Romney is not a moderate. He’s a panderer and so far he’s done nothing to win my vote. If he releases his returns tomorrow and stops his double-talk game, he may just get my vote… But something tells me that’s not going to happen.