Lots of ink and electrons being spilled on the GOP debate but to me it is just further proof that President Obama is likely to win re-election in 2012. You can toss back and forth which of the GOP contenders did better but the fact is nobody turned in a stellar performance.

One of the keys to winning an election is connecting with the voters and that is the one area in which President Obama does extremely well while none of the GOP contenders seem to have mastered the technique yet.

Recently Tim Pawlenty appeared on the Today show and attempted to pull of a joke. The result was painful at best.

Contrast that with what President Obama said during a recent speech.

We get about 40,000 pieces of mail at the White House every day, and I ask my team to select 10 letters for me to read that are representative of what people are feeling out there. And I will tell you these really are representative, because about half of them call me an idiot

There is just no comparison on the charm and charisma front and in this media age that is a key to winning an election.

At this point I see only two ways that the President loses.

The first is if the voters decide to lay blame for the economy entirely on Obama (assuming it continues to sag). This does not seem very likely. Voters have started to make the transition from blaming everything on Bush and the GOP to blaming both sides, but that took a couple years to start and is still developing. I don’t see them taking the next step to blame it all on Obama, especially with the House under Republican control.

The second way Obama could lose is if there is some huge scandal that breaks at just the wrong time. Obviously I cannot predict if such a scandal will break but considering how heavily the right has investigated Obama I consider it pretty unlikely.

And even with a scandal or bad economy the GOP nominee would still have to pass the uncertainty test. If voters aren’t sure the GOP candidate would do better than Obama, or if they are turned off by the nominee (read Palin for example) then Obama wins anyway.

Obviously it is a long way to go until November 2012 but I just don’t see how the President loses at this point.