“One of the dogs that hasn’t barked in this campaign is the massive financial advantage Mitt Romney was expected to enjoy on account of nearly unlimited funds available to him from conservative Superpacs. Yet, even including the efforts of outside groups, Obama has been out-advertising Romney in the key swing states…[.] The full story of how the financial tsunami failed to strike has yet to be untangled, but bits and pieces have dribbled out over recent days.”
Meanwhile, the ad that Mitt Romney is out with right now is in response to his revealing comments about the 47%. After watching the ad, Garance Franke-Ruta raised an excellent observation.
It’s not the most polished video in the world. But you can see the thinking behind it. The candidate will directly address the voters, making a spare, authentic, heart-to-heart appeal that he cares about how “too many Americans” are suffering.
And then he says it. “President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families. The difference is my policies will make things better for them.”
Them.
Mitt Romney keeps talking about the people whose votes he needs as “them.”
In the 47 percent video, it was “those people.”
“I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said.
But presidential elections are always about the grand national us. They are about we, the people. And when it come to a candidate, they are about me and you.
It is like Mitt Romney cannot get it through his thick skull that he needs the votes of those he despises (i.e. the poor) to win. He absolutely hates the working class, for he is so much richer and superior. All he had to do was say: “The difference is my policies will make things better for you.” But instead of you he said them.
Unbelievable. Worst candidate in history.
If the election were held today, however, it could look pretty ugly for Mr. Romney. The “now-cast” has Mr. Obama favored in all the states he won in 2008 except for Indiana, where he is several points behind, and North Carolina, which it shows as an almost exact tie. It would project Mr. Obama to win 337 electoral votes, slightly fewer than the 365 that he won in 2008. […]
In 14 of the 50 states, the “now-cast” would bet on Mr. Obama [receiving] a larger margin [of the vote] than he did in 2008. They are an eclectic mix and include the following:
Two states, Arizona and Alaska, that were home to the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates in 2008.
Three states in New England: Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island. There is an interesting split this year among the six New England states, with Mr. Obama running very well in these three, which are poorer, but not as well in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where voters are better off.
Several states in the upland South, like Kentucky and Tennessee, where polls have sometimes shown Mr. Obama running ahead of his 2008 numbers. This is a region of the country where a higher-than-average number of voters said in exit polls that the race of the candidates played a role in their voting decision. It is possible that some of these racial effects have abated as Mr. Obama has become more of a familiar presence. It is also possible that this is a region of the country where polls still exaggerate the standing of African-American candidates. (This phenomenon, termed the Bradley Effect, no longer seems to hold in most parts of the country.)
New York, where Mr. Obama’s numbers have been quite strong in the polls, and which has gone from a state where Republicans could sometimes compete into one that seems completely lost for them.
Finally, two swing states: Florida and Ohio.