I’m reluctant to use the word “flailing” because the race remains very close, but for over a year, Mitt Romney has invested time and energy in telling Americans he’s a competent, corporate turn-around artist who’ll create jobs. Over the weekend, he was reduced to, “I will not take ‘God’ off our coins.”
Before we go on, I want to stop to notify you that today, for the first time, Nate Silver’s model gives Mitt Romney less than a 20% chance of winning the presidency. It’s true that we are in the middle of a post-convention bounce that is probably inflating Obama’s chances a bit, but Silver’s model actually accounts for that. For example, if Obama were not enjoying significant improvement in the polls, the model would punish him for that. As it is, the model shaves a couple of points off his current numbers. So, even if his poll numbers return to Earth a bit in the coming days, his chances of winning under Silver’s model may not follow suit. I mention this because Steve Benen’s caveat about the election remaining close really is unnecessary at this point. As of right now, the election is not even remotely close.
And that’s probably why Mitt Romney is flailing around talking about his intention to protect God by keeping our currency the same. The Romney campaign knows that they are losing, and there are a variety of problems that make this clear. The latest Gallup polling shows that Romney has a 53%-41% advantage with white voters, which is at least eight points too low for him to win. They aren’t convincing enough blue collar whites that he’ll look after their interests, and they aren’t running up much of a margin with college-educated whites, who are alienated from their climate change and evolution denialism, and their anti-science culturally conservative attitude in general. Their post-factual attacks on welfare turn off college-educated people, which mutes their effectiveness with low information voters.
Then there is the state-by-state battleground, which is becoming unworkable for Team Romney:
In the end, what gives both camps the sense that Obama is better positioned is the map of 10 states they are fighting on. Two months ago, a top Romney official said they had to have at least one or two of these states in the bag, preferably Florida, to be on course to win. They don’t.
“Our problems are Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire,” a top official said. “Our opportunities are Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado. We can’t trade our problems for our opportunities and win the presidency. If we trade our problems for our opportunities, we lose.”
In other words, Ohio and Virginia are slipping away, which makes winning Wisconsin or Colorado meaningless.
Another problem is that polling is showing a very low level of undecided voters. I am personally skeptical about this. I think there are a lot of people who claim to have decided but who can still be convinced to change their mind. I see no evidence that Mitt Romney has the strong support of anyone. His voters are almost entirely motivated by anti-Obama sentiment, and the rest are soft supporters. Nevertheless, the campaigns agree that there are not too many undecided voters, and that gives great confidence to the Obama team.
Obama officials have maintained for several weeks that there are too few undecided voters for Romney to get the bounce he needs from the debates. “Romney is not going to win undecided voters 4-to-1,” a senior administration official told reporters on Air Force One on Friday. “If you are losing in Ohio by 4 or 5 points and trailing in Colorado by 2 points, if you are trailing in Nevada by 2 or 3 points, you are not going to win in those states.
“There is a small number of undecided voters so you are not going to see tremendous movement out of these conventions, even out of the debates. … [W]e have a small but important lead in battleground states that is a huge problem for the Romney camp. … Ohio needs to be tied, Florida needs to be tied at least.”
The profile of undecided voters (white, middle-aged, some college, economically stressed) is favorable to the Republican Party, but there aren’t enough of them to make much difference. And, as Obama’s large convention bounce proves, there are a lot of people whose opinion’s are fluid. I suspect most of that movement is coming from soft Romney supporters changing teams and disappointed Democrats finally coming home.
What’s missing from all these analysis pieces is an estimation of the two candidates’ abilities as politicians or the basic appeal of their campaigns. The reason Mitt Romney is suddenly getting shellacked is because he sucks as a candidate in pretty much every way a candidate can suck. Meanwhile, if you were trying to design the perfect candidate, you’d probably come up with something a lot like Barack Obama, only whiter.
As for the campaigns, I saw Politico reporter Jim VandeHei say on MSNBC this morning that Romney officials openly admit (off the record) that they are completely opposed to offering any specificity about their proposals. That’s funny, because the Democrats did extensive focus-grouping before their convention and discovered that people didn’t want inspiration as much as specificity:
The campaign’s primary goal at the Democratic convention was to provide a concrete sense of what Obama would do in a second term. That was what independent voters wanted, according to the research, and that was the focus in Charlotte.
Romney’s convention denied undecided voters what they wanted. Obama’s did not. And that is not going to change because the Romney/Ryan proposals are toxic once people understand them.
When Romney focuses on God on coins, he’s more trying to shore up his base than he is making a real appeal to undecideds. But, it’s also a sign that he has no idea what to do. No one likes him. No one trusts him. He’s unwilling to tell the truth or even explain his policy proposals. He’s going to get slaughtered.
