"Romney must change dynamics of race drastically to win" by Matt Viser | Globe Staff, September 30, 2012
WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney enters the final 37 days of the presidential campaign in desperate need of a change — and fast — as he attempts to peel off support from President Obama, whose standing has been growing among swing state voters but remains tenuous.
Heading into perhaps the most crucial week of the general election — one that could solidify Obama’s standing as the front-runner or reshape the race — Romney is looking to the first presidential debate on Wednesday night and an updated jobs report 36 hours later as key events to try to jolt his campaign. This follows a three-week period that has left his supporters dispirited and hoping for a revival.
Romney has struggled to confront the self-inflicted wound from a video from a fund-raiser video in which he disparaged 47 percent of the electorate and played into all of the Democrats’ negative ads branding him as an uncaring tycoon, and the more optimistic view that voters seem to be having about the economy.
See: Romney's Remarks
But if Obama is quarterbacking a team that is up big, the game is still only in the third quarter and his opponent remains a threat. He knows Romney will make a run, and the person with momentum at the end can make things shift fairly rapidly.
I'm sick of the football analogies.
“The problem for Romney is even if he runs a mistake-free, perfect campaign for the final five weeks, he can’t close the gap,” said Steve Lombardo, a Republican consultant who advised Romney in his 2008 campaign but is unaligned this year. “He’s got to do something beyond run a mistake-free campaign. He’s got to change the trajectory.”
HMMMMMMMM!!
Maybe he'll get some help from his friends in Israel, 'eh?
Polls have been showing that, even though the unemployment rate has been stuck above 8 percent amid weak to modest job growth, people are more optimistic about the economy. A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted earlier this month found that 31 percent of respondents considered the economy to be very or fairly good, almost double the 14 percent who said the same a year ago. Polls also now consistently show that by a slim margin voters no longer trust Romney more than Obama to handle the economy, a deeply troubling trend for a candidate who has tried for a year and a half to make the election a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy....
Related:
"Recent polls have shown Obama leads Romney both nationally and in key swing states and voters now trust Obama as much as they do Romney in handling the economy"
And that was his alleged strength.
Based on a series of polls, several political handicappers last week moved Ohio into a state that is now leaning in Obama’s direction.
See: Obama Ahead in Ohio
That means there are seven states ranked as toss-ups, as judged by RealClearPolitics. Romney would have to win all of those states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia — in order to win the election.
I saw that Obama should win Virginia so it's over.
Related: Obama Takes Early Lead in Iowa
Obama may well end up winning all the swing states. He is ahead in all the polls.
But right now almost all of the polls have Romney trailing Obama in each of those states, although not by statistically significant margins. Romney could also put several states in play, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but has been unable to.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: How Obama Wins Wisconsin
Also see: Why Obama Loses Pennsylvania
Actually, that is looking like his now.
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign is evaluating whether to put more resources into Arizona, a state that has been thought of as favorable toward Romney but also has a large Hispanic population that Democrats believe is open to voting for Obama.
Unknown factors pose the biggest challenge for Obama at this point, according to political analysts. A foreign crisis could emerge — or new details about what went wrong in Libya when four Americans, including ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed — that could cast him in an unfavorable light.
The word is out that the State Department had warnings.
A dismal jobs report could resurrect questions about why he has not been able to nurse the economy back to health more quickly. A strong debate performance by Romney could give voters a reason to give the Republican another look.
Look at the agenda-pushing media distraction machine flog the selection for all it's worth.
And while Obama is leading in many polls at the moment, the support remains soft.
That will be the narrative in case of vote theft and fraud.
With an election that could be determined by a sliver of voters in several swing states, a rapid shift could cause Romney’s fortunes to rise just as quickly as they have fallen in recent weeks....
Yeah, we are all being held hostage by a bunch of no-information idiots in select states.
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And Romney can now write-off New Hampshire:
"Mitt Romney’s home advantage now eclipsed in N.H.; Campaign seeks turnaround via its ‘ground game’" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff, October 02, 2012
MILFORD, N.H. — Mitt Romney finds himself trailing President Obama in recent New Hampshire polls as precious days vanish from the campaign calendar.
A Granite State Poll released Monday showed Obama leading Romney, 52 to 37 percent, among likely voters. The poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center for WMUR, reported the biggest lead for the president of all recent polls here.
An NBC News poll, released Thursday in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal and Marist College, showed the president leading Romney, 51 to 44 percent, among likely voters. A poll released Friday by the American Research Group showed a 5-point edge for the president, 50 to 45 percent.
“Listen, it’s very challenging to take on an incumbent president, and that’s what we’re doing here,” said Jim Merrill, a Concord attorney who is Romney’s senior adviser in New Hampshire....
Here in Milford, residents and business people are divided or indecisive about the candidates.
“I don’t like a lot of Romney’s stances on women’s rights. A lot of the other stuff I don’t pay attention to,” said Alison Jenkerson, 19, who was working in a consignment shop.
Jenkerson, who plans to vote in her first presidential election, is troubled by Romney’s support to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Deb Carter acknowledged that Obama had inherited a mess, but she was unsure whether he is the right person for the job.
“Romney’s a tough choice, especially for a woman. But what bothers me about Obama is the way things are going,” said Carter, 39, who manages Cardoza Flooring and Decorating. “Do you want to stay on a sinking boat, or do you want to grab the rope?”
We can change captains, but the country is already going down and I'm not sure a course change can save it at this point.
Nearby, store owner Rick Fells, 42, took a break from watching CNN coverage of the campaign to explain his support for Obama.
“I think the fundamental question is, are we better off than we were four years ago,” said Fells, who runs the two-employee Tasty Tobacco Shop. “And I think we are.”
A few doors away, barber George Brown, 50, said he will back Romney as an unsatisfactory but better alternative to a president he loathes.
“I don’t think he has the same idea of America as I do,” Brown said of Obama. “I think he’s a communist, or a Marxist at least. He’s trying to create a dependent nation, create a dependence on government and what they want you to have.”
Similar words were heard inside the state Legislative Office Building in Concord.
“[Mitt] won’t take us down the road to the left — to Marxism, communism, and socialism,” said June Marshall, 57, of Manchester, before the rally. “He’ll allow us to be what we want to be and not subjects of the government.”
Globe always finds the crazies, don't they? The only socialism Obama has practiced is the bank bailout.
During the rally, US Senator Kelly Ayotte focused on Romney’s economic message, which she said carries great weight with women struggling to manage a household budget.
The senator also said she does not believe Romney will be hurt by his videotaped comments that described 47 percent of Americans as “victims” who believe they are entitled to government assistance.
See: Romney's Remarks
“I think that people aren’t going to decide the election based on a fund-raising video,” Ayotte said. “Clearly, I think the video was talking about the election [strategy] and not about a governing philosophy.”
Democrats said they are matching the intensity of the Republican ground game and are taking nothing for granted.
Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, speculated that recent increases in undecideds might be linked to the party conventions and “a little more interest among people who may not have been going to vote.”
In any event, said UNH political science professor Dante Scala, neither party has much of a cushion despite a Republican landslide in the state’s 2010 legislative elections. New Hampshire, he said, is a balanced, competitive state.
“People remember here, to our great dismay, what happened in 2000 when Al Gore lost New Hampshire by 7,000 votes and what a difference that has made in history,” said Kathy Sullivan, a former State Democratic Party chairwoman.
If Gore had taken New Hampshire, its four electoral votes would have given the presidency to him instead of George W. Bush....
I'm sure it was Ralph Nader's fault.
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Related:
"Obama led Romney, 52 percent to 46 percent, among likely voters in a CNN survey taken between Friday and Sunday, the three days after the convention. A poll taken in the four days before the Democratic convention showed the candidates tied at 48 percent."
"Polls point to modest gains for the president after the national political conventions."
Also see: Swing State Surprise
I truly will be surprised if the rig for Romney is the result.
