The United States is perhaps the first country in human history to become a superpower despite being home to a population that isn't all that serious about its government. Yes, a lot of that is a problem of democracy itself, but Americans take it to an entirely different level. Elections in the United States aren't so much of a national dialog as they are American Idol. And even J.Lo and the guy from Aerosmith couldn't take American Idol seriously, even they they made a shit-ton of money from it.
It's true that in other democracies folksiness is a factor (after all, Vladimir Putin is shirtless all the time for a reason,) but in America it's the only factor. If I took ten Americans off of any street and ascribed Mitt Romney's policy positions to Barack Obama, I guarantee you that at least six of them wouldn't question it for a second. And six is a very conservative number. It's probably closer to eight and it could very well be nine.
This isn't just the age of "the low-information voter," it's an age where almost everyone falls into that category.
Both sides of the political divide describe 2012 as "the most important election in our lifetime," which proves that both sides are idiots or that they think you are. This is little more than a shitheaded talking points war between imaginary "socialism" versus an imaginary "free market."
Neither party is serious about anything, which is why I've repeatedly implored my American readers to consider voting for the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson. Obama and Romney both have ridiculous economic policies that will eventually bankrupt the United States, although I'm of the considered opinion that Romney's will (assuming that he's telling the truth, which is, I grant you, a huge leap of faith) do that much faster.
I've been saying for years now that Romney would be the Republican nominee and that Obama would beat him. That's not because I think that Obama is particularly precious as much as that he didn't meet the metrics by which an incumbent president usually loses. Having said that, if Obama wins, this will only be the second time that the United States has had three back-to-back two-term presidencies (the other one being 1801-1825, with Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.)
Was I thrown a little bit by the disastrous first fake debate presidential debate? Sure, a little. I never figured that Obama would allow himself to be disassembled like that, or more importantly, allow Romney to baldly pivot the way he did unchallenged. That was nothing less than shocking.
On the other hand, debates are essentially meaningless. George W. Bush was involved in six presidential debates and, by objective standard (which his own people will tell you, as evidenced by Robert Draper's on-the-record book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush lost all of them.) That didn't stop him from being president. In the first debate of '84, Walter Mondale beat President Reagan so thoroughly that serious people were questioning Reagan's very sanity. Reagan still won 49 states.
Much has been made of the national polls, where Romney currently leads of ties Obama. "Lagging indicators" aside, they don't mean shit. National polls reflect the popular vote, which doesn't decide the presidency. The aforementioned President Bush won the Oval Office despite losing the popular vote by 500, 000 ballots. John F, Kennedy won by a more considerable Electoral College margin, even though he only won the popular vote by 118, 751 votes.
The Electoral College doesn't always follow the popular vote and Obama still has a far more comfortable path to 270 than does Romney. For Romney to win, he would have to be absolutely flawless and he hasn't managed to do that in the last decade that he's been running.
However, the tightening of the race has spared me for ten days of Republican whining about "skewed polls" which was unbearably fucking annoying when they were doing it, and exposes them as hypocritical cocksuckers now that they're not. Unfortunately for everyone, they've now moved on to bitching about "biased moderators," proving that supposed conservatives have taken up the formerly liberal cult of perpetual victimhood.
You what would please me endlessly? If Erick Erickson says anything at all negative about Candy Crowley's handling of Tuedsay's debate. Of course he won't, because they're both on the loving payroll of CNN and I have a deep, abiding, and incredibly logical suspicion that Comandante Erickson's pocketbook comes first. And that goes a long way in explaining why horseshit like this (and this and this) is exactly that.
If you buy anything a glorified blogger with a Big Media contract has to say to you about the Big Media, carefully exempting their own employers, then I don't know what to tell you other than that you're probably an asshole.
In my completely unbought opinion, which remains free of nonsense bugaboos like a biased media or skewed polls, I still think that Obama's good for 300 Electoral College votes and I'd put money on his winning at least 270.
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