Random Nothings About the Election (Including: How Critical Is It?)

1. So you gotta read Jim’s explanation of why he votes the way he does in the thread. It’s presented in his own informal thready style, so I can’t link it or quote from it. We should think about his proposition that the difference between the two candidates domestically is wider than usual and is about affirming or rejecting what could be enduring change. That would make this election something like 1936. But the campaign is not playing out that way, of course. The election is not a referendum on ObamaCare. Nor is it a referendum on Obama as Progressive.

2. Unlike a “critical election,” this election will be very close and won’t give the winner much of a MANDATE. Obama the guy, as Pete reminds us, is rated higher than Obama the “cause,” and if he wins it will because of his personal advantages over Romney.

3. So Piers Morgan—who turns out to be pretty astute—claims that Romney might be most unprincipled and most personally upright candidate ever. His conclusion: He might be the kind of savvy manager who can save America. I think that explains Mitt’s recent surge pretty well.

4. Said surge is over. This morning’s polls give us a TIE. There’s no spin that puts Romney ahead. And I repeat that I have no reason not to believe that the average of a herd of polls isn’t pretty accurate.

5. Jim kind of admits in the thread that Foreign Policy slightly favors Obama, if only because we haven’t had some kind of disastrous TERRORIST event in our country under the president’s watch. Even the full exposure of the incompetence and mendacity of the administration on the Libya murders etc. won’t lead many people to conclude that Obama has made us less safe. Cutting the military budget and not taking the right kind of military modernization seriously does, in fact, do that. But Romney needs to make the case, and that would be mighty tough right now.