It's the Economy, Stupid(s)

As we lurch to our Citizens United-fueled 2012 election, President Obama has lost his lead among registered voters and trails Romney handily among likely voters by 6 points, according to the latest Gallup Poll.   Obama dug himself into a huge hole in the first debate and apparently is not climbing out of it.  Amazingly, even after this Tuesday's debate, Romney is considered to be the person most capable of handling the economy.  As the occasionally sage Bill Clinton once said, "It's the economy, stupid."  No other issue resonates more with the American voter.

The prevailing attitude among those favoring Romney appears to be "Well, Obama has had long enough to fix the mess."  They totally fail to understand the causes of the Great Recession, rooted as it is in Republican deregulation ideology and in the supply-side economics to which Romney will return us  (aka, "trickle down").  They totally fail to grasp the obstructionist role of the Republicans in Congress in preventing a more rapid recovery - in the neighborhood of 2 million jobs not created due to their inaction.  The Administration has not hammered on (or even articulated) these misconceptions for the past several years and it is likely a case of "too little, too late" in the closing weeks of this campaign. 

What other factors will be affecting the outcome? 

Voter suppression laws will have less than their desired effect due to a couple of recent court victories.  Pennsylvania voter ID won't take effect before this election and Ohio was ordered to allow early voting the weekend before Election Day.  On the other hand, I spoke to a Florida voter who was concerned that he had not received his absentee ballot yet.  In Ohio, anonymous groups have launched a voter-intimidation billboard campaign to scare people across Columbus and Cleveland—two Democratic strongholds—out of voting. It's a "saturation-level" advertising campaign that goes both deep and wide, promising prison time and a $10,000 fine for "voter fraud." Let's not forget Ohio 2004 election night when what appeared to be a victory for Kerry was turned around in the wee hours of the morning.  Or Florida 2000 when the Republican-controlled Supreme Court prevented a recount and crowned George Bush President.  (Now, there's something to think about - 4 SCOTUS justices will be in their late 70's or early 80's by the end of the next President's term.)

Democrats are mounting strong get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts in swing states.   But here we have to be cautious.   The formidable grassroots GOTV effort in the Wisconsin recall election could not overcome the huge money advantage of the Republican incumbent Scott Walker.  In a money neutral race with an informed citizenry, Democratic Congrssional candidates should win in a landslide - Republican Congressional approval rating was down to as low as 7% earlier this year.  But Democrats will be lucky if they can hold onto the Senate and make modest gains in the House thanks to the money pouring into Republican coffers.  For just one example, Republicans have so far spent more than $20 million in an attempt to defeat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

As the French philosopher, writer and diplomat Joseph De Maistre wrote in 1811, "Every nation has the government it deserves."  (The more common "Every country gets the government it deserves" is often wrongly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville or Abraham Lincoln.)  So to the willfully ignorant and to the artfully misinformed, if you elect Romney-Ryan and a Republican congress, you will have the government you deserve.  Unfortunately, for the rest of us, we will also have the same government and the social safety net that has protected the vulnerable will be shredded.