100 Days Left and What Do You Get?

**We're lucky the Olympics are occupying people's attention. No one can make up their minds who is going to win the election--the theocrat, the Master of Mendacity or the President and frankly people are beginning not to care.


**So where are we? President Obama still has a commanding  lead in the Electoral College. But he is behind in the national tracking polls. Personally I feel he has not done enough to sell his own record, which is actually quite awesome given the conditions he inherited and the consistent and deliberate policy of Republican obstructionism. 


** The RNC is putting out effective ads of people who formerly supported the President who want to vote for another change. The theme is that it is alright to vote to change the President. However, is it really now that we know about Romney's foreign policy and his amazing tax policy. 


**Nate Silver is off again into his sports fixation. But he does remind us that the 1.5% growth rate in the GDP may not be as bad for the President as it seems. Remember the "misery" index that Romney tried to introduce into the campaign. If you have no inflation, then the employment rate alone doesn't create a recipe for disaster. Also, another countervailing issue is the stock market, which is at 13,000 now, and also plays an indirect role in the election. 


**But Nate does point out that Obama's polling in the states where he is favored has been mediocre but still winning. He says that Obama's polling strength lies in the Swing States. For example, Magellan and We Ask America both showed Obama winning Ohio by 2 points and eight points respectively. Nate favors the Magellan poll as the most reasonable. Nate also says the Democrats can forget about Missouri. Maybe because Mormons believe Jesus will return there.


**As Charles Blow writing in the New York Times writes, Democrats have to be very concerned about the Superpac money pouring into the states and the voter suppression actions by states governed by Republicans. This past week saw court cases start against Pennsylvania's ID law and the amazing admission by state authorities that there are no cases of voter fraud in the state. Florida is not only purging lists of living voters but also trying to eliminating early voting. The Washington Post even published an op-ed that if Romney won with these two elements he would be seen as illegitimate.


**Currently in the Swing States the GOP barrage of ads are all anti-Obama but not pro-Romney. The GOP is desperately trying to get the election back to a referendum on Obama, rather than a choice between the President and Romney. 


**Earlier in the campaign I noted how Karl Rove was concerned that the Republicans have lost their two hardcore issues--taxes and national security. Romney's performance in the last few days hasn't engendered confidence on national security issues. On taxes, the seemingly inconsequential Senate vote against extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy actually puts the Democrats clearly on the side of the middle class and the GOP on the side of the wealthy. Whether this is perceived by the electorate is another matter.


**I started this blog four years ago and I wrote then that I really questioned whether this country had the political will to embrace the future and make the types of policy changes that would enhance the wealthy and security of the country. After 2010 and the recent campaign, I am still at the same place. Like  after an operation when our bodies "forget" the experience, we seem to have forgotten how the global economic collapse happened in the first place and how counter-productive the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been. We have made no societal change to embracing alternative energy and we are still absolutely clueless about the rest of planet earth. From the statements from the Republican side lately, I could see a compelling case for isolationism. Do we want to inflict ourselves on other countries anymore?