The Media Falling For Romney's Narrative

     I hate to say it and it's not everywhere but I see way too many articles like this one by Politico.

     "Mika, Willie and I have spent the last few weeks answering the same question from viewers, family members and friends. "Who's going to win the election??"

      "After the first debate, that question was asked in the form of a plea from Democrats. Before that, Republicans grimly asked for their prognosis resigned to the fact that the answer would not be satisfying."

     "I spent most of the year telling those who asked that the dynamics of the race suggested a narrow Obama win. But that all changed after the president's Denver debacle. After that meltdown, I am the first to admit I have no idea how this all will turn out."

      "But I do know this: Mitt Romney will win the presidency if he wins Ohio. That's because the Republican candidate is nailing down the Southern swing states that he has to win. With Florida, North Carolina and Virginia moving his way, the battle now moves to the Midwest."

      "If Romney's momentum is strong enough to erase the 10 point deficit he once faced in Ohio, expect him to carry other swing states like Nevada and Colorado."

      "That scenario would have been far more plausible had Mr. Romney turned in a stronger performance at last night's debate in Florida. As things stand today, Ohio is still a heavy lift for the GOP candidate and that means President Obama should still be considered a slight favorite to win re-election."

      "But my gut tells me there are two likely scenarios: (1) President Obama will squeak out a narrow electoral college victory or (2) Mitt Romney will carry Ohio and be swept into office by a comfortable margin."

     "After practicing politics for 20 years, I suppose I would rather be in Mitt Romney's shoes than Barack Obama's. Incumbents who are under 50% two weeks out usually go down to defeat.
But who knows? Maybe Barack Obama will bend history once again."

     http://www.politico.com/blogs/joe-scarborough/2012/10/a-narrow-obama-win-or-a-romney-landslide-139386.html

      To be sure this piece is by the conservative Joe Scarborough. But it's the top of the front page at Politico right now and there are many articles like it. It seems that to the extent that the media buys this, they're falling for the Romney team's talking points. They've been trying to claim there's an ongoing "Romney surge"-in fact it ended about 10 days ago and that Romney is actually the favorite at this point.

       http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/10/rommey-teams-overconfidence-bluff.html

      Scarborough's scenario of Romney sweeping the swing states is still not so plausible. And he hasn't even locked up Virginia totally. Indeed Florida is certainly no more in the tank for Romney than Ohio is for Obama and yet we keep hearing this narrative that Florida is a done deal for Romney-Nate Silver did this himself recently-whereas Ohio is very much in play.

      What the narrative seems to be saying is that nothing has mattered in this campaign except Denver. Romney's Denver win negates everything from the first 5 months of the general election and also the fact that Obama-and Biden-won the last 3 debates by all accounts.

       Why should Denver have such a disproportionate effect? According to Scarborough-and many others have bought this-Obama had egregiously caricatured Romney successfully, but with one "sterling" debate performance, Romney demonstrably disproved all of that. While Obama came back in the remaining debates it still doesn't disqualify Romney again-though arguably his 3rd debate came close.

       The answer to that is that supposedly the 3rd debate is usually less important and that foreign policy isn't important this year. Maybe, but still, isn't the lack of gravitas on the top and bottom of the ticket worrisome? Romney's strange history where Reagan didn't care about foreign policy during the first 100 days-all he cared about was a recovery-kind of underscores this. Foreign policy is not something you can turn on and off when you feel like it. Foreign policy is a fluid thing which is always being made. Just because the economy is struggling doesn't mean that all foreign actors wait until your economy is running at full employment again.

       So the narrative is that Romney showed he's an acceptable alternative to Obama. Initially, of course, the Romney team had thought that it was enough to run a referendum campaign. However, they've accepted the idea of a choice election. Yet they think that all they needed was to show Romney was an acceptable alternative and that he did it in Denver. Now that it's been done-the ideology goes-it can't be undone.

        This narrative is overly simplistic and it' not clear it's right. It presumes that people actively want to get rid of Obama but just need someone who's "acceptable" to replace him and the threshold is not too high.

        Actually, this race seems more like 2004 than anything. This had been remarked on a lot until the Denver debate. Now it's been forgotten. Yet, it's very similar. Like Bush in 2004, Obama defined Romney early. Like Kerry, Romney failed to get a convention bounce, indeed, he even lost a point-the two are the only ones to do that since 1964. Obama then like Bush got a bounce and led throughout September. Bush at one point led by 10 points. Then in the first debate Kerry hammered Bush so badly that it tied the race and made many wonder if Bush was even qualified for the office that he had served for 4 years.

        However, he managed to stabilize things in the last two debates-and Cheney's strong showing against Edwards-and the rest is history. This narrative still seems the most likely now. Romney actually peaked October 11. He's since lost about 10 points in Nate Silver's NowCast.