Shady money, voter suppression, shifting positions, murky details and widespread apathy.
If there is a road map for a Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan win in November, that’s it. Distasteful all.
That is how Blow begins
this New York Times column.
On the web page along side the column, one reads some fascinating statistics, dervied from a Suffolk University Poll representing 90 million adults of voting age:
Unregistered, unlikely to vote, but if they were registered and voted, for whom they would vote
Obama 43
Romney 14
Registered, but unlikely to vote, for whom they would vote if voting
Obama 43
Romney 20
Favorable opinions towards the candidates:
Obama 55
Romney 25
Blow then goes through a lot of the inconsistencies and problems with the Republicans on their ticket and things like the ring-kissing of Sheldon Adelson to illustrate the depths to which Romney and Ryan are willing to go to win.
Blow reminds us that while most smart observers give Obama a distinct advantage in the electoral college, the national polls have tended to show the popular vote race fairly close, and then concludes like this:
That is, in part, because of apathy. As USA Today reported, the 90 million people who are unlikely to vote in November prefer Obama over Romney by 2 to 1, and “they could turn a too-close-to-call race into a landslide for President Obama — but by definition they probably won’t.”
If this underhanded dirty dealing by the Republican ticket doesn’t jolt some of these unlikely voters into likely ones, I don’t know what will.
So will the Democratic ticket and those supporting make the case to the American people anbout the "underhanded dirty dealing by the Republican ticket? I wonder? Will in fact the media honestly cover the real dishonesty, starting with Romney's history about lying to the public about his taxes, which is why his word cannot be trusted? Or will the media still tend to cover things in way that contributes to making this more of a horse race than it should be?
In some ways the race should tilt towards the Republicans on economics, except that what Romney and Ryan have to offer would be a doubling down of what got us into this mess.
There are many things about which one could legitimately criticize the Obama administration. Except on every single issue a Romney administration would be worse.
If the American people understood this, the election would be a Democratic landslide. The Republicans and their allies will spend hundreds of millions trying to obfuscate and confuse. They and some allies on courts will do what they can to suppress votes that would otherwise go to Democrats in the hopes of stealing electoral votes of states they would otherwise lose, and in the hopes of winning House and Senate races otherwise out of reach.
It is truly a Dark Road to the White House that can only be one by underhanded dirty dealing by the Republican ticket.
What are we going to do to keep that from happening?