40 Days of Night is Charles M. Blow's take on why and how Romney is doing so badly in the polls leading up to the election. While Blow offers a convincing analysis of Romney's failings, I think there's a larger point that's being neglected. I posted a comment which may or may not make the cut at the Times. I put it here for your consideration:
Romney is important in this respect: he's the perfect Republican candidate for the 21st century because he epitomizes all of the changes that have been quietly taking place ever since Ronald Reagan began the push back against the New Deal and the Great Society.
We live in an economy that is increasingly biased in favor of investing rather than working for a living, where the principle of "one man, one vote" has been supplanted by "one dollar, one vote". It's a world where NOT having money is considered a crime and evidence of moral failings.
If you want to know what Occupy Wall Street was inchoately trying to protest, Willard Mitt Romney and his attitudes are the perfect poster child for the 1%. It's his world and the rest of us live in it only on sufferance.
The fact that Romney is doing so badly in the polls does not mean what he represents is losing ground. The growing hysteria over the contrived "fiscal cliff" crisis, the fanatic insistence by Very Serious People on austerity, the embrace by supposedly Democratic politicians of the bogus Simpson-Bowles "plan" shows the Romneys of the world may be losing this election - but they're still winning the war.
Thoughts? Disagreement? Feel free to comment.