It is strange, is it not, that the national polls still have Obama and Romney tied. Why so? Romney's ideas have alienated women voters, scared the seniors, have little traction with the youth, and yet the national polls are tied.
As Robert Kuttner at Huffington Post points out
Mitt Romney can have a dismal convention, a series of gaffes, the contempt of much of his own party's base, as well as the highest disapproval rating of any recent major party nominee....and yet tie Obama in national polls.
Nate Silver's probability win numbers keep me sane, but still, what gives with the tied national polls"?
More below the tango knot.
In a word, economy.
The economic recovery in the past four years has been lackluster, and much of the blame lies with the obstructionist policies of the Republicans. Still, Obama is in charge and the economy drag is tied to him.
And there in lies the tied race truth.
When elected what's Obama going to do to unleash the economic boom? His talk of "grand bargain" with the Repulican party by bringing in a auterity program is a poisonous prescription.
Obama's interview with editors Iowa's largest paper, the Des Moines Register, revealed this "grand bargain" meme:
I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I've been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.
credibly meet... $4 trillion in deficit reduction
A four trillion dollars of deficit-reduction will lead to economic contraction and guarantees a sluggish economy. We do not want the next four years to be like the last four years. Progressives cannot allow the extremist, out of power, Republican party to dictate the economic program of the next administration. It is economic lunacy and fiscal folly to embrace austerity when the economy remains sluggish.
As William Black points out,
'Worse, Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian bargain...unraveling the safety net is a terrible thing.
The humane safety net programs like social security, medicare, medicaid show how goverment can effectively run big programs. The health care costs can be reined in by modelling procedures and expenses per existing models in other countries, thereby retaining the same health outcome at lower costs.
The country can ill afford President Obama to be a compromising "bipartisan" Democratic "centerist" President in the second term. He needs to rise above this vanity. We do not want him to cut across party lines for compromises with the party whose only goal was to make him the one term President.
In the second term we should hold Obama to lead as a principled Progressive and to curb his instinct for seeking common ground with the party that betrayed the country in his first term.
There should be no "grand bargain" with the Republican Party. Obama should not betray the safety net of Americans to appear "statesman like" by cutting a deal with the Republicans.
We are electing him for the Progessive ideals.