Somebody said earlier that this is Obama's election to lose.
I beg to differ. It's Mitt Romney's election to lose.
8.3% unemployment, an ever-growing unpopular war in Afghanistan, a $15 trillion dollar debt headed for $16, a double-dip recession in Europe and a slowdown in China that have helped to cause our recovery to be a fragile one, uncertainty about the direction of our country.
An independent vote of about 6 to 8% that is up in the air and hasn't come down on one side of the fence yet.
On top of that, Romney has more money in his war chest than Obama.
And he's the business guy who should be scoring huge points with a narrative that says he will do with America what he's done with his portfolio, which is fill it with wealth and prosperity.
Sorry, but if you can't win with all that at your back, than there's something wrong with ya.
This is Romney's to lose. All the conditions are ripe to make Obama a one-termer.
The first order of business you have to show to people when it comes to making them think about you as a possible Commander-In-Chief is how you conduct the business of running for President, which includes your effectiveness at communicating a narrative that sticks with the average person, in controlling that narrative and framing the national debate, at picking the right VP choice to compliment the ticket, rallying the troops at the convention, and then, your debate performances.
So far, Mitt Romney is doing surprisingly awful at the business of running for President since he has been the presumptive nominee the past 3 months. He doesn't appear to have any kind of narrative. From one event to the other, he says what specific crowds want to hear, often changing his positions.
And every other day it seems like he says something uninformed or confused and then has to come back out several times to explain and re-explain, ad nauseum.
There is a business aspect to all this that he understood quite well when he totally demolished his Republican competitors earlier this year, but since he's entered the big dance, it actually seems like he doesn't like being in the spotlight.
When he gets asked common sense questions that are challenging, he gives the impression that he either doesn't want to be there or that he feels entitled and shouldn't have to answer the questions.
That's troublesome to me. I don't care what party you represent. When you run for something, it needs to show that you want it bad. You really have to have the fire for it.
He's not like that. He just seems to think he's entitled to it and shouldn't have to go through the tedious process of being grilled about stuff like his own personal taxes, which is so routinely taken care of by all presidential candidates since time immemorial since they reveal years of them.
It's bad business when you can't get your message out because you're constantly having to defend stuff that should have been taken care of long ago.
It's bad business when you start getting into a 3 or a 4 day feud with the Senate Majority Leader. Harry Reid isn't Romney's opponent. The President is.
It's also bad business with people like moderate women I know who really can relate to the latest Obama ads criticizing Romney for wanting to take us back to the 1950's when he picks a fight with them about Planned Parenthood.
I know people who use PP who've never had abortions and Romney's comments are disturbing. It's bad business for him that he seems unaware of the fact that 10 million more women will be voting in this election than men, and they make up the bulk of that 6-8% of undecideds.
The polls in OH, FL, CO, VA lean Obama to this point, but not by much. They should be places where Mitt is scoring points right now, but he's not. He needs to flip three of those just to make this an electoral college race, or forget about it.
