Romney Enters Home Stretch Poised To Win

Rick Wilson analyzes the 2012 campaign thus far and looks down the road toward November with insight and cogent analysis in the New York Daily News today. Here are some excerpts:

Despite the hyperventilating over each and every poll and dramatic pronouncement from the Obama campaign, Mitt Romney enters the home stretch in much better shape politically than they or the media believe.
It won’t be easy and it won’t be pretty, but the objective reality of the campaign is fundamentally different than the political landscape seen through the filter of cable news and online coverage. . . .
National polling on the race is a distorted mirror, and even that shows a tie game. Romney and Obama are close to tied in the swing states, and with swing voters.
Plus, there’s this little-noticed problem: Far too many of the public and media polls have set their likely voter screens and models to something looking more optimistic than the 2008 turnout model, which even Obama’s most dedicated partisans think is highly unlikely. . . .
Spin cannot cover the deep, ingrained sense of pessimism that the economy — and the nation — is fundamentally off track. Swing state voters are more typically affected by this than the national surveys reflect, and the “new normal” isn’t cutting it.
In the latest survey by the center-right Resurgent Republic poll, Obama’s approval ratings on the economy among groups he desperately needs to win in the swing states are soft: just 46% overall, 37% with independents and 34% with white, non-college voters.
Chest-thumping “Obama can’t lose” types need to reexamine the basic campaign dynamics. . . .
The post-hoc vision of Obama’s 2008 campaign forgets that by this point, Sen. John McCain was largely broke, off the air in key states and had a campaign in deep trouble.
Romney doesn’t share that fate. Obama isn’t going to have a geriatric punching bag to swing at in the cut-and-thrust of the last seven weeks. He’s in some of the weakest shape of any incumbent President, with unemployment, a soft economy and overseas chaos dragging at his campaign.

Click here to read the entire column.