Where Are Romney's New Voters?

by Steve

In the days after the SCOTUS health care decision, I've now seen two national media outlets try to tell me that the decision will energize even more people to come out and vote for Romney. Really, this is utter bullshit. Romney already has all the angry white people (AWPs) who hate Obama voting for him. Are there really millions more independents or AWPs ready to now come out of the woods to jump aboard the No Facts Express to make sure Obamacare gets repealed who weren't already aboard? I don't think so, and no one in the media has made a plausible case that the decision will drive up GOP turnout.

Team Obama is doing everything they need to do against Romney. They know they'll be outspent, so they are spending their precious cash early in battleground states to set the narrative now against Romney, undermining Romney's key argument in favor of his candidacy. Despite advice from limp-dicked Dems who didn't like the anti-Bain narrative, Team Obama knew they needed to educate voters in key states now about Romney's background and track record as a businessman.

By tying Romney and Bain to outsourcing American jobs, and by hammering this message in the battleground states, Obama is spending his money wisely early. Not only do the polls show the strategy working, but Romney's own strategy is set to play right into it.

Mr. Romney’s aides said in interviews that their strategy depended on keeping their candidate close to Mr. Obama in the polls until at least the Republican convention at the end of August. They hope to begin to pull away then with a relentless case that Mr. Obama has not been up to the job of fixing the economy — and that Mr. Romney has the experience and the knowledge to lead the nation to recovery.

So by the time Romney makes the argument late in the campaign that he knows better about the economy, Obama will have already knocked his numbers way down and portrayed him as an out-of-touch corporate outsourcer. Romney's hoping that he can convince millions of voters that the bad economy is Obama's fault, yet recent polling shows that six in ten believe that Obama inherited these problems. If Obama can spend the summer with a two track message - that Romney isn't the answer, and that the GOP congress has stopped any progress on the economy - then Romney will be spending all that cash to sell a losing product.

That doesn't mean the media won't try and convince us that Obama is in trouble; after all, they need to peddle conflict and drama. The latest example is this worthless piece today in the New York Times which tries to convince us that Obama may lose young voters to Romney, a piece that contains no evidence to support that premise. Furthermore, actual evidence from polls shows that Obama is already wildly popular with a key voting group - Latinos - and has room to grow further, especially since six in ten of Latinos consider themselves moderate to liberal.

Obama is building his whole strategy on the Electoral College and swing states, and setting a negative economic narrative now about Romney in those states. That's why head-to-head polls right now are worthless. The media can't see this, or the fact that Romney may very well be topped out already with the AWPs and the lack of any message to win over new converts, especially after Obama has trashed Romney's supposed economic expertise.