Zogby launches final-week tracker for the US, FL, OH and VA

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

All Sandy did was at most close Romney's last possible door. The fact that Romney was still standing outside before that is far more of an idictment of him and his campaign then anything with regards to the impact of the storm, which basically just froze things in place, possibly gave a Obama a small bounce. Romney needed to bounce back in the last week in the state by state polling this week to have a chance.

I think looking back, what sealed the deal was Romney's flawed strategy in the second debate and his failure to put away the Auto issue at the beginning of the season (preferrably back in or before the primary season too), which is what blocked him off in Ohio. With OH not there for him, his balloon began to wilt costing him VA and possibly FL as well as his chances to get NH, IA, CO, and/or WI which were all on the table after the first debate, or seriously compete in MI, MN or PA. Just ceding the Hispanic vote to Obama overall cost Romney NV and NM and made CO that much more difficult, as well as putting AZ on verge of at risk. Angering the Paulites, rather than bringing them to the table hurt in NV, NM, CO, IA and NH. Going too far to try and outmauevered Rick and Newt made him just as bad to many of the same swing voters, for which initially he was a more palatable choice to, as they were. 

Romney will probably do better in the popular vote and the electoral college then John McCain. He will probably have done a better job rallying base of off opposition to Obama, who scares the hell out of both factions of the GOP base, then McCain did off of support and love for Palin who one part of the base loved and the other part were scared by. He will have done a better job in terms of organizing both on the ground in general and in the early vote, raising money, and socking it to Obama (even when the facts were tenuous at best). However, when your standard of comparison is a 7% PV loss and a near 2-1 rout in the electoral college, just "doing better" isn't enough.

A mismanaged Presidential campaign and a basketfull of not ready for primetime Senate candidates, turned what should have been the year Republicans finished the job, and instead possibly put the party all the way back to 2009. The irony is that the GOP did get some good picks, but in states that the toplines preclude like CT, PA, and NM. A bunch of bad picks in swing states (unlike in a 2010 where all the swing state picks turned out to be great save for out west, even the TP backed swing state candidates like Toomey and Rubio could have a case to be made that they did more to help the GOP then hurt them in some way) and some even worse picks in the GOP territory have created a situation where just breaking even would be a miracle, when gains approaching double digits were plausible going in.

Part of the problem for the GOP is that it relied on short term fundamentals, like the cyclical conditions of the economy and popular opposition to a key piece of the Democratic agenda to base their success off of, rather than trying to play on a longer term paradigm. Things were heading in the right direction in 2009, where things got off track again was when victory just fell into the hands of the GOP in 2010.

What is worrisome is what will come to follow. You will have the "enlightened" establishment arguing for the emasculation of the base and the base for the execution of the establishment. Both will be nearly completely wrong in proscribing in their treatment of the other.