I Never Understood a Single Word He Said

But I helped him drink his wine. He always had some mighty fine wine.

I hear you, Scott. In trying to figure out why this is such a bore, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because there’s nothing either one of them can say or do that’ll make much difference. It’ll either be reasonably close or very close, yes, but the result is preordained. A third of the country despises Obama, a third is okay with him, a third will back him no matter what; a third of the country despises Romney, a third shrug their shoulders, a third will back him no matter what (because they despise Obama). Obama’s approval bounces between 45% and 50%; he can’t get any higher, but he probably won’t go any lower. So:

1) Obama wins if gas prices remain where they are, unemployment inches below 8.0%, and he avoids a jobs report under +100,000.

or

2) Obama loses if any one of those goes the other way. Bain won’t save him, any more than Jeremiah II: The Trial Ballooning will sink him.

Evolving Door

The din—as in CNN, the message board, and Sullivan; I don’t go anywhere near Tweeterville—was in full force today, so I’ll keep this relatively brief. I’ll be listening and skim-reading a lot in the next few days, more than at any time since the halcyon days of Newt Surge #1.

Obama’s proclamation was political, of course. If you’re someone who doesn’t believe it lives up to the purity of Kennedy’s and Johnson’s push for Civil Rights legislation, a timeline might be instructive. They (and Eisenhower) dithered when it was convenient, moved forward when they had to, or when they could. Not sure there’s much difference—if anything, I’d say Kennedy and Johnson were even less justified in stalling.

So politically, I’d say Obama goes two for three:

1) On the downside, demographics and the electoral map. According to CNN, every single swing state (as defined by whomever defines such things) has struck down gay marriage already; those that are already wobbly for Obama will presumably move in Romney’s direction now. And Catholic Hispanics are supposedly very unhappy. Maybe Obama’s side feels that reinvigorated young voters will neutralize all of that. I doubt it.

2) The substance: it’s always, I believe, politically smart at some level to do the right thing, regardless of motives. So that’s a plus.

3) Romney wants to keep the focus almost solely on the economy, with a little bit of sabre-rattling mixed in, but now, for the next few weeks at least and maybe all through the summer, he’ll have to contend with an endless procession of people like the guy Piers Morgan had on tonight yelling, “Should we allow brothers and sisters to marry? Should we, huh?” For Santorum or Gingrich, this would have been a prayer answered. For Romney, I’ve got to believe he’s mortified by today’s events.

Lull

Your weariness is my weariness. I am you as you are me as Mitt is us and we are all Newt Gingrich. See how they run, like Rick Santorum, see how they fly. I’m crying.

It’s silly to get worked up about Romney’s imminent demise anymore, so even when Santorum was way up in Michigan with a week to go, it felt hollow. And again, like in Florida, so much advance voting had already taken place, Michigan was probably already more or less won weeks ago. Romney says stupid things like every single day (with Kid Rock on board, I feel hip-hop parlance is now the way to go with Romney), but it doesn’t really matter in terms of the nomination, because Santorum’s a veritable saying-stupid-things machine. Meanwhile, Gingrich and Paul barely exist at the moment, although Gingrich managed to turn up on all four Sunday shows this morning, and I guess he’ll win Georgia on Tuesday.

I still think it’ll be a close election. No matter how much goes wrong on the Republican side, Obama’s approval rating continues to stay around 45% on Gallup. (Higher today, as it sometimes is, then it goes down again.) For many months you’d hear that that didn’t matter, because Clinton (in ’96) and Reagan (’84) and Nixon (’72) also had approval ratings in the 40s a year out, and they all won big. But it’s not a year out anymore. If you look at Gallup’s comparative graph, Clinton was at 53% right now, Reagan at 54%, and Nixon at 56%—they were already in the clear. And it still feels to me like Obama’s current good fortune is about as sturdy as a house of cards. Romney’s awful right now; I assume he’ll get better. (That one’s iffy.) The economy is improving, but one bad month and you know there’ll be a pile-on. Gas prices have a life of their own. The myriad problems on the other side of the world are not going away—they never do. I feel much better about Obama’s chances today than I did a year ago, but the idea—expressed by some on the message board, both happily and with disgust—that it’s over strikes me as crazy.