Polls and Panic

In the last week there have been quite a number of polls measuring the Obama/Romney race for president. The results have varied with a some showing Obama ahead and some showing Romney in the lead. The response, however, has been panic in the liberal world of the press and the pundits. In the last three days, there have been numerous articles and columns written about how the Obama coalition of 2008 was still intact and growing sufficiently to assure an Obama victory in November. These "experts" are out there telling each other that everything will be allright; their hero will win. It reminds me of the coordinated attack on the Tea Party as racist extremists in 2009 and 2010 which included repeated assertions that the group would fizzle and die out long before the 2010 elections. (We all know how that turned out.)

The truth is that the latest polls show a true reason for worry among the Obamacrats. Romney has just emerged from a three month period when he was being bashed non-stop by his GOP opponents. Just think how many times the same pundits told us that Romney would have trouble uniting the GOP base. Remember, we heard again and again that conservative GOP voters, especially in the South, were rejecting Romney. That split in the GOP was going to make it essentially impossible for Romney to win. So, within a week of unofficially taking the nomination, Romney is getting nearly all the GOP voters in poll after poll, and he is running essentially even with or maybe ahead of Obama. So much for the pundits' view of the primary season.

There is still a long time to go until November. The current polls really tell us little about what will happen then. The one message that comes through loud and clear now, however, is this: Obama is in trouble. Even after the fractious GOP primaries, Obama cannot establish a clear lead over Romney.