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Paul Krugman offers a quick and dirty assesment of our political situation that is enouraging if you are Democratic and liberal. I'm just afraid that he counts too much on the rationality of people.
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Mitt Romney is catching a lot of flack from his own side now, which seems premature; although the odds are now against him, this is by no means over. But let me say that even if he does spend election night weeping in his car elevator, his critics from the right are being unfair. Yes, he’s a pretty bad candidate — but the core problem is with his party, not with him.
[...]
First of all, that old standby, national security, isn’t working; between Bush’s Iraq debacle and the fact that Obama was the one who got Bin Laden, the notion that only the GOP will defend America is dead for the foreseeable future. And at this point social issues are cutting the wrong way: there are almost surely more affluent women who will vote against the party of Todd Akin than there are white working-class voters who will punish the Dems for gay marriage.
And underlying it all is the diminishing whiteness of the American electorate.
This still might be a close election thanks to the weakness of the economy, and a better candidate than Romney might have had a better chance of pulling it off. But the long-term fundamentals are not good for Republicans.
-- Paul Krugman at The New York Times
_ _ _
Mitt Romney is catching a lot of flack from his own side now, which seems premature; although the odds are now against him, this is by no means over. But let me say that even if he does spend election night weeping in his car elevator, his critics from the right are being unfair. Yes, he’s a pretty bad candidate — but the core problem is with his party, not with him.
[...]
First of all, that old standby, national security, isn’t working; between Bush’s Iraq debacle and the fact that Obama was the one who got Bin Laden, the notion that only the GOP will defend America is dead for the foreseeable future. And at this point social issues are cutting the wrong way: there are almost surely more affluent women who will vote against the party of Todd Akin than there are white working-class voters who will punish the Dems for gay marriage.
And underlying it all is the diminishing whiteness of the American electorate.
This still might be a close election thanks to the weakness of the economy, and a better candidate than Romney might have had a better chance of pulling it off. But the long-term fundamentals are not good for Republicans.
-- Paul Krugman at The New York Times
