The Inevitability Narrative Confronts Reality

Via-Jer's Notes

Much was made last week when Suffolk Polling's director David Paleologo  said

“In places like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, we’ve already painted those red. We’re not polling any of those states again. We’re focusing on the remaining states.”

How important is that? If true and I believe it is true, it changes the entire outlook on the remaining three weeks of the race.  In particular  it destroys the narrative that the Obama campaign and his media allies continue to try to portray of the nature of the race. The idea is to paint Obama as the inevitable winner and it is Romney who must take risks in order to somehow overcome the mighty One.

But if you do paint Florida, North Carolina and Virginia red here is what the race looks like.

This is why Ohio is so important and if this truly is the way it really is which I believe it is, then the whole psychological outlook on the race is changed. Obana is fighting to stave off Romney rather than Romney struggling to overcome Obama's nearly insurmountable lead. But as important as perceptions are is the money and resource aspect of this. Obama can not just "give up" in some of these key swing states. Although he can cut back on campaigning in them which he has in North Carolina already, but he can't just pull his advertising out of them, at least not now.

Romney however can redistribute some of his resources to states where Obama according to the inevitability narrative, should not have to fight him, States such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where a Democratic candidate for President should coast. This will force Obama to have to compete there as well, depleting his resources and creating another perception problem. If Obama has to start seriously defending traditional "Blue" states the inevitability narrative will not only be gone, it may shift to Romney.

The irony in all of this is that the reason Obama finds himself in this electoral gamesmanship pickle to begin with is that certain polling operations have distorted his strength in the swing states to create the inevitability narrative. Obama has always been weak in North Carolina and the majority of the polling data has shown this.  But whenever it has looked like the state should simply be put in Romney's column, PPP or one of the other leftist polling outfits has thrown a Obama biased outlier into the mix, keeping it "competitive" when in fact it was lost to Obama long ago. This same scenario has taken place for months in all the swing states.  Not that Romney was ahead or will even end up winning some of them, but this need to maintain the "inevitability" meme has created a situation where the Obama campaign now is forced for appearances sake to defend territory which it ought to abandon to concentrate on the true battlegrounds.

Obviously Romney can not just abandon Florida and Virginia, but he can certainly put them down the priority list and concentrate his efforts on Ohio and make Obama play defense in places he should not have to defend, making him look weak. I seriously doubt we will see Obama in North Carolina again before the election and it will be interesting to see how much time he spends in Florida, if any. I suspect the next three weeks we will see the Great Lakes region and Colorado/Nevada being the focal point of the election.

  Hopefully Romney and his campaign will exploit this reality and not just "play it safe". Forcing Obama to campaign in "blue" states will not only deplete his resources, it will dishearten and further erode his base support which generally lives in a narrative world as it is.