The story so far. . .

Sam Smith

Obama  is 2 points ahead of Romney in our running poll average, but in the electoral count he has eleven more votes than he needs.

The only states currently in doubt are Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Where there's a visible trend, Obama is improving in 6 states and declining in 3

In governorships, Democrats stand to win one state with 4 Democratic seats held in doubt. GOP stands to pick up one with 3 GOP seats in doubt.

In the Senate,  the GOP is on target to pick up one seat with four other possibles. Democrats could possibly pick up four. Only four seats need change for GOP to win Senate.

Obama's lead is largely due to Mitt Romney's screw ups and increasing awareness of his elite financial status. Obama's own campaign has been stunningly uninspiring, suggesting that his 2008 victory was more the product of personality rather than politics. Obama, for example, has been terrible at reaching out to Capitol Hill politicians or helping Democrats in races across the country.

There is also unpredictable dangers that remain, beginning with whether we have a war with Iran before the election. Further, the media manipulation of minor incidents makes it difficult to predict whether Obama can hold on to his lead.

The problems of the Romney campaign lends support to a theory I proposed back in April, namely that "the unprecedented craziness of the Republican Party leadership has been a reflection of pathology rather than of politics and that what we have witnessed has been the last rites of those trying futilely to return America to a place that they thought, mistakenly, once was and which will never be."  

Historic examples of this phenomenon:

• The ghost dance culture would sweep across the tribes of western America as the dancers were losing their last hold on their beloved lands.
• As military supplies poured into the Pacific Islands during World War II, local peoples reacted to the sudden change by developing "cargo cults" that offered magical explanations for the flow of imports. When the war ended, members of the cults built imitation landing strips and aircraft to attempt to recreate the former reality and restart the influx of goods.
•  The early 20th century Maji Maji rebellion in Africa was spurred by a medium who offered medicine he claimed would turn German colonials' bullets into water.

Although Obama is as bad on some issues as Romney - e.g. he has never found a civil liberty worth defending - there is no doubt that there is a huge difference that will occur depending on who wins. For example, the Republicans are engaged in an unprecedented effort to reverse 80 years of American progress - one third the entire history of the  country under the Constitution. The closest America has even seen to such a reactionary assault was during the post-reconstruction era following the Civil War. The Republican assault on voting rights verges on the criminal and a GOP Senate and more conservative Supreme Court would be an extraordinary disaster.

There is no doubt that Obama is a huge problem - arrogant, covertly conservative, incompetent on many issues, not forthright,  and lacking in social intelligence - but these are matters that pale in comparison with the the pending Republican disaster. We have to rescue the ship of state before we repair it.