The 2012 Election is Over, Folks

The 2012 election has clearly become Obama’s to lose. And I feel confident at this point that he won’t.

As ridiculously tragic as this week’s toppling dominos might have appeared -- from the the promotion of “Muhammad Movie Trailer” by a crazed fundamentalist Christian pastor in Florida, and its excerpting by irresponsible journalists on Egyptian television, to the killing of a U.S. ambassador in Libya by terrorists who coolly manipulated general Muslim outrage over the video -- they will likely solidify the lead the President was already in the process of establishing over his klutz of an opponent.

In an election year, any sort of foreign tension tends to drive voters back to the incumbent; well, they tell themselves, we’d better pull together and stick with the horse in the middle of the stream. No telling what we’d get with the new guy … especially a mere state governor like Romney who has zero international experience.

The news from Benghazi, Cairo, Yemen, and elsewhere over the past four days coincided with reports that the President already was pulling away from the challenger in key battleground states. Polls indicated that Obama has developed a comfortable lead over Romney in the critical swing states of Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. See this morning’s report in the Washington Post.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll found the President ahead by 50 percentage points to 43 in Ohio, 49 to 44 in Florida, and the same in Virginia. Such a lead is hardly an insurmountable one, except it was clear from the start that voter uncertainty over these candidates, and the movement of undecideds between them, was going to be smaller than usual.

Michigan and Pennsylvania might still be in play, but polling figures reported this week were probably collected well before this week’s international crises broke, and the latter can only strengthen support for the President.

Plus, Romney is maintaining his astounding record of being his own worst enemy. Republicans publicly disavowed Romney’s hasty attack on the Obama administration for an apology issued by the Cairo embassy for “Muhammad Movie Trailer” (an apology not cleared with the White House), because he had mistakenly assumed the apology followed the attack on the Libyan ambassador, when it had actually preceded it.

Less than two weeks after the Republican National Convention, Paul Ryan seems to have disappeared from view. Whatever value he might have brought to the ticket is in danger of drying up because Romney is keeping his running mate on a very tight leash.

And today on “Good Morning America,” the Republican candidate defined the middle class or middle-income Americans as those whose annual income is $200,000 to $250,000. Of course, the Census Bureau says median income in the U.S. is $50,000, but if Romney is hunting for votes from what he calls the middle class, he’s welcome to that thin slice of the U.S. electorate … and he’ll be a guaranteed loser in November.

As long ago as Monday, Rush Limbaugh, the avatar of besieged and fearful conservative Americans, had this to say about his party’s candidate: “Romney, the best thing he can do is remember this election isn’t about him. He may as well be Elmer Fudd as far as we’re concerned. We’re voting against Obama.”

Isn’t that a ringing endorsement? With friends like these. . . .