Obama will lose the election

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If Clinton was offered the VP spot, why would she accept? Playing second fiddle to a president who has generally constrained her at State.

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At this point in time, I'd declare Romney the very slight favorite. But a lot of things could change. If Obama still keeps his +1.5% average in the polls by the third week of September, Obama would be very well the favorite. Largely because I think Romney's net convention bounce will be around 2%.

Also, I suspect the stock market will probably tank a little in September/October. Not enough to make a huge impact, but probably enough to push Romney over the edge.

Of course, if neither of these happen, Obama is probably winning.

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This election is not like other elections. For one, the amount of long-term unemployed is far far far larger than normal. And if we look at U-6 unemployment, we're looking at 16% or so either unemployed or underemployed.

It's true that 90%+ of people won't care about the economy. But most of them are either committed Democrats or Republicans (if not in name). Among people who have felt the squeeze and even among some of those who haven't, the economy is salient.

Plus, among that 7% or so of Americans that have negative impressions of both candidates and are undecided, a large proportion are economically distressed. And a lot simply don't care about politicians and their personalities. The economy is definitely a salient issue. Hell, I know someone who is fairly socially liberal, pro-choice, Obama 2008 voter and she thought Todd Akin was Romney's running mate. And what she basically said to me was, "Lots of restaurants I go to are closed down. Economy sucks. Guess I'm voting for the not-Obama."

But what people have to understand is that the economy is not 1980. It doesn't feel as bad as 1980 (though I believe it is worse). So this idea that "Obama should be behind" is just not true. We still have 2.2% GDP growth or something, relatively low inflation, etc. etc. The weak economy is enough to make the election competitive, but not enough to mean that Romney should be winning if he were a "better candidate".

Also, Obama has heavily outspent Romney. Heavily. Romney has heavily outraised Obama recently, but he can't spend any of it until after the RNC because they're in general election funds. I'm personally of the opinion that campaign spending isn't very important, but I wouldn't be surprised if being outspent cost Romney maybe .2%, and outspending Obama later might turn that into a .2% lead. Obviously, campaign spending doesn't do much in 95% of elections, but this one might be close enough for it to matter.

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I'm looking historically, not at the convention.  Obama numbers are significantly lower than GW Bush (2004), Clinton (1996), and Reagan (1984) at this point in the cycle.  Is it too low to win?  Well, maybe or maybe not.  I won't be looking until after the convention.

They're probably higher than Bush. IIRC, Bush was slightly behind of Kerry for much of the campaign until convention bounce + switching to an LV model elevated him to a lead.

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How is he the slight favorite? Obama's ahead of Romney in Ohio and Virginia. If Romney can't win them, he's done.

Well, I think Romney is the slight favorite because I think that he will recieve a convention bounce that pushes him slightly ahead of the polls and/or the economy will deteroriate from now to then. I'm not too concerned about state polls. Wisconsin and Virginia have perfectly tracked the national polls, so whoever wins the popular vote almost certainly takes both of those states. And Iowa is probably more Romney than the popular vote, so those three states would give him the victory if he won the popular vote. And of course, if Obama edges out the PV, he wins.

Of course, if that convention bounce does not happen or if the economy swings up, Romney will obviously not be the slight favorite, and I admit that. Obama leads now but I think events will unfold that give the edge to Romney. But if those events don't unfold, yes, I agree Obama will remain strongly favored.

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The comparisons to 2004 are entirely too glib. There are several key differences that I see:

1) '04 was a national security election. Several embattled incumbents (Lincoln, Wilson, FDR) won with some variation on the "don't change horses in midstream" argument of Bush. Winning with this argument -- or any argument -- is not as easy with a stalled economy.

2) Obama is less popular, marginally, than Bush was. RCP has a feature that allows you to compare Bush's first-term approval with Obama's on any given day. Currently, O's about two points lower than Bush was at this point in '04 -- not a lot but when you consider that Bush only won by 2.5%...

The other thing that strikes me when comparing the two is how consistent Obama's relative unpopularity is. He's been below 50%, though not drastically, the bulk of the time since the end of his first year. Bush, OTOH, was above 50% until about mid-February '04. The afterglow of his most successful period -- just after 9/11 -- was still in place for a lot of Americans, as frustrating as that was for those of us that opposed him. Obama's most popular period -- '08 through early '09 -- is further back and feels like a lifetime ago.

3) Democrats had no momentum coming into '04. We won the pop. vote in 2000 and had various demographic trends in our favor but the '02 elections were a disaster. There was a sense of starting from scratch with the Kerry campaign and the Dem activist groups who hit the swing states that year. The GOP is coming into this race with a big win in 2010, a decent shot at taking the Senate, and a base that is still pretty engaged and active, if you go by things like the WI recall and "enthusiasm" surveys.

4) Romney's not a great candidate, but his weakness can be exaggerated. Absent his war heroism, Kerry embodied a lot of what middle America didn't like about the Democrats, and he didn't expand the map anywhere except neighboring NH. Romney embodies the "rich Republican" stereotype that hurts in places like Ohio, but at the same time, he's not a Southern-fried Bush clone or a Tea Party extremist (in public perception). He's relatively free of geographic anchoring, which gives him some potential that Kerry -- blue-stater to the core -- never had; the selection of Ryan reinforces this. On a superficial level, he's not as weird-looking as JK and doesn't have a wife who comes off as a slightly tipsy Arianna Huffington clone (I liked TH-K, but boy did swing voters not).

Obviously, there are similarities to '04, you'd have to be blind not to notice them, but it's generally the case that the more some bit of conventional wisdom is repeated, the more you have to question it -- like all the "Romney has a 25% ceiling" stuff from the primaries.

I pretty much agree with almost all of this, especially how Romney is not as weak of a candidate as people think he is. Obviously, it's easy to tar the candidate of the other side on how they are a weak candidate because you don't like them, but it doesn't make it that accurate. Dukakis wasn't that bad of a candidate either.

I don't think the economy is as damaging to Obama as people think. A lot of the economic indicators (gdp growth, inflation, consumer confidence, personal income growth), they're not even close to 1980. Not to mention 1980 was a very steep drop, while our current economy is practically a "new normal". The idea that Obama should be behind by double-digits is just not true. It's somewhere between 2004 and 1992, not somewhere between 1992 and 1980. And polling gives us exactly what we would normally expect: an incumbent who is unusually vulnerable but not yet beaten.

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It's generally believed that we're much more likely to go over the fiscal cliff if the Democrats win. The fiscal cliff is much worse for Republicans than Democrats. If we go over the fiscal cliff, we lose the bush tax cuts as well as a huge amount of defense spending. Sure, Dems lose on part of the bush tax cuts they like, but they win on most of the things they want. That's a policy victory for the Democrats.

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The party isn't getting whiter. There are more important faces of color at this convention than ever before (ie not just tokens).

The country is getting less white though so the party that has always been the racist party in the modern era will lose some ground.

And the economy is deteriorated. And why should Romney be ahead after all the reasons you listed suggesting why he shouldn't? 

  Would a "racist party" as you put it free the slaves?

Uh, I mean his point is complete bullsh*t, but he did specify the modern era. Us claiming Lincoln is as asinine as well, them trying to claim Thomas Jefferson.

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Romney cannot win this election...Obama could lose it but if everything remains the way they are Obama wins by 3 - 4 points. Actually it's only going to be this close because of the voter ID laws and the fact that some Obama supporters will stay home...they won't vote for Romney.

Romney has NO natural base in the Republican party...a lot of the people who hate Obama despise people like Romney they are going to be stuck in the proverbial paradox - should i vote for the Moron that shipped my job overseas and won't show his tax returns, they can't vote for the black guy obviously so they just stay home. The zombies will come out but some are going to stay home. If Romney was Bush he could win, but he is not so he won't.

I don't even know where to begin.