Who Will Make The Are You Better Off Case More Effectively-- Obama Or Romney?

None of the polling companies have detected the traditional post-convention "bounce" Romney was counting on to get his turgid campaign rolling after the misfired and mismanaged affair his team staged in Tampa. Yesterday, Gallup released a pretty devastating analysis, GOP Convention, Romney Speech Evoke Lukewarm Reactions. 51% of Americans who said they watched "a great deal" or "some" of the convention on TV is the second-lowest for any of the eight conventions Gallup has asked about going back to 1996. Only the Republican convention in 1996 was viewed on TV by fewer Americans. The most watched of the eight based on this measure was the 2008 Republican convention in which McCain was nominated for president and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was confirmed as the Republicans' vice presidential nominee. Even worse for the GOP, nationally, 40% of voters said the convention made them more likely to vote for Romney/Ryan and 38% said it made them less likely to vote for them. And Romney himself did even worse than the awful convention.

Romney's acceptance speech this year scored low by comparison to previous convention speeches going back to 1996. Thirty-eight percent of Americans rated the speech as excellent or good, while 16% rated it as poor or terrible. The 38% who rated the speech as excellent or good is the lowest rating of any of the eight speeches Gallup has tested since Bob Dole's GOP acceptance speech in 1996.

Obama's 2008 speech was the most warmly received of the eight speeches Gallup has evaluated using this measure-- 58% of Americans rated it as excellent or good. Americans evaluated McCain's speech in 2008 less positively, but at 47% excellent or good, it was still more highly rated than Romney's this year.

Gallup's analysis concludes ominously for the GOP: "preliminary data show that both the self-reported impact of the convention and the evaluation of Romney's speech are at the bottom of the scale of comparable evaluations from recent conventions." And over the weekend, right-wing propagandist Bill Kristol blasted Romney on Fox for being unable to make a positive case for himself and the GOP. Criticizing the president may go over well with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity fans but that's not going to move normal voters.

Chis Wallace: What did Romney need to do in Tampa and to what degree did he succeed? [...]

Bill Kristol: I thought that they should do a more forward looking emphasis on the next four years. They thought they’re comfortable with asking voters to pass judgement on the last four years and Kirsten’s right, just reassuring people about Mitt Romney.

You talk to the top Romney strategists, they use that word an awful lot. We have to reassure voters about Mitt Romney. He doesn’t hate women, he’s a likable guy. He’s a generous guy. The Republican Party is diverse. That’s enough, plus the case against Obama. That’s their theory of the race and they had a convention that fit with their theory of the race. If you believe and I’m more inclined to this other belief, that you need to actually convince voters by making a positive case for the Romney-Ryan ticket, there was much less of that. ... Why not at least say a sentence of gratitude for our men and women who have fought over there in Afghanistan and Iraq? I think that was a mistake.”


HuffPo's Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel interviewed a few dozen Republican delegates after the convention and asked them what they plan to do if Obama is reelected. They uncovered a big bonus to an Obama win-- many rabid right-wing freaks will desert America, the same way they did after the Patriots beat the British in the late 1700s and thousands and thousands of conservatives left the fledgling U.S. for England, Canada, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands (and other places Romney hides his money from U.S. tax collectors). One of the kooks they interviewed, Sue Cosgrove, who declined to reveal where she's from, says she can't do that.

"I will pray and cry," she said. "I already moved my money."

Two other people chose prayer as a remedy for an Obama win, while one suggested major changes to the family finances.

"Maybe I'll have to take my son out of college at the rate things are going," said Pam Raygor, an Alaska delegate.

And what about the question about being better off. Some Democratic politicians may stumble but Stephanie Cutter was on NBC's Today showing them how to respond: "By any measure the country has moved forward over the last four years. It might not be as fast as people hoped. The president agrees with that. He knows we need to do more. That's what this week is about, laying out a road map of how we can continue this progress, how we can continue moving the country forward." This is how bad thing were when Bush and his GOP congressional allies were in charge-- and how far we've climbed out of that hellhole:




And here's how Krugman rephrased it this morning: "Obama came to office in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The question should be how well he dealt with that crisis-- and in particular whether the man seeking to replace him would have done better. And the facts of how we’ve done aren’t complicated: the economy was in free fall in January 2009; it stabilized and began growing by mid-2009; but growth has been disappointing, and employment has barely kept up with population." [See graph above.] Rachel tackled this last night... and more...