Now I'm getting worried

Recently I have been touting the electoral map predictions that showed Obama with a decided lead in electoral votes -- he had the required 270 votes if he only took the states in which he has a lead of at least 4% in the polls, without winning any of the battleground states.   Forget about the popular vote;  it's not what elects our president.

Just two weeks ago, Romney would have had to win every one of the battleground states (those in which neither candidate has as much as a 4% lead in the polls) AND he would have had to take one or two states in which Obama currently has more than a 4% lead.

Now that has suddenly changed as Wisconsin and Michigan have shifted into battleground status with Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Iowa.   Obama still leads in the electoral count, but not by such a comfortable margin.

That started me feeling less confident about the race, but it was an article in the New York Times that prompted this blog about how the Republicans are winning the battle for framing the message -- in this instance it is the health care reform debate.

They're winning the message war, because they've become expert at distortions and outright lies, and they've got the money and the media megaphones to put their message out there and keep drilling it in day and night.   The Democrats seem flatfooted and tongue-tied.  They are losing the message war, and they're going to lose the money war -- and I'm getting really worried.

Examples are cited where people claim, for instance, that they are opposed to Obama's health care reform for this or that reason -- and their reason is either a false belief about the reform law, or else it is something that would actually benefit these very same people;  and they don't realize they're opposing their own best interests.

It's the same with economic policy.  It's become quite clear, both in Europe and in our own economy, that austerity in a time of such recession, is a losing strategy.  Look at Greece and Spain.   But that's what the Republicans are preaching -- and they frame it as reducing the deficit.  People say, "Yes, we have to reduce the deficit.  Obama is spending us into oblivion."

But that's just the opposite of what most economists say we need in a time of high unemployment.  Cutting government spending is keeping the joblessness high, because federal assistance to states has been cut -- meaning laying off teachers, police, and fire fighters, and others.  So it's the wrong way to go.    Why can't the Democrats get that message out there?   And get people to believe it?

We could beat their money advantage -- as vast as it is -- if we could just cut through their wrong message and get people to listen to the right message.

I'm not sure it's going to happen.

Ralph