State of the Race: #romneyshambles

Just before Romney let loose with his incompetence in London, Markos did a good job of capturing his dilemma.

How does someone go on a "foreign policy tour," yet refuse to talk about foreign policy?

How does someone claim to be running based on knowledge of business, then refuse to talk about his business?

How does someone carry the banner of the moralist Republican Party, yet refuse to talk about his own faith?

How does a former governor run for president, yet does everything in his power to erase those four years from the debate?

You strip away those things, and what's left? The fact that he has perfect hair?

And now, with #romneyshambles in full swing, the Republican nominee has managed to step all over the one message on foreign policy he hoped to communicate.

Undergirding Mitt Romney’s trip to Europe and Israel this week was a single concept: President Obama has weakened the view of America in the eyes of foreign leaders thanks to a policy of appeasement and “apology.” How the world views America is important, Romney said, and he’s going to see to it that America’s reputation overseas is bolstered on his watch.

Within 24 hours of Romney landing abroad, that premise had unraveled and Romney’s own top surrogates were scoffing at the notion that foreign opinions of America mattered at all  to American voters.

Of course we know that Romney's counting on one thing other than his "perfect hair"... his ability to convince American voters that "Obama's bad." The prospects of him being able to do that were challenged by a Pew Research poll released this week that didn't get much attention (probably because it didn't contain a horse-race number on the election).

When it comes to Barack Obama, 90% say they already pretty much know what they need to know about him; just 8% say they need to learn more.

In other words, when it comes to President Obama, people have made up their minds.

That speaks to something I've been saying for awhile now and that Nate Silver weighed in on this week.

We’ve now been running our presidential forecast model for almost two months, but very little has changed in our analysis of the race. Each day, we have shown Barack Obama as a modest favorite to win re-election.

The picture that this paints is that the burden is on Mitt Romney to change the dynamics by increasing the number of people who support him. "Obama's bad" isn't going to cut it. That's why I started off with that quote from Markos...he's got nothin' and the little he does have, he's too busy stepping on.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign continues their pivot to highlighting the choice in this election with this ad that will air during the opening ceremony of the Olympics tonight...



...and First Lady Michelle Obama shows the Romneys what grace and diplomacy look like.

What a team!!!!!!