Why Obama Will Beat Romney

What’s great about political analysts is that they have no memory. Or rather, they’re full of advice and principles leading up to an event, and afterward they’ve forgotten what they said before. For example, the Washington Post reminded us, two days before the calamitous Denver debate (calamitous for the numerous untruths, shameless lies and affirmations that only held true for the Republican candidate), that a debate had never decided an American election.

Bam, two days later and it’s as if Obama were in the same position as Nixon was the night before his resignation from the White House and Mitt Romney were already forming his cabinet. I can’t decide whether to laugh or shrug my shoulders. Romney may have managed to take the bull by the horns and forgotten the disastrous weeks leading up to the first debate, but he’s far from winning.

Let’s first take a look at the figures. According to Nate Silver — author of the New York Times blog FiveThirthyEight and one of the best experts on the American political map, if not the very best* — the gap between Romney and the 44th president is still wide. The prez has over 296 votes in the Electoral College, while Romney has only 241, even if he has gained almost 22 since Oct. 2. To win, he needs the magic number of 270 votes. The popular vote doesn’t really matter. The election stolen by George W. Bush has not been forgotten, won with the help of William Rehnquist’s Supreme Court — the very same Rehnquist who presided theatrically and ridiculously over the grotesque impeachment trial against Bill Clinton. Nate Silver established his reputation as an almost infallible statistician when he predicted the exact results of the 2008 election in 49 of the 50 states. Not bad.

Today, he gives Barack Obama a 71.2 percent chance of winning in November. Even if the 44th’s popularity has fallen since the summer (he gave him an 86 percent chance after the convention), he still has some leeway. And we can be certain that he won’t make the same mistake as in the first debate of thinking about other things while the Republican comes out with his outlandish “facts.”

Obama and his team are the most formidable political operators since Bill Clinton and the Dream Team, who carried him to the White House in 1992. Obama is an intellectual, for which the Republicans have often criticized him, and this signifies clarity of thought and nerves of steel. I do not doubt for a nanosecond that the president is sure of his victory.

Aside from the part of Romney’s base who feel hatred toward the 44th president, the vast majority of the electorate give him a very high “likeability” quotient. The next few days will allow things to become clearer. The vice-presidential debate will be interesting to watch. Joe Biden is a great debater. He won’t sit twiddling his thumbs, listening to Paul Ryan spouting lies. Although the media is fueling the suspense regarding the American presidential election result to create a buzz and boost sales and audience numbers, on Nov. 6 Mitt Romney will go back to one of his tax havens.

*Translator’s note: In the French source article, some expressions and phrases are already in English (e.g., “the very best,” “not bad”). In my English translation I have kept these phrases the same, but the exoticism of English phrases interspersed in the French text has been lost.