There's another poll out today showing President Obama with a nine point lead in Ohio. That's the fifth poll in a row showing him with a larger than a five point lead. The Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll that came out last week had him with a ten point lead.
No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. Plus, whoever has won Ohio has won the last 11 presidential races. Ten point leads aren't small, they're gigantic.
Here's my new favorite fact: whoever is leading two weeks after the last convention has never relinquished the lead in the last 15 presidential elections. It's way past two weeks since the last convention and President Obama doesn't have a small lead, he has a huge lead.
This thing is over. The rest is just running out the clock. In fact, I already called it on our Current show last Wednesday.
The debates hardly matter. They are way overhyped. The last presidential debate that mattered was ... in 1960. Conventional wisdom says that Al Gore lost his lead to George Bush after the debates in 2000. Here are two inconvenient facts about those debates. First, according to polling done immediately after the debates Gore won two out of three debates, including the famous "sigh" debate (sometimes conventional wisdom is so painfully stupid -- the media painted that as a loss for Gore when the polling was clear, he won by a comfortable seven points). Second, Gore won the popular vote (and the electoral vote if you recounted all of Florida by any recount standard).
In the interest of full-disclosure I work for Current, a network co-founded by Al Gore and in the interest of full-disclosure I have already said this many, many times well before I worked for Current.
Could a miracle happen between now and Election Day? Of course, but it would have to be a major one because I don't think a minor miracle will do it here. Do you still have to vote? Of course, none of these polls matter if people don't actually go out and vote.
But the debates are very unlikely to move the numbers and President Obama, being a careful politician, is very unlikely to stumble and Romney, who has been running an awful campaign, is very unlikely to miraculously get much, much better and overwhelm the president in the next month or so.
Does Romney look like he's running the kind of campaign that could pull off the greatest come from behind victory in our lifetimes?
Here is another look at the numbers to show you why this is not a close election (including other swing states):
This doesn't mean that the election won't tighten sometime between now and Election Day. And, of course, the media will make a huge deal out of it because this is our bread and butter. We love this stuff and can't wait for more drama (including myself because I love the horse race almost as much as I love the policy discussions). This is our Super Bowl and we secretly don't want a blow-out. But if you look at the numbers objectively, for all intents and purposes, this thing is already in the books. It's over. President Obama will get re-elected.
Watch Cenk Uygur on Current TV every weeknight at 7et/4pt. Go to current.com/GetTYT for channel information. Watch The Young Turks on YouTube here.