With each passing week, the 2012 presidential race is getting tighter and tighter. The most recent Gallup poll has it at 49.99999999% for Romney and 49.99999999% for Obama. A dead heat. Scientists have discovered molecules with more space between them than these polling numbers.
Just three months ago, the number of battleground states had narrowed to eight. In the past month, it has narrowed even further – to just one state: Ohio. Both candidates have been spending so much time in this state they now know most Ohioans on a first-name basis, as well as their pets.
Political pundits argue that as Ohio goes, so goes the election. Both parties’ campaigns have dissected the Buckeye State county by county, city by city, donut shop by donut shop. They have narrowed down their focus to one household in a small town in central Ohio. Using sophisticated statistical analysis, both campaigns now believe the election will come down to which candidate can win over the final two undecided voters remaining in America: Howard and Marjorie Grundfeldt of Pickerington, Ohio. As the Grundfeldts go, so goes the election.
In my younger years, I used to jog five miles a day, do 50 sit-ups each morning, and row 15 miles to work. I was a nationally recognized fitness expert and author of the best seller, Earlobes of Steel. But now that I am older, I know better. At best, all that exercise will add less than 30 years to my life.
Not long ago, I tried out a fitness class called sports yoga. I stuck with it for what seemed like forever, by which I mean nearly four sessions. There was just one small problem: yoga was really hard. Try as I may, I could never get my left foot to wrap around the back of my neck. I never got the knack for how to balance my body off the ground using just my thumbs.
I even wrote about my nightmarish yoga experience previously in a post called The World’s Least Flexible Man – the 100% true retelling of my very first yoga class. So I hung up my yoga mat. I’m simply not that young anymore. My body is no longer capable of contorting like a human pretzel. And before you know it, I’ll be celebrating my 80th birthday. (Okay, technically not for another 23 years, but in geologic terms, that’s a blink of an eye).
There are only a few more weeks until Election Day. Polls paint a bleak picture for Romney’s chances of winning the White House – which house is even lovelier than his ski chalet house in Park City, Utah, but not quite as lovely as his ocean-front house in La Jolla. But that’s not the point.
The point is that for weeks Romney has been playing defense thanks to some unfortunate gaffes like claiming that 47% of Americans are freeloading parasites, letting it slip that he and Vladimir Putin are longtime BFF pen pals, and accidentally admitting he is a New York Yankees fan (there goes the Massachusetts vote). Reports that he recently purchased India’s Taj Mahal as a winter vacation get-away probably won’t help either.
Any way you slice the polling data, the news does not look good for Romney. He trails Obama with the following demographic groups:
Women, Latinos, blacks, gays, people under 25, people over 25, people who identify themselves as middle class, people with access to the news, people who can do basic math, people who can identify Canada on a map, and people who are nice to their pets
The National Football League is taking decisive action in response to complaints about horrendously bad officiating by the replacement referees, who were brought in due to the lockout of referees by the league.
The move is the culmination of events precipitated by perhaps the worst missed call in NFL history. In this week’s Monday Night Football contest between the Seattle Seahawks and visiting Green Bay Packers, a Green Bay Packer defender intercepted a pass in the end zone as the game clock expired but the referee called it a Seattle touchdown. Various instant replays clearly showed that the Packer player had possession of the ball, but the referee still upheld the egregious call.
Players, coaches, and fans have weighed in, demanding the offending official be executed for treason. Sports pundits are calling it the most outrageously bad call since drummer Pete Best made the decision to leave the Beatles in 1962 to join the band Tony Jack and the Lollipops because they had “more potential.”
It’s now less than two months until the 2012 presidential election. The field of candidates has been whittled down to the Final 13. The short list includes several impressive independent candidates, like Robert Burck, better known to New Yorkers as the Naked Cowboy, Brian J. Moran of Texas, who, as best as anyone can tell, is the only candidate running this year on the Jedi party ticket, and Vermin Supreme, whose boldly fresh platform calls for an end to gingivitis and more investment in time travel research. Vermin also courageously promises a free pony for every American. (I am not making any of this up.)
Fortunately, to make it easier for the average American to decide for whom to cast their vote, our electoral system has given two candidates a slight edge in the race to the White House: incumbent Barack Obama and that other guy, whose name temporarily escapes me because of the complete dearth of political ads on his behalf – no wait a minute, it’s coming to me. Yes, Mitt Romney.
With each passing week, the 2012 presidential race is getting tighter and tighter. The most recent Gallup poll has it at 49.99999999% for Romney and 49.99999999% for Obama. A dead heat. Scientists have discovered molecules with more space between them than these polling numbers.
