"We've had our limit of anger and polarization." Really? Who is this 'we' of which you speak? Significant fractions of both sides have only had their fill of the other sides' anger and polarization and are frustrated that the leadership of their own side has been too accommodating to the other side. Perhaps this 'we' of yours is the basis of, I don't know, a party? In 2000 and 2008 the winning candidate sold themselves as uniters, and we know how that turned out. This country hasn't had political unity since 1820, so forgive me if I think that promise is simply snake oil. Considering that you made your mark in this world as a partisan working for a "party", this distaste for partisanship is strange.
As to your assertion about Willard thumping Barack in the middle, care to cite a poll? Recent, post or mid-debate polls? The campaign to date has already shown he has a glass jaw, and the first votes have yet to be cast. He isn't popular in his own party, and if he somehow gains the nomination is likely to spur a right-wing third party because the true believers despise his politics and his religion and will have a very tough time voting for him.
As for the Congress, yes, the numbers are against the Democrats, but much depends on their opposition, ask Harry Reid. The odds were against the D's in '06 and '08 and they managed to prevail. Chicken counting season hasn't opened yet.

On a personal level, people who disagreed with Goldwater liked him individually. But many people who know Gingrich and agree with him politically despise him as a human being. Gingrich's appeal thus lies almost exclusively in his ability to excel at articulating a mean-spirited rage among white conservatives. That looks like it will be sufficient to garner the GOP nomination, but will it carry the general election? In other words, just how radically nuts has America become? If the world continues to teeter in the next 12 months, will the panic simply spread and deepen? In the 2012 election avoidance of a totalitarian disaster may be the best outcome we can hope for.

I'm betting on President Romney or reelection for Obama, and a closely split Senate. But I could be wrong, and it could be more conservative. But either way we get.....nothing. The political elite is now obviously out of touch with the citizenry, in a way that we have not experienced in decades, if at all. Mortgage debt relief? Nada. Student loan relief? Zip. A serious public works program? Not a chance. Reigning in the power of Wall Street with banking regulations or a tax on speculation? Not even on their radar screen. Pulling back from embracing military solutions to political problems? Not with the Senators and Representatives firmly in thrall to defense contractors. A serious response to climate change? Not until it's too late. What we will get is more nonsense about the defecit, further cuts to those in need, and an increasingly repressive response to domestic turmoil. Which, believe me, we will be seeing, by desperate people who feel they have nothing left to lose. "Those who would make reform impossible make revolution inevitable." 'Nuff said.

So you elected Mr. Obama because of how you felt about his family?

Ok. Fine.

The left usually votes feelings over substance. I get it.

"Obama got off to a fumbling start in his first two years and, over the past year, has focused more on building a 2012 electoral coalition than he has on governance." Agreed, and I also agree that he has the same abilities that he had in 2008, which was: zero executive experience. He has an ability to get elected, but what issues had he championed? Which legislation did he pass? What had he done? Did he have a successful private sector career? Had he ever created a job? Did he ever do anything that didn't require chicago-style political connections? (See million-dollar house/Tony Rezko)...

I'm just saying that Obama is in over his head. It isn't his fault, we, the people, did not vet him properly. The majority hoped his slogans were real, that the $700,000,000+ ad campaign was more substantive than it was, but, alas, it wasn't.

We will have a president Mitt Romney.

TVD, instead of rehashing your usual complaints about President Obama, why don't you do something new and examine Mitt Romney and his positions and how they line up with your views of what's right? How about Romney's call for expanding the military? Continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Getting even more aggressive against Iran? How about his position against raising taxes on the wealthy? Turning Medicare into a slashed and privatized voucher program and Medicaid into capped state block grants? How about his positions (at least today's positions) on climate change and deregulation and "American exceptionalism" etc. etc.? You keep suggesting that he's a moderate but why don't you spend a column taking a closer look? No one running on a true moderate platform can win the Republican nomination in 2012, or win base Republican votes in the general election.

Electoral races look better now for Democrats than they did three months ago. Since then generic Democrat has gained 3-5 points over generic Republican, Democratic voters have become more enthusiastic and Republican voters less enthusiastic, Obama's job approval rating has improved from an RCP average of -15 to -5, Obama has opened substantial leads in Florida over both Romney and Gingrich according to NBC/Marist, PPP and Suffolk polling and Magellan Strategies, a Republican polling firm, is warning Republican strategists that control of the House is in jeopardy and that the payroll tax issue is hurting them in the heartland. Just yesterday The Hill's political blog reported "Political Winds Shift to the Democrats".

The available data doesn't support this articles conclusions.

Thanks for the early comments. As most readers know, I don't indulge in partisan argumentation but instead present objective conclusions based on my knowledge and experience. Readers preferring partisanship can and do express it in their comments.

It is always best to proceed from fundamentals, not from day-to-day shifts in polling either on issues or candidates. The fundamentals tell us that an election involving an incumbent President (or, for that matter, governor, mayor or other executive) always is a referendum on the incumbency. An incumbent president, carrying the baggage of a weak national economy, has an uphill climb---especially when the unemployed, partially employed, or those who have stopped looking for work add up to
nearly 20 percent of the working-age population. That fundamental will not change.

There is another fundamental I did not mention. It is that post-2010-census congressional redistricting and allocations of electoral votes also will tend to favor Republicans.

That is not to say, however, that Obama and Democrats are a lost 2012 cause. Congressional Democrats will reclaim some seats historically held by their party but temporarily claimed in 2010 by Tea Partiers. And, if Gingrich is the GOP presidential nominee, there is a strong likelihood that
he will implode along the way and alienate moderate and independent voters who are the deciders in presidential elections. Nonetheless, the fundamentals still favor GOP majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and a GOP presidential candidate who is perceived as capable, responsible, and
from the political mainstream.

OK, can you now tell us, based on your objective conclusions, knowledge, and experience, how Romney's campaign positions line up with the bipartisan, moderate agenda you believe will rescue this country? Please be as detailed as you've been in criticizing President Obama's policies.

I'm voting for change this time around, Libertarian Bill Still at least has a grasp on what the fundamental problem with the economy is.

http://still2012.com/

After all there are more than two parties in this country.

The wildcard in the governor's race will be the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of the health insurance purchase mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Inslee is a sure winner if the court lets it stand.

Reactions to later comments:

1. A moderate GOP challenger such as Romney need do no more than express
non-threatening positions and seem experienced and competent. The election, remember, mainly will be a referendum on the Obama incumbency.
If Gingrich is the GOP nominee, the election is likely, though, to be about him rather than about the incumbency. For whatever it is worth, Romney's vulnerabilities in a general election mainly would revolve around his so-called flip flops on issues over the years. As the GOP governor of a strongly Democratic state, Romney governed successfully and worked with Democratic legislative leaders to get legislation passed. He also took positions on social issues, in particular, which fit Massachusetts but which are not popular among GOP conservatives. He thus has moved generally but not dramatically rightward in his two campaigns for the GOP presidential nomination.

2. Some voters no doubt will vote for a Libertarian or other candidate outside the two major parties. Independent or third-party candidacies often have had unintended consequences. Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose candidacy in 1912 gave the presidency to Woodrow Wilson; Ross Perot's
1992 candidacy won it for Bill Clinton; Ralph Nader's in 2000 took enough Florida votes from Al Gore to win it for George W. Bush. In each instance, third-party or independent voters helped elect the major-party candidate they would have been less likely to vote for in a two-party matchup. A vote for an alternative candidacy can be a principled decision.
It also can have unforeseen effects on the general-election outcome.

3. I have been mystified by Jay Inslee's emphasis on the Obama health plan in his gubernatorial campaign. If the Supreme Court upholds the plan as presently constituted, it may help him marginally. If it rules the other way, it might hurt him marginally. This is more a legislator's issue than that of a candidate for an executive position. Voters making a choice about a gubernatorial candidate will be looking for evidence of knowledge and competence on such current state issues as economic growth, jobs, taxes, debt and deficits, and environmental stewardship. Medicaid and related health services for the poor will be at issue---but debate will mainly be about what the state can afford and how the programs can be paid for. Nationally, voters by a narrow margin still hold the Obama health plan in disfavor. In Washington, it is probably favored by a small margin. But it should not be an important issue for a gubernatorial candidate.

TVD, with your own secure retirement health insurance (Medicare or whatever you have), you are deeply out of touch with how important a problem it is for Washingtonians and people nationally not to have secure, affordable health coverage. And you seem deeply unaware that without government action on health care to control cost growth, state and federal budget deficit problems, including Medicaid, which you obsess about, cannot be addressed. Health care costs in our insanely wasteful system are the main driver of the long-term deficits. Unlike you, Jay Inslee is fully aware of the importance of reforming health care on a federal and state level, which the Affordable Care Act makes a strong start at. He and Democratic Attorney General candidate Bob Ferguson has firmly opposed Rob McKenna's legal effort to overturn the entire law, including all the popular stuff like allowing young people to stay on their parents' policies, closing the Medicare doughnut hole, and eliminating insurance preexisting condition exclusions and denials. So your mystification is mystifying for someone who professes to be a knowledgable policy and political analyst.
As to your comments about Romney, simply asserting that he's a "moderate" does not do the job of political analysis which you purport to do. You still have not taken a detailed look at his positions as a presidential candidate on a range of key issues, including defense spending, taxes, foreign policy, immigration, etc. If you did, you would have to conclude that he's running as a hard-right conservative, just as he did four years ago. He has explicitly turned his back on his years as a centrist Republican governor who could work with liberal Democrats, and we're not going to see that Romney again in today's hard-right Republican Party. You need to acknowledge that if you're going to have any credibility as a political analyst.

"Ralph Nader's in 2000 took enough Florida votes from Al Gore to win it for George W. Bush."

Actually no. The real vote count done after the election showed that Al Gore won Florida on his own by 77,000 votes.

http://www.gregpalast.com/florida-by-the-numbersal-gore-won-florida-in-2000-by-77000-votes/

http://www.gregpalast.com/vanishing-votes-by-greg-palast/

and more if you care to know the truth.

GaryP is correct about Florida; the Republicans stole the election (as they did in Ohio in 2004-- http://www.truth-out.org/new-court-filing-reveals-how-2004-ohio-presidential-election-was-hacked/1311603015 etc). But TVD is also correct, sort of: "Nader took enough Florida votes away from Gore to make it easier for the Rs to steal the election."

I think the Republican debates have shown that this is not a traditional year, thus I’d throw history out.

Break out the tinfoil hats and watch out for tainted Kool-aid.