And what if there's a third party candidate on either side? Sabato says that could put a wrench in things.

I hate guns - wish we could go by the whole 2nd Amendment and not just the second clause, but I think you're statement is a bit of a stretch.

Romney . . . well let's just say that given the 7 states referenced, Romney continues to scare me.

Lust (for power)

Gluttony (for power)

Greed (for power)

Wrath (against the people)

Envy (of the few remaining rights/privileges/ducats they have to be pilfered)    

Sloth (in doing nothing that really helps people)

This just backs up what I have been saying for quite a while that right now it's looking to be very close.

This story of the fight for the center looks true over the last few elections. And it makes good copy for the status-quo-oriented media.

But most big presidential victories play from a different rule book.  The big wins didn't fight for the center, they undercut the opponents' base, leaving them nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

After the bruising debt-ceiling fight -- as well as Standard & Poor's subsequent downgrade of the nation's credit rating -- Obama's job approval rating has sunk to a low of 44 percent, a 3-point drop since July. His handling of the economy stands at a low of 37 percent. And only 19 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, the lowest mark for this president.

Perhaps most ominously for Obama, a majority of poll takers -- 54 percent -- think he's facing a longer-term setback from which he's unlikely to recover. Back in January, just 39 percent agreed with that assessment.

Indeed, that 54 percent is virtually identical to George W. Bush's score on the same question in the Nov. 2005 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which was released just months after Bush's widely criticized handling of Hurricane Katrina.

I think this next election will be a 'throw the bums out' election, especially in the House. I don't see the obstructionists and puritanical cut it alls maintaining their seats.  

People expect something, even if it isn't much. Can't say much about the Senate. I need to look at who's running and retiring, but I don't know. I doubt, for some reason, that the Tea Party will have a lot of folks re-elected. After all, they haven't done anything!

But never underestimate the American voters... the next election's schwerpunkt? Getting out the vote. Nobody claims satisfaction in large numbers. There's a lot of discouragement and lack of interest given the last two years-- politically and economically-- wasted years.

They would include five proposed bills that would: lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent; implement free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea; expand domestic energy exploration; consolidate worker retraining programs and turn them over to the states; and cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent. (Obama also supports those three trade agreements, although he has been accused of dithering to satisfy the demands of organized labor.)

If elected, the former Massachusetts governor said he would also issue five executive orders on Inauguration Day. They would roll back President Obama's health-care overhaul; eliminate Obama-era regulations; issue new oil-drilling permits; sanction China for currency manipulation; and reverse a number of policies that favor organized labor.

Romney also said he would cut the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition, possibly by hiring only one new government employee for every two who leave.

But even as he touts the comprehensiveness of his plan, Romney leaves out some important details, such as setting personal income tax rates, that at least one of his opponents, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., has detailed in his own economic plan.

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.  There would no longer be 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of other states.

When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes-- enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA ,RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL,CA, NJ, MD, MA, VT, and WA. These 9 jurisdictions possess 132 electoral votes-- 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.