Simply put in style and likeability for the most part yes. In this election? NO.
There are many factors at play here that many are for whatever reason completely ignoring, but I attribute that to an extremely effective Obama campaign that is especially good at distracting the public from the real issues. That coupled with Romney's lackluster campaign that just can't get on an offensive footing and keeps having these stupid stories come out it seems each week, and it seeming to be difficult to get in front of them.
When it all comes down to it there are some significant things that are in a worse situation than in the 2004 election. For one thing the economic recovery has literally sucked royal dung ever since it began. And its so bad that it really isn't effecting the job market like a recovery could. The job progression is anemic. Some of the best times of job growth were at the beginning of this year, but it appears to still be slowing. Last month 96,000 jobs were added and that number has likely been revised down like 97% of all the previous months have gotten revised down. This economy needs to be adding close to 200,000 jobs a month consistently to be a true recovery and lower the unemployment rate. The problem is people have been dropping out of the work force like crazy in the last 3 1/2 years. The popoulation Participation rate is the lowest it has been in the past 31 years! People keep dropping out of the work force giving up on work.
Its so evident that the economy still sucks. There are now 47 million Americans on food stamps. During the clinton years there was somewhere around 17 million...or somewhere below 20 million. Yes economic times were better than and population has grown, but 47 million on food stamps is still an astounding number. The current unemployment number is at 8.1%, but when you count all those who are underemployed, looking for work, ect. the number is about 15% that has never been that high within other recent presidencies.
Add to that the Middle East is blowing up and I think we are on the verge of an utter miscalculation by the Obama Administration that has not been fully realised yet. the majority of the media has not fully picked up on it yet, but we have learned that the ambassador being killed had the potential of being prevented given the reports before the attack that the security was not sufficient, and also the state department was warned that intelligence said an attack was possible soon within a few days of the attack. Throw that in with the constant riots, burning American flags and chantings of "death to America", this could get bad for Obama's image on foreign policy. Foreign policy was his one main strength against Romney, but it appears that may be shaky ground as well.
I really don't think all of these things have been fully realised yet. Obama is dealing with a lot more negatives than Bush was in 2004. Plus add on the state of the debt, deficits, and continuous spending by the Fed. This is all stacking up against Obama. Romney is running a mediocre campaign. Obama is running a very good campaign. If Obama wins it will soley be because of his steller campaign. If Romney wins it will be because he will get the majority of Americans to see the negatives stacked on Obama and that most of the blame is cast on him for it.
So even though Romney as a politician has some large similarities to Kerry (however I do think Romney at least speaks slightly better than Kerry. Kerry just made me cringe when he spoke. So mundane and dull.) I do think that Romney has a lot more favors in his court than Kerry ever could have wished for. There is no way Obama will get the sizeable turnout he got in 2008. Its just not going to happen given his record and the state of the country. And Romney is setup to at least get the vote amount that McCain got. This will very likely not be a blow out election. if you think so, sorry but you are just wrong.
