It was Clint Eastwood the other day who reminded us what this election is about and that is the economy and the insane levels of debt that will not be stopped without a change of administration. This is what he said on Hannity:

The debt situation is going to kill us. We are going to go over a fiscal cliff, and when it happens, we’re going to be all very surprised.

To some extent Sandy has allowed the electorate to take its eye off the ball but perhaps it has been Benghazi as well. The economy has been the crucial issue so talking about anything else at all, no matter how discrediting to Obama in some sense it might be, doesn’t put the focus where it needs to be. Romney in No Apology got it just right but whether enough actually care is the first issue:

The fact that both parties have come to accept deficits and eer-higher levels of public debt is deeply troubling. There are times when deficit spending may be an appropriate bride to finance a national emergency or to stimulate a depressed economy, but it should not be a permanent part of the budget. Almost half our public debt is financed by foreign entities, a circumstance that puts our currency at risk, threatens our annual budget, and makes our productive enterprises vulnerable to foreign ownership. Like most Americans, I recognise the need for government spending, but I cannot fathom the argument that it’s fine to spend more than we earn year after year. Passing an ever-increasing debt to our children is not just bad policy, it is morally wrong.

The second issue is the 47%. These are the proportion of the voting population who are invisible to us. This is a description of who they are but I fear even this is a quite sanitised version of the actual reality:

Obama’s hate-the-rich rhetoric does resonate with a minority — the losers, the ungrateful, the lazy, and the entitlement-junkies who showed up at the Occupy Wall Street protests. Think about that, folks: these arrogant idiots have the audacity to demand that government confiscate the profits from entrepreneurs (risk-takers) to redistribute to them. And they call that ‘fairness.’ The day a majority of Americans side with such lowlife scum is the day we cease being a great nation.

He’s right, and that day could be as soon as Tuesday next week.