Romney’s Anchor

Charlie Cook: “What seems to be holding Romney back are voters’ personal feelings toward him, which are more negative than those faced by any of the past six nonincumbent nominees… In my judgment, Romney’s poor numbers go back to his campaign’s obsession with talking only about the economy and not attempting to define who Romney is as a person, as a way to build trust and strong positive personal feelings toward their candidate. The Romney camp has yet to run what I would call a personal-positive ad, a biographical or values-based commercial portraying him as the kind of person whom people might want to vote for, someone with values that they would want to see in the Oval Office.”

First Read: “But chew on this: Romney has been actively running for the White House for six years now… If you look at the fundamentals of this race, Romney should be ahead. And the fact is, he’s not. Why not? Because he has fumbled his biography.”