We may be a politically polarized country, but there seems to be a growing consensus on at least one thing: Mitt Romney's campaign is blowing it. Even before the leaked tape, the sentiment was so widespread that the pre-mortems and jockeying to avert blame have already begun, led by a long front-page piece in Politico titled "Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled."

Note the use of the past tense. The day before, in The Hill, it was, "Republican lawmakers say Romney campaign needs to change course." And then there was Saturday Night Live, which opened its new season with a sketch in which President Obama acknowledges that "things aren't great, the economy's in the tank" and that "the job market is horrible" but says he's not worried because his campaign has a "secret weapon" to guarantee a win: cut to Mitt Romney.

When the satirists think that the idea that your campaign is tanking has been sufficiently internalized to use it as a premise, you know you're in trouble. The question is: why? As the AP's Kasie Hunt wrote in a piece about the dissatisfaction at this past weekend's Value Voters Summit, "Republican activists are incredulous: Why can't Republican Mitt Romney seem to break open a tight race with President Barack Obama given the nation's sluggish economy and conservative enthusiasm to beat the Democrat?"