I never have seen a red bar that did not love to seize on tiny, narrow, insignificant issues, like this contraception thing.  It does not make a difference on the economy one way or another, we are talking about a tiny sum of money either way.  But you have the religious zealouts on one side and the feminist zealots on the other side, and no matter what Obama does, somebody will throw a tantrum and call foul.  So Obama sides with the feminists, who are more likely to vote for him.  It's called good politics.

You must have forgotten to bring up Solyndra-- another tiny non-issue and non-scandal that the Republicans have tried to blow up into some major catastrophe.

What has Obama done on the economy?  He's done most of the right things to avoid an outright depression.  He supported the bailouts, which was the right thing to do, even though it was unpopular on the left.  He got a stimulus passed which every non-austrian economist agreed was needed.  He passed a payroll tax cut to help out the middle class.  Now, he has completed this robosigning settlement which will put a little money in the hands of some struggling homeowners and simultaneously help move foreclosures along.  He has not done more because 1.) the Republicans aren't inclined just to step aside and let him do whatever he wants, and 2.) there is no extra money, so Obama's hands are tied as far as implementing anything that costs money.

So within these constraints, he is doing the smart thing-- particularly, getting government spending under control.  He's cutting the size of government to reduce the deficit-- gradually by necessity, in order not to stamp out the recovery.  Government employment has fallen 2.6% in Obama's first three years-- even faster than occurred under the great Republican hero Reagan, who only cut government jobs by 2.2% in his first three years in office.  Obama is cutting the deficit-- likely this year for the first time it will be lower than the $1.2 trillion deficit he inherited from Bush.  The deficits are still a huge issue, but huge issues must often be tackled gradually, and that is the case here-- if the government cuts spending too fast, it will put the economy back into recession.  Obama understands this;  Republicans like to dishonestly pretend that Obama could balance the budget right now with no adverse consequences. 

Republicans want to pretend that Obama is running us off a cliff and we will soon be another Greece. Maybe if Bush had another term, that would be the case!  Bush was the irresponsible spender, not Obama:  1.7 million government jobs were added under Bush (while the private sector lost 600,000 jobs over 8 years!); tax giveaways to the rich; a stupid and extremely expensive war in Iraq.  Does Obama blame Bush for the lousy state of the government's finances?  Only when he is being honest! 

I am anything but a class envy person, but Romney is not a guy who built businesses, he was a guy who plundered them.  The euphemism is "creative destruction".  But the operative term there is "destruction" when you saddle a company with huge debts in order to pay yourself enormous fees and you end up not only costing workers their jobs but driving the entire companies into bankruptcy, as Romney did on multiple occasions.  The economy functioned just fine before this kind of corporate raider appeared on the scene, and I certainly do not think that these guys should be subsidized through their tiny 15% tax rates on their income.  This tax giveaway is ridiculous and unnecessary, and yet Romney won't do the right thing and admit that it's not good policy.  It's silly policies like this that fuels the class envy that Republicans say they are against.  Want to reduce class envy?  Start with a reasonable tax code where Romney's income would be taxed in the highest bracket for normal income.

You may be right about Americans trusting a businessman to run the economy but Romney was in the wrong business to earn that trust.  If the Republicans had the sense to turn to a real businessman who built an enterprise, like a Bloomberg, it would be a different story, but the Republicans do not have enough sense to do that.  And that is going to come back to haunt them.  When even Newt Gingrich attacks Romney's business career in a Republican primary, you have to know that Romney's business career is seen as an achilles heel, not a strength.  And even though those attacks did not benefit Gingrich, it sure looks like they have hurt Romney, as his apporval ratings have been plummeting since his record at Bain started making headlines.