Suffice it to say, it’s hardly a shock that Mitt Romney is on the verge of losing Ohio. It doesn’t take a political scientist to see how a guy might struggle after urging bankruptcy for a state’s key industry, as Romney did for the automakers. And Romney’s lord-of-finance pedigree was never going to endear him to Ohio’s proletarian class. For that matter, even George W. Bush, who was burdened by neither a betrayal of the car industry nor Wall Street success, barely carried the state, winning by 2.5 percentage points in 2004 and 3.5 points four years earlier.

Nonetheless, the simple fact that Romney has kept Ohio close—that he may only lose narrowly in a place Republicans frequently win—suggests there was something he could have done to change the likely outcome. Sure, the auto bailout was a lost cause. But, at the very least, there were ways to neutralize the “rapacious capitalist” line on his CV. I’m thinking in particular about four policy issues that would have helped him play against type: Tax goodies for the rich, Chinese currency manipulation, overgrown banks, and Wall Street speculators. Romney might have led in the polls heading into Election Day had he staked out more populist terrain in any of these areas.

Consider taxes. Romney personally saves millions of dollars each year because most of his earnings come from investment income, which is taxed at the 15 percent capital-gains rate instead of the 36 percent rate he’d pay on a salary. Coming out for raising that rate would have bought him instant credibility with voters, many of whom pay a higher effective rate than he does. But instead he assured us he’ll preserve his own windfall.

On China, Romney has famously said he would declare the country a currency manipulator on his first day in office. But as anyone familiar with U.S.-China economic relations will tell you, the currency manipulator designation is largely symbolic. It triggers no substantive retaliation of any kind. Though China wouldn’t exactly have welcomed the designation—its leaders certainly discouraged the Obama administration from making it—they would no doubt have understood the context in which Romney made the promise and would have taken it in stride. And that’s assuming he even followed through, which is unlikely given the amount of wiggle room involved. A truly tough China policy, by contrast, would be a measure like the one the Senate passed last October, which mandated stiff tariffs for Chinese goods if the country tamped down its currency. But, of course, Romney never came anywhere close to endorsing such a bill.

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