The Obama campaign is dangerously close to an unrecoverable tipping point. Look at all these states that are now rated as toss ups:

In 2008, Obama won 11 out of 12 of those states that are now toss-ups. He’ll be lucky to get half of them this time, if that. Overall, Obama only has a comfortable lead in seven of the 58 states — er, 50 states… sorry. The magnitude of Obama’s fall is evident by comparing some of these states that are now toss-ups to 2008. Michigan is a toss-up now, and Obama took that by over 16 points in 2008. Obama took Wisconsin by almost 14 points four years ago and it’s a toss-up today. The One took Pennsylvania by +10 in 2008 — toss-up now. Ditto for Colorado (+9 for Obama in 2008), Iowa (+9.5 in 2008), New Hampshire (+9.6 in 2008), Virginia (+6.3 in 2008).

What a huge difference compared to four years ago, when Obama was +7.6 over McCain nationally at this point before the election. Now Romney is +1 over Obama nationally — and it might be higher than that.

The graphic above doesn’t include “solid” states for Obama and Romney, which are these:

I’m hearing a lot of comparisons with the Walter Mondale drubbing in 1984. If Romney wins it won’t be that big of an ass kicking (I can’t imagine a scenario under which Obama loses California or New York, for example), but things certainly are trending downward for Team Obama, and their “run out the clock” strategy won’t make things better. We’ll find out in just over three weeks.

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