Everyone has that friend who doesn't think it matters. Some of my friends are like that, they don't understand how I get so worked up over politics, and invariably their refrain is some variation of "both sides are corrupt".

One of those friends called me up a few days ago. Usually we don't talk about politics, but when I picked up the first thing out of his mouth was "Did you see this Mitt Romney video?"

He was referring to the now infamous 47% video.

This friend of mine is young, in his early thirties. He has a job and he pays his taxes. He is a smart guy who is pissed off with the economy and he's very cynical about politics and our government. In many ways, my buddy is exactly the kind of guy that Republicans need to start winning over to their side.

Instead, Republicans have totally lost my friend.

"Where do I get registered to vote?" My friend asked me.

I told my buddy to look it up online, and sure enough he did, and now he is registered to vote and he plans on voting for Barack Obama.

This is a guy who was adamant about not voting a month ago. Now he is telling me that we have to make sure Republicans and Mitt Romney don't get in power.

TalkingPointsMemo.com finds similar sentiment in recent polls . . .



The NBC/WSJ polling about how negatively respondents react to the 47 percent comment comes on top of similar polls that suggest a high awareness of the story as well. So those who hear it, don’t like it — and lots of people have heard it. A survey by Pew found 67 percent of voters aware of remarks — about half complained they had even heard too much — and they disapproved of the remarks by a 55-23 margin. Another poll by the Washington Post and ABC News found voters disapproved of Romney’s comments by a 54-32 margin, with the effect more pronounced among independents. The video may be a bigger influence in swing states. Democratic pollster PPP pegged awareness of the Romney video at 89 percent in Florida, with a 50-44 negative reaction. In Colorado they found 90 percent of voters aware of his comments and that group found them inappropriate by a 38-27 margin. Democrats must be seeing similar numbers in their internal polls: they’re cranking out 47 percent related ads as fast as they possibly can, connecting the remarks to any number of anti-Romney themes.

Long story short, my buddy registered to vote just the other day, and he is going to vote for Barack Obama for President.

That stench is the stench of an elephant graveyard.

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