Mr. Helling's 'pithy analysis' is an odd mix of self-congratulation for his correct prediction about the national election, and a lament about our national polarized politics that have become, well, nationalized; the result of which sucks the air out of the room for local down-ballot issues and candidates. The 'what matters' in his title, I think.
I believe Mr. Helling misses the larger picture about 'what matters' in the suffocating environs of an aggressively malignant nanny-state that attempts to micro-manage society by sucking gynormous volumes of tax dollars out of the economy, but I digress.
He did score a bulls-eye with his analysis of a hidebound electorate who decide elections almost before they get started:
"The Obama campaign understood this. They worked on registration and outreach for years before the vote, while the Romney folks seemed to rely on a last-weekend push that seems, in retrospect, very 20th century."
Pollster PPP, pundit fivethirtyeight Nate Silver, and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, et al saw the new millennium path to electoral victory 3,000 miles away, while past king makers - like Rove, Morris, and Rassmussen - applied their spectacles to lumber along the old world cobble stones to an election 'day.'
This helps explain the year long, vile smears perpetrated by Obama's sycophant surrogates for the benefit of his 'kill romney' meme as a key ingredient in the carefully crafted tactic of early voting.
And those vile smear against an otherwise decent man went largely unanswered by a rather naive Republican candidate, who thought if he played it forthright, and rose above the small and petty, he could convince voters of his campaign's rejuvenating austerity message.
But Romney never counted upon getting waylaid by street wise Chicago thugs with buckets of mud, aided and abetted by complicit and corrupt media with a seemingly vested interest in Obama's re-election.
Well played, Mr. Obama. You won.