Latinismo!

As President Obama puts the finishing touches on his State of the Union address, his campaign released a three-page memo Monday outlining the state of Obama’s bid for re-election against Mitt Romney.

Conclusion: This year, a weakened president can defeat a weak Republican nominee.

Looking ahead to the Florida GOP primary, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina ignored the victories of Rick Santorum in Iowa’s caucuses and Newt Gingrich in South Carolina’s primary, except as prima facie evidence of Romney’s stumbles. Although he was the winner in New Hampshire’s primary, Romney is traveling a rutted path toward the nomination — one that will hobble him when he faces the president, Messina asserted.

The memo to “interested parties” is a metric-supported bit of bravado — the kind Messina particularly favors — offered up to Obama supporters and the media. The conclusions he describes about Romney are unchanged from the campaign’s pre-primary phase of the race. But the data he assembles from exit polling are used to bolster assurances that Obama, however weakened by the economy and his record in office, can defeat Romney because the former Massachusetts governor is not what most voters say they want in 2013 and beyond.

Independent voters have rejected Romney in three Republican contests; he’s not doing well among deeply conservative voters; most Republican voters say they are lukewarm about him as a nominee; and he lost among every income group in South Carolina’s primary except those earning more than $ 200,000 a year, Messina said.

Anticipating Romney’s reluctant release Tuesday of information from his 2010 tax return (and an estimate for his 2011 return), Messina argued that Romney’s foot-dragging about documenting his tax status and success at Bain Capital “further weakens the central premise of his candidacy” because the GOP front-runner has said his business acumen qualifies him to be president during tough economic times. “What is he hiding?” Messina taunted.

The memo offers yet another preview of Obama’s plans to go after Romney on policy terrain, in addition to the candidate’s issues of “character” and “values.” The president wants to draw crisp, clear contrasts against his GOP challenger, and Democrats have already staked out ground for 2012 on which to do just that. Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night will further define that campaign strategy on pocket-book issues that appeal to the middle class, including independent voters.

Messina’s memo argued that Romney has no plan to address the housing crisis, which has been devastating in Florida; he alienates older voters because he has favored a Republican plan to privatize features of the Medicare program and reduce benefits for some Social Security recipients through means-testing and hikes in the retirement age; would raise prescription drug prices for seniors if he repealed the health care reform law, as he seeks to do; and is out of step with Hispanic voters in Florida and elsewhere because of his hard-line approach to immigration.

“Romney has simply been unable to connect with the voters he would need to win in November,” Messina concluded. “If he recovers from his loss in South Carolina to eventually secure the GOP nomination, he will have one of the lowest favorability ratings among nominees in recent memory, and will be the first nominee in years with a negative rating that outpaces his positives.”

The Obama campaign memo was released just as the Gallup Organization updated its diagnosis of American’s feelings about the state of the country. Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the nation’s economy, the size and power of the federal government, and the moral and ethical climate in the nation. Levels of satisfaction have been dropping in those categories since before Obama came to office — as measured against the findings in January 2008, Gallup reported Monday. Concerns about the size and power of government have been rising since January 2002, according to polling.

Gallup recently reported that polling during past elections suggested that Obama as the incumbent has better odds of re-election if both his job approval ratings and economic indicators show signs of recovery by March.