Media desperation for hot stories tends to overplay the alleged weirdness of this campaign, which is actually pretty par for course. This time 4 years ago Hillary and Obama were still locked up and McCain was just solidifying, and if you look back at '92 for instance about this time people were despairing of the nigh impossibility of Clinton beating Bush, back in '80 people were pissed at how non-conservative Reagan was and how he'd lose the base. If I had to guess, barring major changes, if Romney were picked right now and the election held in 6 or 7 weeks, I'd give Obama coin flip odds at best. It does not take long for people to rally and traditionally hotly contested primaries don't hurt much and often even help a little.

Obama is not a popular president and he's had very few guns turned on him thus far with most aimed in the traditional primary season circular firing squad. Romney is in a strong position to court the moderate and independent vote. But this stuff is never inevitable like everyone will say in mid-November, and an election can be flipped by it raining on the major city of a swing state on election day, or something as tiny as the guy running for senate or house in that area becoming unpopular and associated to ones of the candidates.