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Romney is ready with a wealth of bleak statistics to prove his case that the economy is falling backward, not moving forward, as Obama consistently claims; and to prove that his failed policies have hurt the most vulnerable Americans in our country, especially the middle-class.
As for Obama, who has presided over an economy that a majority of Americans still say is either doing poorly, or is in a recession, well, he's got a lot of explaining to do.
If you still believe the pro-Obama puffery on the nightly news that the economy is improving, consider these new developments in just the last few weeks.
The economy is not only weakening much faster than the White House or its allies in the national news media want you to know, it's teetering on the edge of recession.
In a stunning report last Thursday, the U.S. Commerce Department said the slowing economy barely grew at a snail's pace 1.3 percent in the second quarter. That's the economic equivalent of being on life support. In another time, the news might have been enough to sink President Obama's re-election hopes and give Romney's candidacy a major boost.
But the story, with few exceptions, was all but buried or played down by the network news shows and the national political news media. The chattering class was still talking about, and searching for, silver linings in the economy to make the case that it is improving under Obama's policies.
But the revised 1.3 percent growth rate was down from a dismal 1.7 percent rate the government had reported in August. And that was below an anemic 2 percent pace in the first three months of the year, which has plummeted sharply from 3 percent at the end of 2011.
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The White House blamed the revision on the droughts across the Midwest, but the growth rate has been falling since last winter.
Moreover, the 1.3 percent rate followed other signs that the economy had all but stopped growing.
Nationally, unemployment stayed between 8.1 percent and 8.3 percent for the year, though more than half of the states saw jobless rates rise in September (another story buried by the news media).
The government also announced last week that durable goods orders plunged 13.2 percent in August. It was the steepest decline since 2009. And, while manufacturing rose just slightly in September, it followed three months of severe contraction, falling by a 1.4 percent annual rate. Hardly a sign of a turnaround.
Obama has been declaring that manufacturing jobs are coming out of the woodwork, but nothing could be further from the truth, something he knows little about.
"The U.S. manufacturing sector isn't collapsing, but it is definitely flat-lining," Washington Post economic writer Neil Irwin reported Tuesday. Contrary to Obama's exaggerated claims, the numbers "reflect weak growth" Irwin says.
The manufacturing sector added an average of 5,000 jobs nationally each month this summer, he notes, but that was down from an average of 19,000 a month last year.
"Manufacturing recovery? What manufacturing recovery?" Irwin asks. His story was buried on page 13.
If there's one word that defines the economy in Obama's inept presidency, it is "uncertainty." And it's slammed the brakes on business expansion, job creation, consumer spending and economic growth.
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Businesses aren't hiring because they're afraid of the massive employee benefit costs and taxes from Obama's employer health care mandates. Obama's insistence that income taxes must be raised on small businesses and all Americans in the top two income brackets further adds to their uncertainty.
The "fiscal cliff" that awaits the economy at year's end, largely because of Obama's opposition to making the 2001 tax cuts permanent, only adds to this economic paralysis. If we go over that cliff, when 90 percent of Americans will be hit by severely higher taxes, it could plunge the country into another recession.
The result of all this is that Americans, businesses and investors are socking their money away in Treasury bills and other forms of savings that has kept trillions of dollars out of risk-taking investments needed to create jobs and boost growth.
At the same time, "other data show that Americans are fleeing the stock market and avoiding the purchase of new homes," the Post reported Tuesday.
"They've been burned by the stock market. They've suffered through capital losses on their homes. And so they're hunkering down in what they view as the safest place to store money," says Karen Dynan, co-director of economic studies at the liberal Brookings Institution.
Americans have good reason to be fearful. Jobs are in short supply, median family household income is declining, and the poverty rate has risen to a record 15 percent, with 46.2 million people now in poverty. On any given night, at least 700,000 Americans are homeless.
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If you think the economy is going to get better anytime soon under Obama's anti-growth policies, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sent a grim signal Monday that the Fed will keep its near-zero interests rates in place at least through mid-2015.
Romney's debate strategy will be to stay on offense on the economy's weaknesses. He can't let the president tie him down with distractions that have nothing to do with the hard times Americans are facing under his policies.
Obama's had four, long, insufferable years to fix the economy and he's failed to do it. Unemployment is still over 8 percent. Add underemployment among part-time workers seeking full-time and college grads who can find work at all, and the real rate is over 15 percent.
The only reason unemployment fell from 10 percent was because millions of discouraged Americans stopped looking for work and are thus no longer counted among unemployed.
Romney spent his entire business investment career creating jobs here in America, so he knows how to get that done. After four long years, it should be manifestly clear that Obama doesn't.
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