Obama ahead, Romney within striking distance... and who are those other guys?

Early polls on next year's presidential race reveal:

1. That President Obama is ahead, despite the economy;

2. That a generic Republican candidate is within striking distance- and runs better than any of the actual Republican candidates in the survey; and

3. That Mitt Romney is, at the moment, the only actual human being who makes it a horse race.

It should be noted, of course that Tim Pawlenty and Michelle Bachman are at this point basically unknown,. Pawlenty, at least, can be expected to do better as voters become more familiar with him.

Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, on the other hand, are going nowhere. Their problem is that voters already know who they are- and given who they are, that's an  insurmountable problem.