Mitt's Path Not So Narrow

Salon's Steve Kornacki writes that recent claims Obama has a lock on the November election are exaggerated. His reasoning works for me. Kornacki describes:

The political world’s very human tendency to treat the patterns that defined the most recent election as more fixed than they are. 

Obama won the 2008 election and it wasn't close. On the other hand, the GOP won the 2010 Congressional elections and that wasn't close. Which of these patterns is determinative? Most probably, neither.