What Losing Looks Like

I'm experiencing wild mood swings as the election nears. Some days I know Romney is going to win, and even win big. Other days I'm terrified that Obama will be put back into office. The yard signs for O are starting to pop up in my (very liberal) town here and there. As I drive by another one that just appeared in one of my neighbors' front lawns, I wonder how anyone with a brain can even think of voting for this clown again. I (sort of) understood the first time--first blackety-black president, blah, blah blah. But not this time. Those signs depress me.

However, there are other signs that give me hope, such as articles like these:

This one is from the website Redstate, the article by Erick Erickson: "Obama's Hubris Will be His Undoing." Erickson says that although O has clearly lost North Carolina and Florida, he won't stop spending money in those states and redirect the resources to Ohio--and why? Because "[t]hat would convey weakness and demoralize the base."

Some of these articles already sound like a postmortem on O's campaign.

This is from Real Clear Politics, by Ben Domenech: "Obama's Blunder Was Ceding the Center." "If Obama should lose this election, many will say it was because the economy was weak and because the president is black. Actually, it will be because he fought it as a failed progressive rather than a successful centrist."

And this one from Commentary, by Jonathan S. Tobin: "Dems Begin the Post-Obama Blame Game." "New York Times political writer Matt Bai has fired the first shot in what may turn out to be a very nasty battle over who deserves the lion's share of the blame for what may turn out to be a November disaster for the Democrats."

Here is Matt Bai's article at the NYT: "How Bill Clinton May Have Hurt the Obama Campaign." "[I]n recent weeks, starting with the first debate, the challenger has made a brazen and frantic dash to the center, and Mr. Obama has often seemed off-balance, as if stunned that Mr. Romney thinks he can get away with such an obvious change of course so late in the race. Which, apparently, he can."

I particularly like this one, another from the NYT, this one in the "Opinion Pages" (if they didn't tell you, it would be impossible to tell the difference between their straight "news" and opinion--but I digress), by Ross Douthat: "Obama's Aura of Defeat." "Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them: They go negative hard, try out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals. . . . A winning presidential campaign would not typically have coined the term 'Romnesia,' let alone worked it into their candidate's speeches."

Then there's an article by Rick Wilson at ricochet: "The Inflection Point": While Romney draws "astounding crowds" at every event, "Obama is largely reduced to trawling college campuses for political jailbait, stroking the shreds of his coalition in the increasingly desperate hope of getting at least a few salvagable video clips out of each day. Big Bird, binders, and bayonets don't comprise a sweeping vision of a second Obama term and it shows. Vice-President Malaprop wanders Ohio diners, touching people's food and getting biker chicks to sit in his lap. It's a campaign in trouble, and they know it."

It also seems like the one thing O always had going for him, his likeability (not that I ever understood people who swooned over how "likeable" the guy was, but that's just me), is apparently not working for him anymore. In Breitbart's Big Government, Dr. Timothy Daughtry writes, "Letting Obama Be Obama." "Under pressure from an apparent Romney surge, someone--perhaps even Obama himself--has decided to let Obama be Obama. But, considering the strong narcissistic streak that many observers have noted in Obama's character, that decision could prove to be one of the more colossal tactical blunders in recent political history."

According to today's blog at the Weekly Standard, O called Romney a "bullshitter" in a recent interview in Rolling Stone magazine. I honestly think people expect better of their president than that--I honestly do; that sort of dismissive attitude against an opponent is hardly "likeable." I haven't read the article, which is "Obama and the Road Ahead: The Rolling Stone Interview," by Douglas Brinkley.

Not that newspapers are particularly relevant these days, since journalism has been participating in its own demise, particularly over the past four years. However, there are still interesting signs out there from the tree-pulp press that things aren't going well for O.

Take a look at the front page of this morning's The Des Moines Register--this was posted on Twitchy this morning.

Then there's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, which has decided to make no endorsement for any presidential candidate in 2012 (and of course--you guessed it--they endorsed O in 2008).

Finally, there are the signs from late night TV. This is from American Thinker, by Daniel Joppich: "The Rats Are Leaving the Ship." Ouch. "Quite possibly the wall around Obama is coming down. The Lefties in the media are subtly trying to distance themselves from BO. They want to be able to say, 'Hey, look, I was tough on the guy.'"