Moe Lane

I’ve noticed that folks like Jim Geraghty and Legal Insurrection are pointing out that the President’s fund-raising team is currently acting as if they’re absolutely desperate for last-minute contributions to Obama’s reelection campaign.  Like Jim, I’d like to remind folks that back in 2008 the Obama campaign notoriously poor-mouthed its fundraising every month… so don’t be surprised if they try this sort of thing again.  As I’ve noted before, these people aren’t what you’d call real original.  We’ll know in a couple of weeks what the real totals are.

Not that it matters as much this go-round, thanks to the Supreme Court reestablishing some basic free-speech sanity with Citizens United…

…in one handy sentence:

Their questions, about Obama’s economic appointments and about his messaging problems, all began with some variation of “I’m going to vote for Obama again, and work for him, but …”

Let me channel the administration’s effective response to any question that starts in such a fashion:

• Really?
  
• Then shut up.
  
• Get out your wallet.
  
• Sit down.
  
• Do as you’re bid.
  
• Say “Thank you” afterward.

(more…)

Nope.  Writing this sentence did not cause nigh-physical pain for its author.

A group including former White House officials, union leaders and one of Hollywood’s biggest producers have joined forces to start an outside effort to help President Obama and Congressional Democrats in 2012 by using the very sort of anonymous, unlimited donations from moneyed interests that the president has so deplored.

Nope. Not at all, nosireebob.  That thin screaming that you’re hearing?  Nope, that’s not the death of hope and innocence in the battered soul of a newspaper reporter who has realized that he has been implicitly working for a political faction who has been secretly laughing at him for his stupid naivete.  Not all: it’s actually just gas.

It’s just gas, blast your eyes.

Via RCP.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

He ain’t so tough.

Mind you, Sean’s not saying that Obama’s in bad re-election shape, either: he’s currently scoring the President at essentially 50/50, with the slightest edge against the man.  But he’s definitely out to demolish some of the current Democratic talking points.  Short version (and this is only Part One):

• The popular correlation between incumbency and re-election falls apart if you look at it too long;
• If the economy is rebounding, it is not rebounding quickly enough to give the President sufficient wind at his back; and
• Even the favorable polls for the President are not showing hard support for him – and certainly not for his policies.

(more…)

…unexpectedly.

Gallup mentions the most obvious point – the President has slipped from his historical approval rating among African-Americans (usually around 92%) all the way down to 85%* – but it kind of obscures a detail on the graph with regard to Hispanic voters. They acknowledge that the President is currently at a low with 54% of those voters, but Gallup does not point out that Obama’s approval rating dropped by double digits with those voters over a year ago and hasn’t really come back since. For that matter, the real story from that graph is that the President has a 39% approval rating among whites; his approval rating among those voters at the beginning of his term was somewhere just above 60%.

Andrew Malcolm is right to couch all of this in terms of it merely being worrisome for the President; after all, it’s early days yet. But he’s also right that Obama should be worrying about this, given that hyper-enthusiasm is precisely what his campaign needs if they seriously plan to raise a billion dollars for the 2012 campaign. In fact, i think that the billion-dollar number is going to end up being a bit of an albatross for the President: it will require a constant, probably grueling, emphasis on fundraising in order to work, and it has already forced the President to formally re-enter the electoral arena months early. In other words, the President may have been better off if he had decided not to try to beat his high score. (more…)

So.  The Left has gone from “We must elect Barack Obama to the Presidency so that He may unleash His awesomeness upon the country, and make everything better” to “We must convince Barack Obama to not run for re-election so that He may… unleash His awesomeness upon the country, and make everything better.”

This is progress, I guess?

It’s also just not going to happen.  Everybody else is linking to this American Narcissus post by Jonathan Last, so I might as well, too.  After reading, you may be forgiven for deciding that people might as well get used to the idea that the only way that President Obama is not going to be the Democratic nominee in 2012 is to have somebody beat him in the primary.  Fortunately – for the GOP – there’s a PERFECT liberal candidate for that sort of thing.  He’s even going to be looking for work next year!

Hope that helps.

Moe Lane