Morning Jolt - Come On. It's the Obama Campaign. There's Always Arrogance!

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

May 25, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. Come On. It's the Obama Campaign. There's Always Arrogance!

2. If Walker Wins, Will Wisconsin Democrats Blame Obama?

3. Addendum

No Morning Jolt Monday -- enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!

I'm scheduled to appear on Chuck Todd's Daily Rundown today, talking . . . something campaign-related, no doubt.

Jim

1. Come On. It's the Obama Campaign. There's Always Arrogance!

The headline in BuzzFeed is "Not Arrogant Any More" but . . . come on. This is the Obama campaign. There are still a lot of source-greasing gushing profiles to be written about David Axelrod, still plenty of Democratic talking heads who will gleefully predict an Obama landslide, still plenty of pollsters willing to offer results based on samples that have way too many Democrats in them to realistically represent the 2012 electorate.

A big part of winning an election is convincing everyone -- your own supporters, the bandwagon folks in the middle, the opposition -- that it is not merely a possibility but likely. Bob Dole never did this in 1996; he came out of the primaries hobbled, Clinton softened him up with the ads tying him to Gingrich, and the whole thing was over by this time 16 years ago. The conventions, the debates, the polls never moved around that much.

Most of the evidence suggests that the 2012 presidential election will be close, but one can see the pieces of a Romney landslide assembling here and there -- an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high, chronic underemployment, Americans dropping out of the labor force and young people unable to begin careers, gas prices that are high enough to pinch the wallets but not getting the hype of 2008, a vagueness to Obama's second-term agenda, a Supreme Court declaration that Obama's signature domestic accomplishment actually violated the Constitution . .. and a Republican nominee who, for whatever his flaws, has built his career on finding struggling businesses and endeavors like the Olympics that need to turn things around quickly.

BuzzFeed's take:

Two difficult weeks for President Obama have shaken the overwhelming confidence of his campaign in Chicago and of Democratic leaders in Washington, and prompted a depressing realization: This is, at best, 2004, not 1996. At worst it's 1992.

Democrats had taken comfort for months in the Republican Party's seeming inability to get behind Mitt Romney, Obama's healthy lead in the polls, and equally healthy job growth. And for a few, fleeting, moments, Democrats thought the election might just be easy. But Republican division appears to have been merely an artifact of primary politics, and Mitt Romney has proved a consistent, if unglamorous campaigner.

And this week, amid poor economic indicators and continuing voter frustration, Democrats returned to the harsh reality that this election is going to be anything but a walk in the park.

"There was this sense maybe a month or two ago that Obama was really riding high - that he had gotten his base behind him and the economy was doing better and it had this Clinton vs. Bob Dole 1996 feeling - that he was going to cruise," said one 2008 Obama aide who does not work for this year's campaign. "And now it feels like it's going to be really tough - a 2004 race."

Indeed the campaign is shaping up to be a close-combat battle for one percent of swing voters in a few hundred precincts across three or four states.

While not a sign of panic, there's some indication that strategy and messaging within the Obama camp is being retooled: "President Barack Obama's presidential campaign cancelled a planned ad buy in Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia this week -- the same states where Mitt Romney has gone up with ads. According to an Obama campaign source, the move is just "reweighting markets" which happens frequently, and not a change in strategy. The campaign has launched over a half-dozen television spots in the past few weeks -- part of a $25 million campaign in May. The Obama campaign purchased new airtime next week, though the scale is as yet undetermined, according to a media buyer. The new purchase includes both 30 second and 2-minute spots."

At Hot Air, Allahpundit finds the perpetual confidence from the Obama team baffling: "Were there really any Democrats who thought Republicans wouldn't unite behind Romney? Conservatives have spent three years lamenting every move the White House makes; when given a choice between Obama and Not Obama, there was never a scintilla of doubt how enthusiastic they'd be for the latter. And Romney's big selling point, of course, was electability, so there was also never much reason for Democrats to think they'd win easily among the center. Their only strong hands against Mitt were O's likability advantage, which might move votes at the margins but likely won't be decisive, and the hope/prayer that a crude class-warfare campaign might get traction among working-class voters. No dice so far. They still might win -- Romney's political track record suggests he needs a big spending advantage to make him competitive and that's not happening this time -- but this is a national election in a 50/50 age after a rough first term economically. Go figure that the polls might narrow."

But it's the Obama campaign. Chronic overconfidence is what they do. They spend all day reading their press clippings that declare how smart they are.

2. If Walker Wins, Will Wisconsin Democrats Blame Obama?

CAC at Ace of Spades has a long, insightful post on why Democrat Tom Barrett and his allies keep releasing "internal polls" that show a much tighter race and victory potentially within grasp. But here's the key conclusion:

One thing I didn't mention in either of my "things helping Walker" threads had been held back because I wasn't quite seeing it yet, but I sure do now:

Inevitability. The reality that Walker will probably win is dawning on his own opponents and has been discussed at length on MSNBC, Huffington Post, Kos, FDL, DU, CNN, Politico, local news and other sites and sources too numerous to count. The sense that the Governor is going to beat the recall is very real now, and with prognosticators more professional than me calling it as such, solid efforts by the recall forces to pull a final-week script switch are evaporating.

This is far from the time to get cocky. Barrett and his supporters won't likely make any big moves, nor his supporters, in the coming week. Everything from here to electoral judgment day is centered on getting the voters to the polls for early voting, getting the absentee ballots filed, and contacting those who must show up on June 5th. Walker's supporters have done an incredible job, and will continue to do so, in doing the same. If you haven't visited his site and donated, do so in the waning days. If you worry about shenanigans and can volunteer time as a poll watcher, do it. Most of all, if you reside in Wisconsin, come hell, high water, or a cheese and beer shortage, you must vote.

Here's how the lefty folks at FireDogLake are acknowledging hard truths:

With less than two weeks until the recall election in Wisconsin, it appears Republican Governor Scott Walker currently stands a very good chance of surviving the effort. Two new polls out today confirm Walker leads Democrat Tom Barrett in their rematch. A poll for Wisconsin Public Radio has Walker leading by five and a poll for Reason has him up by eight.

St. Norbet College/Wisconsin Public Radio (5/17-22)

Scott Walker (R) 50%

Tom Barrett (D) 45%
Not sure 5%

Reason-Rupe poll by ORC International (5/14-18)

Scott Walker (R) 50%

Tom Barrett (D) 42%
Don't Know 6%
Refused 3%

Although the race remains relatively tight, all the recent polling constantly shows Walker with a small single digit lead. While polling special elections is difficult because so much depends on what could end up being very unusual turnout, at this point Walker is a strong favorite to maintain his office.

Great comments there, too: "disastrous." "I don't understand." "At this point, I see only one option, send in the BIG guns.....Brad, Angelina and Oprah." "After all the fan fare, this is depressing." "Better to not recall at all than have this happen (recall & lose). Total fail." "You have to wonder why the DNC decided that this fight wasn't worth fighting. Maybe they would rather have a whipped and demoralized populace, too."

And when I see comments like, "Not to worry. Obama will be there soon to save the day and show his solidarity with the working class. He just needs to locate his work boots" . . . I start to think . . . if Walker wins big enough, and Wisconsin Democrats are demoralized enough, this state could start slipping into the Romney column.

My mirror Moe Lane is enjoying every second of Democrat and lefty disbelief:

I don't want to spend too much time on this -- if for no other reason than it's lunchtime -- but here's a pre-post-mortem on the whole sorry recall election situation. What happened here was the accumulated karmic backlash of forty years' worth of Establishment Democrats telling the Activist Left that they were the vanguard of, and spokesmen for, a broad American populist movement. For the longest time, such lies were simply an accepted part of the public policy debate; mostly because the country had no yardstick by which to judge the Left's turnout and activities.

But then came the Tea Parties -- which showed people what a real American populist movement looks like, and what it can do -- and its success stung the Activist Left at the exact moment that Scott Walker came along and not unreasonably decided that if he was elected on a platform of doing certain things, he had best start doing them. This infuriated the Left, but not as much as the refusal of Walker and the WI GOP to go weak-kneed at the first sign of push-back. So... the recall movement was born!

And... fizzled. The Left should have cut their losses when Prosser demonstrated that drum circles and illegal indoor camping in the Rotunda didn't translate into votes... and they definitely should have cut their losses when the first wave of recalls didn't live up to the hype. But they didn't, and now the people of Wisconsin are increasingly demonstrating that they're tired of all of this - and they're not blaming the Republicans, either. Such a shame, but that's what you get whe- hey! The bacon's fully cooked.

Kind of metaphorical there, really.

3. Addendum

The guys at Powerline have fun making fun of PolitiFact: "Poor George W. Bush! He is, according to PolitiFact, the only president in American history (other than FDR) to be responsible for nine fiscal years!"