Liberals Beginning to Realize They’ve Overestimated Obama’s Popularity?

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A steady drip, drip, drip of polling data — including a new Battleground poll showing Democrats on the losing side of an “enthusiasm gap” — has started to undermine the carefully maintained perception of Obama’s re-election as inevitable. Ed Morrissey comments:

If Obama trails in a D+8 poll by 6 among the extremely likely voters with four weeks to go, he’s in deep trouble — and his debate performance certainly won’t boost him.

Meanwhile, also via Hot Air, we find the WaPo’s Chris Cilizza as the first liberal analyst to try getting ahead of the chance that Obama might lose:

Obama’s debate performance also raised a bigger question: Is he overrated as a candidate?
Four years ago, that question would have been unimaginable …
Fast-forward to this campaign — and specifically its last two major public events — and you see Obama’s flaws as a candidate in starker relief.
His acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was flat and, rhetorically, felt like a patchwork effort — five or six different speeches all clumped into a single address. His debate performance was glum and defensive, leaving anyone who watched with the overwhelming sense that the president would have rather been anywhere but sharing the stage with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R).

That the question “would have been unimaginable” in 2008 is likely a result of Cillizza having his head inside the liberal media echo chamber where never was heard a discouraging word about Obama. Democrats were pumped up and eager for action after eight years of Bush, and having a completely untested candidate allowed them to project onto Obama whatever they wished to see there. If you bought into that hype (as Cillizza evidently did), then it was easy to imagine Obama the Light-Bringer riding to glory astride a flying unicorn, eating Magic Peace Flakes for breakfast and farting rainbows all day long.

Reality? What a bummer. It’s like the old joke: What did the Grateful Dead fan say after the dope wore off? “Dude, this band sucks.”

Two weeks ago, I warned that Democrats were “spiking the ball early,” but they didn’t listen to me then, and I don’t expect them to listen now. Cillizza is shrewd enough to see the value of hedging his bets, being one of the first liberal media types to warn of the possible defeat ahead, but Nate Silver seems unwilling to kick the Kool-Aid habit just yet.

Remember that a month ago, Silver gave 4-to-1 odds against Romney. Nate’s confidence is quietly fading, as he starts to wonder what excuses he’ll make on Nov. 7 if he has to explain why he was wrong.

“Ride Right Through Them — They’re Demoralized as Hell!”

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers.

170 comments

  18. Really? You’re going to compare one-hit-wonder Obama, a man who as of 4 years ago never ran anything but his mouth, to a band with over 400 songs, 2300 live shows, its own channel on Sirius/XM, and millions of fans who trade tapes, obsess about the music, and occasionally listen even when they run out of pot? Man, when I sober up I’m going to be really pissed.

  25. File a ticket first with @support or nothing will happen. Protest the suspension due to political opinion. I’ll rally the cavalry on Twitter to get you reinstated ASAP. By the way, who is new follower AvgJane? Following our whole Disqus group.

  30. Well if it is still linked to your twitter account then you better take it over or you could lose the account altogether. The other solution is to change the settings in twitter to associate it with another email account.

  38. We’ll get you back in. “We” meaning Six and Selmore and others who know what the hell they’re doing.
    But I’ll retweet my ass off!

  50. AverageJane is a friend of mine that I’m trying to get to tweet…..so I set up her account. It happens. She’s great so I figured she should follow greatness. 🙂 Look for From_Average_Jane on Disqus.

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