Okay, I had planned another post for this afternoon, but the Drudge report about “Obama’s Other Race Speech” seems to indicate that this story will dominate the news, going into the debate, likely putting the incumbent on defense and possibly even rattling him.

If I were advising the Romney campaign, I’d paraphrase Napoleon who once quipped that you should “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Now, to be sure, the video shows Obama making the mistake six years ago, giving a “special shout out” to his racist, anti-gay pastor:

The guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great leader not just in Chicago but all across the country, so please everybody give an extraordinary welcome to my pastor Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Trinity United Church of Christ.

If Drudge is accurate, the video captures Obama saying things that are far more offensive than what Romney said in his “47%” video.

As pundits at the various networks examine Mr. Obama’s words, as bloggers and pundits embed clips onto their web-sites, the Romney campaign should just let it all play out — and not get involved.  Let Obama’s words tell the story.

You can read more about the video here.

Those who read this blog know that I’m a big fan of my alma mater, Williams College.  Well, here’s something which justifies my affection for my college and its alumni:  a daughter of Williams (we call ourselves Ephs) is one of the few voices in the legacy media to call the administration’s reaction to suggest that in its reaction to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, the administration is “covering something up”:

As Allahpundit (who alerted me to the video) reports, after his

. . .post on media bias, let’s give credit where it’s due. CNN has followed this story, and on primetime shows like this one and Anderson Cooper’s too. Two: Per Eli Lake’s piece in Newsweek today, someone has started leaking preliminary intel assessments made by the CIA that pointed to a spontaneous attack. (I wrote about that here.) I think you’re going to hear more about that from the White House in the next days and weeks, e.g., “We were only telling you what the CIA told us.” Read Lake’s piece to see why that won’t wash, then watch this clip as CNN’s own foreign affairs correspondent reveals that her intel sources were pointing to a full-fledged attack on the consulate within the first 24 hours.

So, let’s give credit to Williams alumna Erin Burnett for investigating the administration’s reaction and reporting what her news team learned in that investigation.   (more…)

Yes, I know that even if the polls have shown a slight drift to Romney these past few days, they still show Obama ahead.

That said, given the problems this nation faces, with the “fiscal cliff” looming, he just doesn’t seem engaged in the process of governing.   And that is why this video is — or at least should be — one of the handful of defining ads of this campaign.  It shows a president who would rather campaign than provide for the common defense (flying to Vegas on the day after the attacks on our embassies and consulates), would rather participate in a day-time talk show than meet with world leaders (heading to a taping of the View rather than take the time to talk to world leaders in New York for the opening of the latest session of the United Nations).

He seems more disposed to doing TV talk shows than to negotiating with federal legislators.

As we’ve said before, he just doesn’t seem interested in doing a job.

The “middle class” has “been buried the last four years”:

Repeating “the myth that Mitt Romney will ‘raise taxes’ on the middle class— ‘raising their taxes with this tax cut,’ as Joe so Bidenly puts it“, the Vice President seems to have forgotten that his team has been in charge these past four years.

Mary Katharine Ham, the first blogress (or blogger) to alert me to the video reports that “The Romney campaign agrees and Jim Pethokoukis has the charts to prove ” just how hard Obama policies have hurt the “middle class.”  (Read the whole thing.)

Glad to see that Mr. Biden recognizes that.

Commenting on my post about the apparent abundance of Romney signs in swing states, our  reader Bastiat Fan who lives in Vancouver, Washington just across the river from Portland has been

. . .  STUNNED by the amount of Obama TV ads I’m seeing. It doesn’t get much bluer than the Portland metro area, so why is he spending all that money HERE, of all places? I suspect their internal polling is scaring them. I don’t believe all the media spin about polls….it looks like what we used to call “whistling past the graveyard” to me.

I do recall seeing a polls or two in the summer that had Obama well below 50 in the Beaver State and Mitt Romney not far behind.

Could this state which hasn’t gone Republican since 1984 be in play?  And if Oregon is in play, could Maine and Minnesota also be competitive?

UPDATE:  Picking up on this post, Michael Barone reminds us how close Oregon was in the 2000 and 2004 elections and speculates that

. . . someone in the Obama campaign somewhere are concerned that Libertarian party nominee Gary Johnson may cut into Obama’s vote in Oregon, which could make Mitt Romney competitive as George W. Bush was in 2000. After 2000 many left-leaning voters were wary of third party candidates like Nader, for fear that votes for them would elect a Republican. But Johnson differs from Nader in one important way: the former governor of New Mexico favors liberalizing the laws against marijuana.

Read the whole thing.

For the past few weeks, conservatives have been contending that polls giving Obama a substantial margin have done so largely by oversampling Democrats.  The most recent CNN poll, for example, favored Democrats by 8 points.  In 2008, a year very favorable to the president’s party. Democratic was only 7 points higher than Republican turnout.

This year, most serious pollsters forecast a much narrower Democratic margin.  Scott Rasmussen thinks Democrats will likely have a 2-4 point advantage this November.  I tend to think it will be loser to 2 points, but sometimes I wonder if Republicans will run even with Democrats, each party’s partisans making up a near identical portion of the electorate.

The last time this happened in a presidential race was 2004 when “Republicans managed to turn out their base at ‘supercharged’ levels.”  Republicans weren’t the only ones eager to vote that year.  Democrats were eager to evict George W. Bush from the White House.

Family members reported high school friends returning to Cincinnati to canvass for John Kerry.  Democrats were motivated to vote and doing what they could to get their vote out.  They were not depressed or otherwise, dispirited.  They wanted to win; they thought they could win.

Given that in 2004, when both parties were motivated, turnout was even, I wonder sometimes if we could see a similar pattern this year.

Let me submit a few facts for your candid consideration:

• Republican enthusiasm is way up, with most surveys showing it even with — or greater than — Democratic enthusiasm.  (In 2008, Democrats were enthusiastic, Republicans dispirited.)
• We see that particularly in the abundance of Romney-Ryan yard signs and bumper stickers in swing states.  (And not just swing states.)  (Does the drop in the number of Obama bumper stickers indicate a decline in Democratic enthusiasm?)
•  ”Scott Rasmussen“, John Hinderaker reminds us, “finds that more voters identify themselves as Republicans than Democrats“.
• In a parallel development, we learn that since 2008, the Democratic registration advantage has shrunk considerably “in several key swing states“.   (more…)

A conservative SuperPAC is doing reporting that would, in a Republican administration, be handled by the legacy media.

Let’s hope we see a slightly shortened version of this ad in swing states.