Most people forget that back in the 2008 campaign, there was a period where the Obama campaign seems lost and the candidate himself confused. Right after the Republican convention, with the GOP (briefly) energized by Sarah Palin’s selection, the Democrat was forced to play defense and the wheels, as Hugh Hewitt blogged at the time, seemed to be coming off the Obama campaign bus.

This week, we’ve been seeing a similar thing with even Obama-friendly institutions like AOL/Huffington Post taking notice:
In an article I cited in my previous post, Noah Rothman observed that “President Barack Obama’s campaign has responded to the newfound adversity he faced after his debate loss with a stunning lack of competency.”

At Commentary, Jonathan Tobin wonders if Obama “and his campaign are temperamentally unsuited to playing from behind“.  The record of 2008 — and this past week — does not provide much evidence that they are.

Maybe the campaign has changed in the intervening four years, but we haven’t seen much evidence suggesting that Obama knows how to play defense.  Seems he’d rather “lead from behind” in foreign affairs than campaign from behind come election time.

I had not heard for the actress Stacey Dash before I learned of the flak she was receiving for endorsing Mitt Romney. What struck me was not the flak which celebrities have come to expect when they come out in support of a Republican, but that an actress would risk that flak by so coming out.

Maybe it’s that this actress who seems as intelligent as she is attractive senses something going on in this country or perhaps she’s been hearing Hollywood friends and associates (less courageous than she) grumbling about Obama and considering Mitt Romney.  Two days ago, everyone was all abuzz over writer Buzz Bissinger’s piece in the Daily Beast where he put forward his reasons for backing Mitt Romney.

What makes that piece “so damaging“, writes Jeff Greenfield, is that Bissinger “is not retreating from his Democratic roots, nor even embracing Romney’s policies. Rather, he has concluded that Obama is ‘burnt-out. … He is no longer the chosen one.’”  And the acclaimed writer, notes Greenfield, is not the only one in the media establishment who is distancing himself from Obama.

Could this be a sign of more folks in this (in recent years) traditionally Democratic industry backing away from Obama? At Mediaite, Noah Rothman finds that  ”The media” have “shown a conspicuous lack of resolution to continue defending the administration“:

The media has shown a willingness to let the chips fall where they may when it comes to finishing the White House’s sentences for them. This is a significant and unexpected development, and it should horrify the Obama campaign. They may have squandered their greatest asset in the last week. The end of the media’s infatuation with Obama may be the greatest casualty of the debate.

(Rothman via  Joy McCann.)

FROM THE COMMENTS:  V the K ”can’t help wonder if a similar cultural shift happened in the 50s/60s. At one time, the leftist counterculture was on the outside, and leftist actors and writers were blacklisted. Then, it began to tip the other way, and eventually the leftist counterculture became the dominant culture. Wonder if it is now starting to tip and eventually conservatism will once again be the dominant culture.”  We can only hope.   For such a change.

ALSO FROM THE COMMENTS:  Howard Towt contends this is “evidence of the Coming Preference Cascade described by Glenn Reynolds”: (more…)

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RELATED: Exciting new Obama talking point: There’s only one candidate in this race who’ll fight for Big Bird and Elmo

Was working on a Ryan-Biden debate post when I caught this question on Stacy’s McCain’s blog, “Will Ryan Hold Biden Accountable?”  It’s a short post and well worth your time–so much though I thought it worth a post of its own.

When I saw the title, my first thought was that Stacy was asking if the fetching Republican from Wisconsin would do what Sarah Palin failed to do four years ago in her debate with the Delaware Democratic, call him out on his distortions and misrepresentations. No, instead, McCain was, in excerpting a post from Michelle Malkin, reminding us of another Obama administration commitment gone by the wayside. Back in ’09, the president dubbed his vice president his “stimulus spending cop” (as Michelle puts it):

Remember when President Obama bragged about Joe Biden’s fiscal discipline cred in 2009? “To you, he’s Mr. Vice President, but around the White House, we call him the Sheriff,” Obama warned government employees. “Because if you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him.”

And as to the “trillion-dollar ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,’” Malkin adds, “keeps piling up waste, failure, fraud and debt”, Biden has been “AWOL on oversight.”

“Maybe”, the other McCain concludes, “Paul Ryan will bring this up Thursday night.”  Maybe.

Let’s hope that he does.

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Spooks in the Machine Speak Up
• Simply Jews – Greta Berlin’s defense by Larry Derfner
• The Colossus of Rhodey – What’ll happen: No care about content; just worry about ‘timing,’ ‘racism,’ etc
• Joshuapundit-Why Obama Got His Clock Cleaned Last Night
• The Political Commentator – The cover-up is almost always worse than the crime unless…
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Hail Columbia! Did Mohammedism drive Europe to seek the Western Hemisphere?
• Bookworm Room – The girl’s guide to visiting the USS Makin Island
• Gay Patriot – Obama upset that he no longer gets to define Mitt Romney
• VA Right! - With 4 Weeks to Go, Pollsters Move to More Honest Models and Romney Takes the RCP Lead – Maybe!
• The Right Planet – Debating The Debate
• The Glittering Eye -Deflating The Bubble
• Rhymes With Right – A Teacher Who Needs Firing In Philly
• The Razor – Democrats Should Watch What They Wish For
• The Mellow Jihadi – Somali Community Organizing Comes to Maine
• The Independent Sentinel – Obama’s Narcissism Caused Him to Foil His Own Debate Performance (more…)

Of the predictions I am making in this presidential contest, the one about which I am most certain is that Mitt “Romney will win independents, probably by a margin equal to, if not greater than, that Obama enjoyed in 2008 (i.e., 8 points).”  This, I believe, is particularly significant in an election where the number of independent voters is surging.

As I seek to provide more information to make the case for this prediction, well, Ed Morrissey just, as I put it yesterday, “makes a conservative blogger’s job easier“.  Today, that astute blogger provides a more in-depth analysis of Mitt Romney’s success among independent voters:

Christian Heinze at The Hill picks up on a months-long polling trend that I’ve noted for quite a while, but which has mostly escaped the media.  Mitt Romney has consistently and clearly led among independent voters for quite a while, although Heinze only looks at the most recent polls to make his point about the nature of the race. . . .

(Read the whole thing.)  Of those 5 polls, Romney’s lead among independents ranged from 4 in the Pew poll to 18 in the IBD/TIP poll.  Averaging the 5 surveys, we see the Republican leading independents by 49.4 to 38.6, a margin of 10.8 points, a margin greater than Obama enjoyed in his 2008 victory.

That average, to be sure, leaves 12% still undecided.

When Jim Geraghty measured the undecideds, he found, citing pollster Bill McInturff that they “are ripe for the picking for Romney: 68 percent are white, 57 percent are married, 53 percent are men, 70 percent think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and 60 percent disapprove of how Obama is doing his job.”

UPDATE:  Ace cites another poll with Romney up among independents:

The poll shows independents side with Romney by 44-32 percent.  That’s a reversal from before the debate when it was 43-39 in Obama’s favor.  One independent in four is undecided or will vote for another candidate.

As far as I can recall, this poll, the FoxNews poll, is the only one, since the conventions that has shown Obama up among independents.

But Voter ID laws are not necessary….

UPDATE: Daily Caller is now running the story.

Videographer James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas caught an official for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign helping who she thought was an Obama supporter set herself up to vote more than once in November.

Stephanie Caballero is the regional field director for Obama’s Organizing For America in Houston, Texas. Federal Election Commission documents show, according to Project Veritas, that Caballero is a “salaried employee of the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”

Caballero is caught on camera helping the young woman try to vote in Florida and Texas in the upcoming election.

Remember — if this were a Republican Presidential re-election effort…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UP-UPDATE (from Dan): Great minds. Had seen the story on Jim Geraghty’s Campaign Spot and thought it might make a good blog post!

UP-UP-UPDATE (from Dan):  OBAMA SUPPORTER BRAGS ABOUT ILLEGAL FOREIGN DONATIONS ON PRESIDENT’S OWN WEBSITE

This flat-out lying to the American public by the Obama Administration is beyond the pale.

So President Obama can stand up for “Big Bird”… but our Ambassador and three other dead Americans in Benghazi were just “bumps in the road.” Roger that, Barack.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

You will have to click on over to my blog at Patriot Consulting to get my thoughts.  Sneaky, ain’t I?

Hint:  Yes.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“What”, I asked shortly after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008, “Justifies the Left’s Enthusiasm for Obama?“:

• What has he accomplished besides deliver some really powerful speeches? Has he, in his twelve years in public office, enacted any major reforms, been the driving force behind any bipartisan legislation?
• What has he done to effect this new kind of politics he describes so readily?

They loved their nominee without any evidence to support their case that he was a new kind of politician able to transform the political landscape.  They could point to no speeches, identify no policies where he had both shown a keen understanding of issues and demonstrated the ability to turn an good idea into a workable legislative proposal  – and help shepherd that proposal through the legislature.

In the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, conservative bloggers, looking at the Democrat’s record, concluded that he was all hat, no cattle. So, in the wake of last week’s debate, when many liberal pundits were beginning to realize that they may have “overestimated” Mr. Obama’s qualities, Ace, with the words below, seems to speak for conservatives:

Let me suggest something that many conservatives realized after the debate: Obama did not do that badly. For Obama. He was the same listless, droning, exhausted-of-ideas scold we have seen for at least two years now (and maybe three).

He was Obama. This is what he is. He is not quick-witted. He is not, as I think I saw Mickey Kaus note, a wonk. He has never been a wonk, a detailed-policy guy. (more…)

“Please tell me,” a nephew posted on Facebook, “this isn’t a real ad…”:

This perspicacious young man is wise to question the video’s authenticity; it looks more like a video an Obama supporter made to post on Facebook rather than one produced by a presidential campaign. It may look amateurish, but the Obama campaign really did put it together, intending it, Alana Goodman reports, “as a ‘parody’ and it’s going to run during ‘comedy shows.’”  It’s just another “shiny object” designed to distract us from a dismal debate performance and an incumbent president who has run out of ideas.

If high school students (albeit very smart ones) are incredulous that a presidential campaign would produce this ad, what hard-working adults (and adults wishing they were hard-working), Americans who are concerned about the dwindling size of the income and the increasing cost of gas and groceries, think today about this latest offering from Obama’s campaign.

Jennifer Rubin tallies

up the ways in which this ad is not helpful to the Obama camp. (more…)

RELATED: Stacey Dash: I picked my candidate by the content of his character