Obama is Toast Marathon V3.9999

Heeeeerre’s Barack the Toasted Marxist:

Dem pollsters: Obama thrill is gone, turnout jeopardized

As buoyant Democratic delegates head home from their three-day convention here to nominate President Obama for a second term, party officials and advisors are sweating the reality that the 2008 hope and change thrill is gone–and so might be Obama’s voting majority.

While Obama and Mitt Romney remain locked in public polls, several Democratic officials are worried that three groups that pushed Obama over the finish line in 2008–younger voters, seniors and “Walmart” white women–are as frustrated as other groups about the economy and Obama’s failure to change Washington and might stay home.

In other words, they say, the polls lie. Yes, when called by pollsters, the nation is split, but the GOP appears more eager and willing to follow through and vote than the Democrats.

Those Jobless Numbers Are Even Worse Than They Look

The alarming numbers proliferate the deeper you look: 40.7% of the people counted as unemployed have been out of work for 27 weeks or more—that’s 5.2 million “long-term” unemployed. Fewer Americans are at work today than in April 2000, even though the population since then has grown by 31 million.

We are still almost five million payrolls shy of where we were at the end of 2007, when the recession began. Think about that when you hear the Obama administration’s talk of an economic recovery.

Obama’s electoral problem, in one simple chart.

To judge from his schedule, Obama has given up on North Carolina

President Obama, aside from his appearance at the Democratic National Convention, has not campaigned in North Carolina since April of this year.

“I don’t have a scheduling update for you on that or any specific announcements to make,” Obama for America spokeswoman Jen Psaki said when asked if Obama would campaign in North Carolina any time soon. The reporter who asked the question said “I think the last event he held there, aside from the convention, was April 24th” — when he visited the University of North Carolina campus to talk about student loans.

Democrats Said to End Convention $15 Million Short

Democrats ended their convention in Charlotte $5 million short of their budget even after being forced to draw down a $10 million line of credit from Duke Energy Corp. (DUK), according to a Democratic Party fundraiser.

That will leave a $15 million bill that eventually will have to be paid by President Barack Obama’s campaign or the Democratic National Committee, according to the fundraiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Awful August jobs report: The beginning of the end of Obama?

The job numbers will likely harden the perception that the president is in over his head. The voters do not see a “recovery.” A call for “more time” is unconvincing if one has the sense neither that four nor 40 years would make a difference under this president.

Romney will continue to hammer away at the president’s failures. But he would be wise to push (as he is doing in 15 new ads in eight states) his own plans for middle-class Americans, and most especially domestic energy development. Voters are certain things are bad; they now need to be reassured Romney will be better. With these jobs numbers the public might well conclude: How could he do any worse?

The Democrats’ Soft Extremism…Obama is out of ideas, and Clinton’s speech was unworthy of him.

Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he’s thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There’s too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We’ve done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

There were many straw men. There were phrases like “the shadow of a shuttered steel mill,” which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you’ve heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.

It was stale and empty. He’s out of juice.

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There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn’t what you love if you’re American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don’t see all this the same way, and that’s fine—that’s what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.

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Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn’t strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don’t think the American people want that. Because, actually, they’re not extreme.

10 surprises at the conventions

1. Clint Eastwood’s remarks were more memorable and more effective than President Obama’s. The empty-chair metaphor never seemed so apt as during the Obama drone-a-thon.

2. The press, even liberal commentators, admitted that Obama had bombed. Sure, there were bitter-enders who claimed all was fine, but the cable TV talking heads and the vast majority of columnists were brutally honest. MSNBC personalities were downright glum.

3. Knowing the president has a problem with pro-Israel voters, the Obama campaign made a mess for itself by fiddling with platform language and then allowed the matter to fester for two days. The display of booing and confusion when the language was reinstated may be the most memorable thing about the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Even more surprising, Obama did not mention Jerusalem and gave short shrift to both Israel and Iran in his speech.

4. The gap between the GOP bench (including Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Bob McDonnell and Artur Davis) and the Democratic bench is striking.

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