Commentary: No Need for Pesident Obama to Panic About Re-Election – Yet (982 hits)
Is now the time for everyone to panic? For backers of Barack Obama, the answer this weekend seemed to be a resounding “Yes.” Strategists and bloggers seemed to spend the weekend throwing their hands in the air and shrieking over the U.S. president’s dismal debate performance on Thursday and the sudden dramatic plummet in voting-intention polls that followed.
In quieter corners of the political universe, however, observers pointed out that the electoral odds still appears to be overwhelmingly on Mr. Obama’s side. For the moment, those voices aren’t being heard in Democratic circles, where the suddenly positive poll ratings for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, after months of poll-leading complacency, have been a sudden slap in the face.
Leading the Dionysian chorus was the well-known blogger Andrew Sullivan. “Devastating, just devastating,” Mr. Sullivan wrote in Sunday on Newsweek’s Daily Beast blog, under the apocalyptic heading “Did Obama Just Throw the Entire Election Away?” He seemed to answer in the affirmative:
“Romney’s favourables are above Obama’s now. Yes, you read that right. Romney’s favourables are higher than Obama’s right now. That gender gap that was Obama’s firewall? Over in one night… That’s terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion.”
Mr. Sullivan was far from alone. Pundits across the liberal side of the media expressed shock at the president’s banana-peel moment. “Romney has been helped” by the debates, acknowledged Peter Hart, a pollster for the Democrats. Rick Klein of ABC News suggested that the president is sinking into bathos amid a Romney resurgence: “Romney is getting more serious by the day, with a foreign-policy speech and now Paul Ryan about to make the case for conservative fiscal policies. Romney marches toward Benghazi, while the president marches down Sesame Street?”
With 28 days left in the campaign, it might be understandable that people would start to panic: The post-debate poll from the Pew Research Center showed support for Mr. Romney among likely voters rising to 51 per cent from 43 per cent, while Mr. Obama dropped from 49 per cent to 45 per cent – in other words, an almost instant reversal of the trends shown in previous polls.
But in other corners, more patient observers were pointing out that this is hardly an October surprise that puts Mr. Romney in a winning position – not yet, anyway. ...
... [Leading the Dionysian chorus was the well-known blogger Andrew Sullivan. “Devastating, just devastating,” Mr. Sullivan wrote in Sunday on Newsweek’s Daily Beast blog, under the apocalyptic heading “Did Obama Just Throw the Entire Election Away?” He seemed to answer in the affirmative: ] ... I'd say probably not, but look at the below clip of President Obama making fun of himself at his performance at the first debate with Mitt Romney...
President Barack Obama drew laughs during a celebrity-led fundraiser in Los Angeles on Sunday when he poked fun of his debate performance against GOP challenger Mitt Romney
