Sandra Fluke spoke to ten people in Nevada. Michelle Obama (formerly of never-been-proud-before/downright-mean-country infamy) is accusing Republicans of talking down the country. Joe Biden, in his usual adolescent fashion, is gesticulating and acting up behind the stage while others try to speak, babbling about binders and the mythical war in Iran. Bill Clinton, as is his custom, is talking nonstop and monotonously about how Barack Obama should not be blamed for not achieving the sort of economic success that he feels his own genius achieved. Our president goes from rants about Big Bird to something infantile called Romnesia — in between the tired four-year boilerplate about those who do not pay their fair share.
No one is making the case that the stimulus was inspired and effective, that massive green subsidies of borrowed money created millions of new jobs and lessened dependence on foreign energy, that they have a plan for how to pay back the $5 trillion borrowed or stop the serial $1 trillion deficits, or how to rev up anemic GDP growth, or what went wrong in Libya and the Arab Spring, or how raising the tax rate on those who make over $200,000 will provide enough revenue to balance the budget, or how and why Obamacare will lower costs and better meet the health needs of Americans.
In these last two weeks, Obama and his supporters appear exhausted and without any notion of what they should do in the next four years or even quite what they have done in the last four years, and they have been reduced to adolescent sloganeering, cartooning, and temper tantrums. A month ago voters were somewhat suspicious of polls when Romney was running 3 to 4 percent behind. But when he now runs even or ahead in those polls, apparently the Obama team, at least privately, acknowledges that this translates into a Romney lead, and one that seems to be either fixed or growing, hence the fear of something like the last week of October 1980 — and the current public face of desperation.