-By Warner Todd Huston
The idea that President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is in some trouble is dawning on many in the Old Media, these days. The latest to notice that Obama has found some unexpected obstacles — mostly troubles of his own making — on the road back to the White House is the oft times left-leaning National Journal.
For the Journal, Major Garrett identifies some of Obama’s hurdles that he calls “four Ls and four states.” According to Garrett, these are the eight main items that Obama has to deal with successfully to win in November.
First and foremost is Libya and Obama’s weakness and dissembling about the attacks on our embassy in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of our Ambassador and several of his security team and staff. This is a major soft spot for Obama, one that has come so very close to the election that Obama will not likely have enough time to successfully spin it away. Obama is very vulnerable on Libya and Romney should be able to exploit this in the last remaining weeks of campaigning.
Garrett identifies the Lilly Ledbetter Act as one that might serve as a boon to Obama’s campaign since it has sort of become a catchall phrase to showcase Obama’s interest in “women’s rights.” Of course, the Ledbetter Act does nothing at all for “women’s rights.” All it does is give a helping hand to lawyers trying to sue businesses for so-called discrimination cases. The Ledbetter Act is more like the Lawyer’s Relief Act. So far Republicans have failed to make this clear. If Obama can keep this false characterization of the law as a chief talking point, it will continue to serve his campaign.
Lying is also a big issue. Obama can easily be characterized as a liar for so many things. Romney laid out a laundry list of things Obama claimed he’d do but then didn’t even bother trying once in office — even though the President had both houses of Congress in his pocket.
Garrett calls the issue of the economy “lame,” as in Obama’s lame claims of being just on the verge of fixing it. Flash polls after the last debate seems to agree with that. CNN’s undecideds, for instance, thought that Romney would be more effective on both the deficit and the economy.
Next Garrett went on to discuss Obama’s slide in the key swing states of Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada showing that Obama has vulnerabilities and noting that Romney has been narrowing the gap in many of these and other states.
Garrett ends his piece saying that both sides are “smelling victory.” That rings true, for sure. But the very fact that Romney is close enough to catch that whiff less than 20 days from Election Day should make team Obama very worried.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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