"'Republican Candidate' Extends Lead vs. Obama to 47% to 39%."

Gallup.

ADDED: "Obama, Moderate Republican."

"What did David Plouffe really say about unemployment?"

WaPo's Greg Sargent tries to rehabilitate Plouffe, who clearly did say that the unemployment rate is not going to determine how people vote in 2012.

When you see the transcript and think about it, it's obvious that Plouffe did not say that unemployment wouldn't matter to voters. He said that the percentage itself isn't what affects voters' minds. What matters is their personal subjective experience:

So, you know, people won’t vote based on the unemployment rate. They’re gonna vote based on, “How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?”

Sargent says:

You can argue that it was a misstep in that the quote does sound tone-deaf when reproduced without the surrounding context, and it’s understandable why people would see it as insensitive when viewed without that context.

A lot of clever remarks are like that. A witty, engaging speaker will say something surprising and counterintuitive, but then flesh it out or add one more point, and then it clicks. Of course, if you have opponents, you've got to anticipate what they'll do with the little slice of what you said that seems head-slappingly idiotic. So it may not be so smart to be smart like that.

Now let's look more closely at that possibly clever notion of Plouffe's: Any given voter is going to ask not what the facts are about Americans in general, but how do I feel about what's happening to me personally and do I believe that the President cares about me. 

This is how people* got hooked into voting for Obama in the first place! Plouffe and company massaged people into the place where they had a feeling about Obama. Hope. Change. Yes We Can.

And Plouffe is gearing up to do it again. The difference this time is that Obama is not an outsider to the current conditions. He represents not change, but: the same. And the current situation is dreadful. Plouffe knows that, and his comments show how he's planning, this time, to do the same thing but different. Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family? Yes, you do. Or you will. Plouffe hopes.

You can savage Plouffe all you want for his seemingly stupid remark, but don't miss the opportunity to see what he revealed about the theory of the reelect Obama campaign.
_______________________

*Not me. I voted for Obama, but I coolly observed all this emotionalism, soberly examined the 2 major party candidates, and made a rational choice.

"Generic Republican Candidate 46%, Obama 42%."

Says Rasmussen.

Fortunately for Obama, the Republicans will have to settle on a specific Republican.

"'Release Baby Release' is the new 'Drill Baby Drill.'"

And candidate Obama told us in '08 it was going to be his "policy to use the strategic petroleum reserves as a market cushion."

"Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the American military engagement in Afghanistan."

"But it is a setback for his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who helped write the Army’s field book on counterinsurgency policy, and who is returning to Washington to head the Central Intelligence Agency."

Two administration officials said General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, though both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is retiring, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reluctantly accepted it. General Petraeus had recommended limiting initial withdrawals and leaving in place as many combat forces for as long as possible, to hold on to fragile gains made in recent combat....

The decision... reflects the rapidly changing domestic political landscape. Mr. Obama faces a sagging economy, intense budget pressures and a war-weary Congress and public as he looks ahead to his reelection campaign.

"On College Campuses, Obama's Not Cool Anymore."

The Atlantic asserts.

Deep thoughts about Obama's bin Laden bounce.

From Nate Silver. What will it mean in November 2012? If it means 1 percentage point, distributed evenly across all the states, that could correspond to a 13 percent improvement in the chance of winning in the Electoral College... but not really.

Did Obama demonstrate leadership in pulling the trigger on Osama... or did he merely do the only thing he could do?

Here's a former Navy SEAL calling in to Rush Limbaugh's show yesterday:

CALLER: ...I believe that President Obama's hand was forced in this, and this is really just a crass political decision. When I hear people say that this took courage, I just believe he was absolutely forced into doing this.

RUSH: Yeah, because somebody came and said, "We got Osama." So he's got to do something.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: We've got Osama so we've got to do something....

CALLER: If he wouldn't have acted I assure you the information would have been leaked prior to the election cycle.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And he would have had to have dealt with that, and frankly if that came to knowledge late in the election cycle, our next president would be either Hillary Clinton or whoever the Republicans nominated.

Mickey Kaus works a similar theory this morning:

Attention, Republicans: Looking for a theory that will allow you to reconcile Obama’s Abbottabad success with the unfavorable portrait of him that before Sunday was just beginning to come together and burn itself into the collective mediamind–that’ he’s an inexperienced, indecisive leader, constantly debating with himself, who fatally hedges every bet? ... [Consider] the possibility that Obama’s hand was forced by WikiLeaks–i.e., he had to act quickly or else Osama might realize we were on his couriers’ trail and flee...

In other words, Obama’s still a natural ditherer and hedger–it’s just that in this case he was forced into taking decisive action by something bigger: the prospect of a devastating political attack (“He let bin Laden escape”) no candidate entering a reelection campaign could survive. Our young elected leader may not know how to wield global power or reconcile realism and idealism, but he knows a deadly negative sound bite when he sees it. So (maybe after talking it over with his political brain trust) he decided he could not afford not to pull the trigger. Kind of wussy when you think about it!

Kaus denies believing the theory himself, noting that Obama is actually a bit trigger happy: "He’s been shooting drones into Pakistan for years, and recently greenlighted an unnecessary war in Libya." He's been shooting-from-the-sky trigger happy. This shoot-him-in-the-face thing is new, isn't it? It would have been so much easier — and so much more in character — to annihilate the Abbottabad compound from high above.

"What if O doesn’t run? Says he’s done what came to do. New Dem cand. untaintd by job #s. O can run again later."

Tweeted Mickey Kaus yesterday, picked up by Hot Air and Instapundit.

Back on April 3 — I hope you all know — I said Obama should not want to run in 2012:

If he is reelected, then that will be the end of running for President. He'll be 54 years old, and what will he do? Move to Hawaii and play golf? But he could move to Hawaii and play golf in January 2013, if that's an enticing prospect. And, if he does, he won't have maxed out his eligibility for being President. He can tantalize us, year after year, with the possibility that he would run for another term — a fascinatingly out-of-sequence term. The thing he's best at is running for President. Why let that game expire? He could toy with it in 2016, when he's 58, and in 2020, when he's a clear-visioned 62, and in 2024, when he's a well-seasoned 66, and in 2028, when he's a beneficent elder, offering his services once again, because his country longs for the golden days of 2011. It will never end, as long as the icon of hope and change — oh, my lord, I typo'd "hope and chains"! — walks the face of the earth... unless he serves that second term.

(Idea originally suggested by Meade....)

ADDED: I'm not saying Mickey stole my idea. In fact, our ideas are completely different (except for picturing Obama not running). Mickey portrays Obama as a big old failure who ought to get out gracefully and give another Democrat a clean shot. Meade and I were fantasizing from Obama's perspective — what his life really feels like to him and how to milk the pleasure of being Obama for all it's worth.

2 perspectives on the placidity/passivity of Obama.

You could be mean about it, like White House Dossier:

The Middle East is afire with rebellion, Japan is imploding from an earthquake, and the battle of the budget is on in the United States, but none of this seems to be deterring President Obama from a heavy schedule of childish distractions. The newly installed tandem of White House Chief of Staff William Daley and Senior Adviser David Plouffe were supposed to impart a new sense of discipline and purpose to the White House. Instead, they are permitting him to showcase himself as a poorly focused leader who has his priorities backward.

This morning, as Japan’s nuclear crisis enters a potentially catastrophic phase, we are told that Obama is videotaping his NCAA tournament picks and that we’ll be able to tune into ESPN Wednesday to find out who he likes. Saturday, he made his 61st outing to the golf course as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington’s elite journalists at the annual Gridiron Dinner.

Or you could go upbeat, like Politico:

A dizzying succession of major world events is bombarding a president who insists on controlling his own time, emotions and political message. With Japan’s nuclear crisis teetering on the verge of catastrophe, with Libya and Bahrain in violent turmoil, and with financial markets crashing in response, President Barack Obama has been adamantly sticking to his own political and policy playbook.

That has meant muscling past the red-siren headlines to hammer away at the jobs-and-education message that will be the centerpiece of his 2012 campaign, the kind of discipline that is a hallmark of his new senior adviser, David Plouffe. And it also meant refusing to scrap a five-day trip to Latin America on Friday that will take him to sun-dappled Rio de Janeiro, among other places, rather than staying home to focus on the increasingly disastrous international news confronting his crisis-weary White House....

Let me muscle past that adulation and hammer one point: The simple facts speak for themselves. It doesn't matter what emotion these second-rate writers lather into their reporting. We can see that Obama is disinclined to take positions or actions with respect to the core responsibilities of the presidency.

"Now, Walker, Scott, and Kasich are doing exactly what they should do, and exactly what Barack Obama did in 2009."

"They won power; they're using the power to push through structural political and economic changes that will be hard to reverse. They're making the same bet Obama did — if they do this, the economy will rebound, and their political opponents will have been weakened in a way they may never recover from."

Says David Weigel, who adds:

If the economy does rebound in 2012, they're going to be in better shape politically. But so will Obama. In the long run, breaking down the power of public unions is going to help Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin. In the short run, if it fires up activists and alienates independents, it puts the next GOP presidential candidate in a tougher spot.

That's a big "if." Also, if you want to talk about the 2012 presidential election, what's more important than Ohio and Wisconsin?

"The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty."

Says the UK Telegraph, relying on Wikileaks:

A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.

Oh, but don't be upset! The START treaty was Obama's chosen post-elections showdown with GOP last fall:

Just two weeks after an election that left him struggling to find his way forward, President Obama has decided to confront Senate Republicans in a make-or-break battle over arms control that could be an early test of his mettle heading into the final two years of his term.

Obama proved his mettle! What's more important? Our relationship with the UK or proof of Obama's mettle after the crushing 2010 elections?

After the SOTU: Wisconsin!

We must be quite important!

"Obama's temperament has become a political liability. "

"In 2008, his calm was a synergistic counterpoint to the joyous excitement of the throngs that packed his rallies. In the tidy, quiet isolation of the White House, his serene rationality has felt to many like detachment, even indifference."

Yesterday afternoon, Matt Welch and I tried to talk non-obsoletely about last night's election.

Topics, as framed by Bloggingheads:

Why Ann voted against her old pal Russ Feingold
Just a pendulum swing, or something fundamentally new?
Will the Tea Party take over the GOP, or vice versa?
Matt vs. Ann on Prop 19
Advice for Obama (which he probably won’t take)
The GOP’s possibly futile attempt to stop Sarah Palin

ADDED: Matt Welch is the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine.

"50% of Voters Say They Don't Plan to Vote for Obama in 2012; 57% See This Election as Obama Referendum."

Zogby.

"I probably should have used the word 'opponents' instead of 'enemies.'"

Obama repositions.

Bill Clinton: "I called the president the other day, and I said: 'Relax....'"

"'They haven't said anything about you they didn't say about me. The only reason they're being nice to me right now is because I can't run for anything any more.' "

What did Bill Clinton really mean?
	Relax, the GOP will get some congressional power, but in the end you'll be reelected.
	It's not really all about you. It's all about me.
	Let down your guard, so Hillary and I can oust you in 2012.
pollcode.com free polls

"What is that? It makes me angry, and I don't even know why."

That's what I said, as I overhead this video (which Meade was playing over there). "It's a Hillary for President ad," he said. It doesn't make me feel angry while looking at the video...



... but that was a weird experience. The music is the most heavy-handed kind of movie music, the stuff you hear in trailers for very big-budget sci-fi. Perhaps Hillary is a big-budget sci-fi project. Ever thought of it/her that way?

In any case, it's not Hillary presenting herself as a candidate, of course. Not overtly anyway. But she is a 2012 candidate, isn't she?

Hillary in 2012?
	Pure fantasy, and it's going nowhere.
	Hillary wants it, she'll jump in if she can, and I hope she does.
	Hillary may want it, but there's no hope for her, and I'm glad.
	Hillary is already running against Obama, and this ad is one sign of that.
	She and Obama made a deal. He'll back out of the 2012 race, then run again in 2016 or 2020 perhaps.
pollcode.com free polls

Is Hillary setting herself up for a 2012 challenge to Barack Obama?

"There is a subtle distancing going on...."