Pouring Cold Water

Pivotal
The president then pivoted to longer-term economic trends, which he said have deepened inequality and put at risk the future of the middle class. Lengthening the frame of reference allows Mr. Obama to argue that the problems of today are not principally his fault, but the result of a Republican philosophy practiced by the Bush administration and advocated by Mr. Obama’s challenger, Mitt Romney. (NYT, 7/6/2012)


"Lengthening the frame of reference." What could that possibly mean? Oh, of course, blame Bush!


Remaining
The economy remains the most important issue to voters.  Health care is second, government ethics and corruption third. Just 31% give the president good ratings for handling the economy.  That’s down from 41% at the beginning of May. (Rassmussenreports.com, 7/7/2012)


Forget the polls that show Obama ahead by three or four points. They are instruments of the Obama re-election effort. (Sample question: if it could be proved conclusively that Mitt Romney was the Antichrist, who would you vote for? a) Barack Obama or b) The Antichrist) RedStateVT believes that Obama faces an enormous uphill struggle to win. Here is why:


1) Carville was right...it IS about the economy and the numbers above are a disaster for Obama.
2) More than half of the country opposes Obamacare and neither his victory at the Supreme Court nor all the wonderful goodies that the health care law will supposedly bring will change that.*
3) Obama has lost the independents who elected him in 2008. The mid-term elections, Scott Brown and Wisconsin are all harbingers.
4) The basis of Obama's attacks on Romney, class warfare ("He's a rich guy") have been tried before against George Bush and they did not work. 


*White House officials have repeatedly underestimated opposition to the health care law. They predicted that public support for the law would grow as people learned more about it. They minimized lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the requirement for most Americans to carry health insurance. They predicted that states would embrace the opportunity to insure more of their residents by expanding Medicaid and creating insurance exchanges, but a number of states have balked. (NYT, 7/7/2012)


Truthful 
In truth, Chrysler and General Motors did go bankrupt. What the Obama administration did (and this actually began during George W. Bush's lame-duck period) was to intervene in the normal bankruptcy process so as to advantage political interest groups, most notably the United Auto Workers, at the expense of taxpayers and corporate bondholders. (James Taranto, WSJ, 7/6/2012)


Outstanding point by Taranto!