To hear Democrats (and much of the media) tell it, President Barack Obama is a man on the rebound. The president turned in a strong State of the Union speech,
picked a smart political fight over taxing the rich and authorized
another heroic Navy SEAL mission in terrorist territory. Sounds like a
recipe for reelection, they say.
There is a big problem with this
Pollyanna punditry: There are a bunch of real-time numbers coming in
that tell a much different tale.
In short, there’s a new Congressional Budget Office report
that shows unemployment likely to climb to nearly 9 percent by the
election, there’s polling data showing Obama tied or trailing Mitt
Romney in the most important swing states
(and doing only marginally better against Ron Paul), and there is
mounting evidence that the assumption of a decisive Obama fundraising
advantage for the fall might be flat wrong. All of this is happening
while Republicans are at their worst, with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich
spending millions of dollars and using all of their air time explaining
why the other is untrustworthy, deeply flawed and eminently beatable by
Obama.
Let’s look at each:
