Is it Despair?

My return to the United States has brought me back to the non-stop political spin cycle that thankfully does not penetrate much abroad. Things have changed a great deal in the world of punditry since I left two and a half weeks ago. At that point, I was reading each day many columns written by "those in the know" who confidently told us that the election was over and Obama had won; we just had to wait for the inevitable outcome on election night. Well, as they say, not anymore! What I hear now is panic coming from the pundits. Romney has surged into the lead in the polls, and while that lead is very small, it is a lead nevertheless. Obama has changed from the confident, sure winner, to the failed debater who is now spending nearly a week off from the campaign trail to polish his debating skills in order to avoid getting crushed by Romney a second time. Biden has turned into a buffoon who thinks that laughing or making faces is the way to win a debate, much in the same way that many debates are settled in second grade. (Actually, that is not much of a change.) The tone among the pundits has come close to hysteria. Think about these examples:

1) The New York Times published an op ed piece whose main point was that the economic plans of Obama and Romney are almost exactly the same. That's right, the liberal paper of record is now telling America that Obama and Romney have economic plans that have no material difference. We just spent months hearing from the Times that Romney's goal was to destroy the middle class in order to make the rich wealthier. Now, they are trying to resurrect Obama by making his economic plans the equivalent of Romney's. It boggles the mind.

2) The left has also trotted out once again the idea that the only Republicans are angry white men. This old chestnut comes out each time that the left feels threatened. They tell each other that only angry white males vote Republican and that there are just not enough of those people to win an election. In other words, this is how the left tries to redefine reality in order to keep confident that it will win the election. I love this argument. I find it funny that white males are always described as angry. They cannot be considered rational, just angry. White men cannot believe that free markets work better to bring economic growth than wasteful government intervention; no, they must just be angry. Imagine, for a moment, the response were the Republicans to write articles saying that Obama's supporters among African Americans were "angry black men". The outcry that such statements were racist would form a tidal wave in the media. White men, however, are all angry.

3) We are getting articles about how Democrats are dominating early voting. Yahoo News, with its reliably pro-Democrat slant, is today touting the "overwhelming" lead racked up by Obama among early voters. The funny thing is that after polling about 7000 people, the Reuters pollster could only find about 340 who had voted early. That is less than 5% of the total. Indeed, the sample was so small that the margin of error in the poll was +/- 10%, an extraordinarily large number for such a poll. And the poll, of course, did not disclose in which states the voters were queried. Obviously, a poll of early voters in a state like New York is much different than a poll of early voters in one like Nebraska. This is, however, a slim reed on which the pundits can once again tell us that Obama is winning.

4) Today also brings columns telling us how Obama is sure to win the second debate because this one will require the candidate to interact with real people and Romney will not be able to do so. Really? That is what the Democrats are telling each other? Romney has managed to get elected governor of Massachusetts and to win the GOP presidential nomination. But Democrats actually think he cannot relate to real people? The pundits are, so to speak, drinking the Obama kool-aid. They have seem to believe the negative ads that the Obama campaign has run rather than reality. The problem, however, is that the debate is reality.