ABC Sees The Ground Crumbling Under Obama's Feet

Well, I an not totally surprised that ABC was the first network to take a step off the plantation - after all, they are the home of Jake Tapper, perhaps the Last Honest Man in old-school TV journalism.

No sugarcoating the disaster here:

First went the mood. Next, the muscle failed. Finally, to close out a horrific week for President Obama’s reelection bid, went the message.

The first week of June began with a monthly jobs report that solidified a sense of an anemic economic recovery. Then a Democratic loss in Wisconsin, coupled with staggering Romney campaign fundraising figures, revealed the strength of political organization on the right.

The week was punctuated by the most prominent voice in the party short of the president himself undercutting key Obama campaign messaging. To round out the rough patch, the president tried to turn the story lines around, but wound up delivering the kind of line that’s tailor-made for his opponents to make famous.

“The private sector is doing fine,” President Obama said Friday, at a press conference organized because it most certainly isn’t, at least in the minds of most Americans.

Taken together, the beginning of June 2012 may be remembered as a time period that shook the pillars of the Obama reelection effort. If nothing else, it’s shown the 2012 landscape to be so different from 2008 as to make assumptions based on four years ago seem worthless.


And that's the most important takeaway here. At least one member of the MSM has come to admit that whatever the "convention wisdom" is with incumbent presidents, it can be tossed out the window when it comes to Obama's er-election campaign.

And while the rest of the media does their best to cover-up the Gaffe-O-Matic that is Obama's mouth, ABC will not let go of Obama's infamous "The private sector is doing fine" remark, and will not let him blame Bush, either:

But the danger in the comment is that it undercuts the president’s effort to connect with skittish voters on the key issue of the election. The president needs to do more than blame his predecessor for inherited economic conditions; his challenge is to convey a sense of momentum around his policies for job growth.

.... Three-and-a-half years of the presidency has given Obama ownership of this economy. That fact may not be just fine for his prospect of a second term.

If the primary difference between Campaign 2008 and Campaign 2012 was that the media finally decided to do an honest job in its coverage, that alone would be enough for me...