Empty Seats and Diminishing Returns
Is the love affair with "Hope and Change" over?
About a week ago Jodi Kantor Tweeted from from Chicago that a $51/person Obama fundraising event was only half filled. Obama is lagging behind Mitt Romney on fundraising, especially after Paul Ryan was brought onboard the GOP ticket. The odor of panic is beginning to waft from the Obama campaign. The crowds are not as plentiful or energetic as they were four years ago. And the Obama camp in making a very hilarious claim that THEY are intentionally keeping the crowds small...
The presumptive GOP presidential and vice presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan are attracting thousands of supporters to their campaign rallies since Mr. Romney named Mr. Ryan to the bottom of the ticket. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has taken notice of the massive crowds at the Romney Ryan stump speeches and sent out an urgent e-mail to their supporters, reported The Washington Examiner last week.
However, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not drawing the crowds they once could. The New York Times reported that the Obama campaign said that it is intentionally limiting crowd size at their events because of security and cost:
“We have plenty of time for big rallies,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. “Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd."
Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator. And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.
The Romney campaign told the New York Times that the smaller turnout at Obama events shows there is an “enthusiasm gap” for Obama.
Read more...
The MSM is showing signs of a strained relationship with their Golden Guy, as he ignores them for the celebrity tabloids...
The fact is, Obama is pretty much avoiding the "serious news" media (especially the White House Press Corps) like the West Nile Virus, and it's not sitting well at all with his jilted lovers...
Tina Brown's NEWSWEEK's new cover and accompanying article is quite a bit titillating.
Poor MSM ... And they have so much invested in him. So much...
Corre la bola | 
I just have to mention this: Noel Sheppard at the Media Research Center notes that economist and Enron-remunerated groveler (now turned lunatic detractor) Paul Krugman is not happy with that Newsweek cover story. Why, in his essay, Niall Ferguson didn't cite the [fraudulent, doctored] Congressional Budget Office data from 2011 showing that Obamacare would not increase the deficit!
One problem: The CBO has since revised their estimates, which as a Nobel-prize winning economist Krugman certainly should have known about. Instead, Krugman quoted Ferguson's remarks about what the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation "now" says and linked to the report of what the CBO "then" said.
Think we'll see a retraction or apology? Neither do I.
The whole business of Obama as POTUS, even for one term, is such an outrageous farce that it defies belief, or rather, it defies reason. It is simply appalling, not to say disgraceful, that the electorate of the first country in the world could possibly be so wrongheaded—assuming it’s not worse than that, and it may be. Despite being massively enabled by the criminally negligent and irresponsible media, he was obviously not even remotely qualified for such a job, yet a majority of American voters did essentially the same thing as the Nobel Peace Prize committee: they simply voted based on wishful thinking, which is at best infantile and potentially very, VERY dangerous. There is no excuse for such dereliction of common sense, but unfortunately, sense is evidently not nearly common enough.
As for Newsweek, it is now a slightly less seedy version of New Times. Anything to move the product.
And btw, can't Andrea Mitchell do something about her face, or is it beyond plastic surgery?
asombra,
Plastic surgeons cannot perform miracles...
She probably already has had lots of surgery to look this good. Like dear Nancy.
[...] In recent days the MSM has felt a bit the jilted lover as Obama chooses entertainment news vehicles and local news stations to be interviewed, usually with fluffy softball questions. Blogger White House Dossier's Keith Koffler points out the administration can better dictate the tone and the questions with local medias... The White House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President Obama and the reporter will talk. [...]