Flying pig moment from New York Times: Obama's Aura of Defeat

[BurfordTJustice]

Excerpt:

Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them: They go negative hard, try
out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core
supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by
their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals. Think of John
McCain's desperate hope that elevating Joe the Plumber would change the
shape of the 2008 race, and you have the template for how tin-eared and
desperate a losing presidential campaign often sounds - and ever since the
first debate cost Obama his air of inevitability, he and his surrogates have
sounded more like McCain did with Joe the Plumber than like a typical
incumbent president on his way to re-election. A winning presidential
campaign would not normally be hyping non-issues like Big Bird and "binders
full of women" in its quest for a closing argument, or rolling out a new
spin on its second-term agenda with just two weeks left in the race, or
pushing so many advertising chips into dishonest attacks on its rival's
position on abortion. A winning presidential campaign would typically be
talking about the issues that voters cite as most important - jobs, the
economy, the deficit - rather than trying to bring up Planned Parenthood and
PBS at every opportunity. A winning presidential campaign would not
typically have coined the term "Romnesia," let alone worked it into their
candidate's speeches.