Major Garrett reports President Obama’s team “conveys such a visceral sense of self-confidence that even protestations to the contrary take on air of comically profane absurdity.”
“They didn’t give people anything to grab on to, and they allowed us to define him before he could define himself. And now they are playing catch-up, said David Axelrod. “And now they are running bio ads. The summer is when candidates and races get defined. That’s why we made a strategic decision that it was better to muscle up in the summer. I can’t think of a presidential race determined by paid media after Labor Day.”
“That’s Axelrod’s understated way of saying… that he thinks the election is already over. In fact, campaign officials purposely approach the race as closer than they truly think it is. For more than two months, the campaign has been subtracting 2 points from internal polls that consistently show Obama ahead nationally and state by state.”