The Obama Strategy for 2012 - More of the Same Old Demagoguery

Slate has a piece on a meeting held with Obama campaign staffers in which they tried to make a case that Obama is pretty much a shoe-in for re-election.  Just to show you how bad the president's position is right now, even Slate was not convinced.  These last two paragraphs show how out-of-touch the Obama campaign is with reality:

The briefing suggested a pretty rough campaign. When Axelrod was asked whether there were any vestiges of hope left over from the 2008 campaign, he said that the focus on fairness was in the same vein: "It is a hopeful vision of the future of broad prosperity." But it's hard to see how voters are going to see any hope at all. Polls show that people already have the lowest opinion of government they've ever had. They've heard these promises from President Obama before. Are they going to be more receptive to his message that he can change Washington and make it effective for them when he hasn't been able to for four years? It's all the other guys’ fault, the president's team will argue.

Perhaps, but the other guys are not going to change even if he's re-elected. Not so, says Axelrod. An Obama re-election will liberate Republicans by showing them the folly of standing with the Tea Party. Once Obama has set them free, they will join with him to tackle the real problems of America. That seems like a stretch, especially if the Obama team is effective in so diminishing the Republican opponent that Republicans can write off the loss as simply the result of a bad nominee, not a fatal flaw in their party's message.

Anyone who thinks the GOP is going to line up behind Obama if he wins again is simply delusional. The GOP is likely to hold the House and regain the Senate even if Obama wins. You'll see gridlock like you've never seen if Obama wins, and instead of the Tea Party being marginalized, they'll be angrier than ever...at the GOP for sticking us with a bad candidate. The GOP establishment will not only be fighting Obama, but they'll be fighting primary challenges from Tea Party candidates.