Telling It Like It Is

"[I]f you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from." That is what Barack Obama said when he accepted his party's presidential nomination in 2008. Four years later, it reads like a prophetic description of his re-election campaign.

President Obama's two biggest legislative accomplishments were the passage of his $831 billion economic stimulus package and his $1.8 trillion health care law. How's that working out? Last month's Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a mere 31 percent of Americans believe his "economic program" made things better, compared with 67 percent who said it had "no real effect" or even made conditions worse.

As the Supreme Court weighs whether Obamacare is even constitutionally permissible, support for the law is down to 39 percent, which is even lower than it was at the time of passage, according to an average of surveys compiled by the Huffington Post's Pollster.com. Although Obama promised to cut the deficit in half in his first term, it's now projected to be $1.25 trillion in 2012 -- the fourth straight year it will exceed a trillion dollars. With gas prices rising, unemployment still at a stubbornly high 8.2 percent and economic growth sluggish, Obama cannot win if he runs on his record.

And this is from the Washington Examiner, not the right-leaning Washington Times.