Obama's Tears

I don’t know who’s going to win the vote in the US today, but one thing seems clear to me: Obama expects to lose.

He shed visible tears at his closing rally last night. Whatever the proximate cause, this is not a man in an exhilarated mood. And for “No Drama Obama,” famous for acting so cool? Something must hurt badly.

His campaign’s parting words were a warning to their troops not to panic if unofficial early exit pools seem to favour Romney. Just good advice, perhaps; but it is also the advice they would have to give if they were expecting a big Romney win. And in the past, exit polling has tended to favour Democrats.

Indeed, Obama’s campaign has looked all along as though it is expecting to lose. Using Bill Clinton so heavily, for example. A humiliation for a sitting president; and Obama is said to have resisted even letting him speak at the convention.

Going negative on Romney early, and sticking to that tack throughout, was also a weirdly defensive tactic. It was bound to alienate independents for the sake of firing up the base. It is the kind of strategy designed to prevent a collapse rather than win.

I suspected they might be doing this because they knew something was coming that was going to hurt the campaign badly. Some October surprise. It didn’t; unless it was Benghazi. Perhaps they know something from their internal polling, and from their knowledge of their own ground game. For example, they may have a far better idea than anyone else, including the independent pollsters, of just how many Obama voters they actually turned out in their early voting push.