That seems to be the developing conventional wisdom, particularly right of center. To be sure, Team Obama has had its share of problems recently. However, there is probably both more and less to these problems than meets the eye at first glance.
The two big examples cited by writers like Matthew Continetti are Team Obama’s handling of same sex marriage and the seemingly ineffective attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. These two supposed stumbles share at least two notable features.
First, both reflect tensions between elite Democratic constituencies that in recent cycles have funded the party and the rank-and-file constiuencies that have voted for it. Same sex marriage is a cause celebre for Hollywood, gay rights activists and the post-grad crowd, but not nearly as popular with working-class whites and socially-conservative blacks. The Democrat apparat is well aware of how much financial support they received from Wall Street, hedge funds and private equity firms in the pre-Obama era, but young Occupiers, Big Labor dinosaurs and assorted class warriors would like to plead ignorance. The stories about these issues are less about the Obama campaign specifically than about the difficulty any Democrat president would have managing the party’s voting coalition. One of the major themes of Sean Trende’s The Lost Majority is the difficulty any major party has in maintaining a broad coalition over time (Obama’s is already narrower than Bill Clinton’s). The major theme of Jay Cost’s Spoiled Rotten is how clientelism is a particular problem for the Democrats.
