OBAMA AND THE 2012 MAP – AT 8:39 A.M. ET:  The 2012 campaign is underway.  Candidates are already visiting key states.  Soundings are being taken.  Bank accounts are being examined.  Egos are being stroked.  And questions about Sarah Palin are asked every three minutes.

But for President Obama, the hill has become steeper.  The Politico outlines the presidential dilemma:

Two years after his dramatic expansion of the electoral map paved the way to a landslide win, President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign appears likely to resemble the political trench warfare that marked the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.

Last week’s midterm elections saw the trio of conservative-leaning states Obama captured in 2008 — Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana — return to their Republican tendencies while more traditional swing states also broke sharply toward the GOP.

Perhaps most worrisome for Democrats, Rust Belt and Midwest states that had been trending toward the party even before Obama’s election saw Republicans pile up victories. In places such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where the president won with double-digit margins two years ago, the GOP captured offices up and down the ballot and demonstrated that they remain politically competitive in those states.

COMMENT:  The wind is at our back, but wind directions can change abruptly, and will change, unless we come up with a superb candidate.  I don't see any naturals on the horizon, and that is what is troubling.  Our job is now to sell our point of view, with a great salesman (or saleswoman) doing it.  Absent that, Barack Obama may well have four more years to gum things up.

November 12, 2010