Victor Davis Hanson:

The common denominator here is the old story of the vast gulf between the reality and mythology of Barack Obama. Although Obama had sometimes shown some of the smarmy cool and set-speech fluidity of a John Edwards, otherwise there was never much evidence that Obama had ever excelled in debate or repartee -- perhaps explaining why he wisely had consented to the fewest press conference and one-on-one Q-and-A press sessions of any recent president. His reliance on the teleprompter has no recent presidential parallel, but was always wise even for the briefest of appearances. And yet even here, the chameleon-like set-speeches quickly become monotonous and the faux cadences jarring rather than clever.

... perhaps the reason for Obama's reluctance to face questions and counter-argument was not just that Obama is not very good at it and resents doing his homework ("a drag"), and not just that his economic and foreign policy records are dismal and would be hard to defend under scrutiny, but largely that he has had scant need to work on debating or sharpening his analytical skills -- given the investment of the media and popular culture in his success.

An often distracted and diffident Obama has astutely understood that his own fortunes were in some strange way a referendum on the liberal sensibilities of legions of neurotic but influential elites. That realization had excused him from much of the mundane worries of other politicians -- almost as if problematic things like polls, government statistics, laws surrounding lay-off notices, or controversies (from Fast and Furious to the Libya consulate disaster) would all be properly adjusted by others more interested in his success than he in his own.

... the nation has now seen that the conservative critique of Barack Obama -- fluff without substance -- was frighteningly accurate.

Mortimer Zuckerman:

The fundamental issue for America is that we seem to have lost our way and we haven't found it after four years of the Obama administration, thanks to a leadership so lacking that the American dream now seems to be a chimera of nostalgia.

... some 25 million Americans are without full-time work. Over 5 million have been out of work for 27 weeks or more. The share of the unemployed who have been out of work for a year or more has soared from 12 percent three years ago to over 30 percent today. The share of the population actually in the labor force has shrunk to a post-World War II low. Almost 8.5 million people have given up looking for a job, so they are not counted in the unemployment rate because they have not searched for work in the prior month.
...

As of April, we have added 5.5 million people to the disability rolls since the beginning of 2009, several million above the previous trend. There are now roughly 9 million people on disability. In 1992, there was one person on disability for every 35 workers. It is now about one for every 16 workers. It is hard to believe that so many people have become disabled; disability has literally become another fallback position for people out of work. If disability had stayed at the pre-recession growth rate, unemployment would be at least one percentage point higher, leading to a true unemployment rate much closer to 10 percent and perhaps significantly more.
...

Fifty-four percent of the long-term unemployed who have found jobs have had to accept lower pay. The typical family is back to where it was in 1995. Median income in 2011 has fallen to $50,054, the fourth straight year of the decline in well-being. Fifteen percent of Americans are on food stamps, compared to 7.9 percent from 1970 to 2000. Some 400,000 people per month have been signing up for the programs over the past four years. In August, nearly twice as many people went on food stamps (173,000) as found a new job.

One-third of homes are worth less than their mortgage debt. Values remain 30 percent below the 2006 peak and now match the level of a decade ago.

No wonder the country is unhappy with its direction, as Americans do not accept the inevitability of American stagnation or indeed of Obama's re-election.

Read the whole piece.

It's interesting. If you use actual election data to question the assumptions pollsters make, lefties call you are 'poll denier.' And if you cull through the data supporting the reported unemployment rate and question it, you are an 'unemployment rate truther.'

The American Left is absolutely incredible.

Investor's Business Daily's John Merline:

... despite the depth of the downturn, Obama has presided over the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression.

In fact, what has been noteworthy about Obama's recovery is how frequently it has "unexpectedly" underperformed economists' projections.

To get a sense of how dismal Obama's recovery has been, consider this: Since World War II, there have been 10 recoveries before Obama's. Had Obama's merely performed as well the average of all those recoveries, the nation's GDP would be a staggering $1.2 trillion bigger than it is today, and 7.9 million more people would have jobs.

Read the whole piece.

National Review's Jim Geraghty:

The pop culture stuff -- the cameos on Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show, the celebrity guests at rallies, the appearances on non-news programs -- used to be the frosting on the cake of a campaign. Now it's the cake.

Isn't that the truth?

From a letter to the editor in the Austin American-Statesman:

Norquist pledge

After reading about ugly fighting and infighting in newspapers and on TV, I feel obligated to remind everyone that since Grover Norquist instigated the pledge that committed certain elected officials to promise to never raise new revenue (taxes) for government, our national debt has steadily increased. Perhaps it is time that this petition should be outlawed.

Leaders in Congress who vowed to uphold the Constitution of the United States cannot act as a representative of, for and by the people after signing an oath that contradicts their oath of office. It stands to reason that this oath is in opposition to the spirit and intent of the Constitution. Those elected officials who pledge "no taxes" should either resign or be indicted.

This issue is a major obstacle to the "general welfare" of our citizens as the Constitution requires and should be considered and taken care of before the coming election.

Conrad Black, in the National Post:

The fact that Willard M. Romney is still running almost even in the polls despite his demiurgic implausibility as a candidate, afflicted by a one-person pandemic of foot-in-mouth disease, illustrates the concern of the American voters. Either Romney lucks through and numerate sanity starts to return to American public life, or the most self-destructively incompetent regime since James Buchanan brought on the Civil War, will come back and stoke up a truly spectacular inferno that will purify America in a mighty economic Jonestown. There will be no more tugging at a trouser leg from Canada -- either a comradely pat on the back, or a neighbourly blast with a fire extinguisher, but this operatic crescendo can't continue for one more full act.

Read the whole piece.

The Illinois Teachers' Retirement System announced that it lowered the expected annual return for its portfolio to 8%.

The Chicago Tribune's Ray Long reports:

The Teachers' Retirement System lowered what it expects from investments from 8.5 percent to 8 percent. The pension fund's leadership also increased a variety of other assumptions, including how long it expects retired teachers to live. The fund covers teachers outside Chicago.
...

The state is paying $2.7 billion into the fund in its current budget. Without any adjustments, the state would have owed about $2.89 billion in the new budget year that begins next July 1.

But the changes approved Friday increased that price tag to $3.37 billion. All told, the state will have to pay $670 million more than this year.

Trouble is, the 80-plus year real, historical return on stocks alone is about 7%. However, a retirement portfolio is comprised not just of stocks, but also of treasury bonds (which have an historical yield of about 2%-3% after inflation), along with other debt instruments, and cash and cash instruments. Therefore a realistic predicted return would be more like 5% (a portfolio mix of say 60/40, stocks to bonds) -- and many people believe that may be too optimistic, preferring to use the long-term treasury interest rate for the estimate.

So if a downward readjustment for expected returns of 0.5% results in an additional $650 million needed for the fund, imagine how much more would be needed if a more realistic rate of 5% (or lower) was used? It's in the billions of dollars. Each and every year.

Maybe the state of Illinois should just go to this site, from England, to help fund the shortfall: partybingo.com.

Long continues:

Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Michael Madigan, both Chicago Democrats, recently suggested that changes to the pension system would have to get done in January at the earliest. That's a post-election period when more lame ducks are freer to take politically risky votes, and the bar to pass legislation with an immediate effective date drops from three-fifths to a simple majority.

A little info: IL Speaker of the House Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) has been Speaker of the IL House for almost 28 of the last 30 years, and has been in the IL House since 1970 (his daughter is IL Atty Gen. Lisa Madigan); IL Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), the relative newcomer, has been IL Senate President since 2009 and has been in the IL Senate since 1991 (he was in the IL House before that from 1979-1991) -- his family has been a fixture in Chicago politics since the Chicago Fire, with a Cullerton sitting in the Chicago City Council for all but 40 of the last more than 140 years.

The Washington Post's Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik report:

The Washington region has emerged from the recession looking even more affluent compared with the rest of the country, boasting seven of the 10 counties with the highest household incomes in the nation, new census numbers show.
...

In 2007, before the recession began, five counties in suburban Washington made it into the top 10. By 2010, there were six. The seven in the latest ranking is an all-time high.

From a new Gallup poll:

Two-thirds of Democrats think government should do more, while an even larger percentage of Republicans say government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses. More than six in 10 independents agree that the government is doing too much.

Read the whole piece.

Nancy Pelosi, in September 2012:

"Mitt Romney isn't going to be President of the United States," she said with a laugh. "Everyone knows that."

Nancy Pelosi, in October 2010:

"When we return, we will have the majority."

George Will:

When the independent Fed buys bonds to affect short-term economic stimulus by manipulating long-term interest rates, this is less monetary policy than fiscal policy, which is the business of an accountable Congress. It also is a preposterous arrogation by the Fed of a role as the economy's central planner, a role beyond the Fed's -- or anyone else's -- competence, and incompatible with its independence.

Bernanke's term ends in 2014, and Mitt Romney says that he would not reappoint him. If Romney becomes president, he should appoint someone such as [Kansas City Fed President Esther] George, who would concentrate on protecting the currency as a store of value -- restraining inflation -- while reversing the recent inflation of the bank's ambitions, which have not prevented the recovery from being dreadful and may have helped to make it so.

Daniel Henninger:

The Obama Democrats are no longer the party of FDR, Truman, JFK or Clinton. All were combative partisans, but their view of the American system was fundamentally positive. The older Democratic Party grew out of the American labor experience of the early 20th century, which recognized its inevitable ties to the private sector. The systemically alienated Obama party more resembles the ancient anticapitalist syndicalist movements of continental Europe.

In its 2008 primaries, the Democratic Party made a historic pivot. The center-left party of Bill and Hillary Clinton was overthrown by Barack Obama and the party's "progressives," the redesigned logo of the vestigial Democratic left.
...

An Obama victory wouldn't be just a defeat of the GOP. It would be a defeat of the post-World War II Democratic Party. And they know it. The progressive left has wanted to push Democratic liberalism over the cliff for decades. This is their best shot to get it done.

Mitt Romney -- whose own political conversation is remarkably bereft of history -- ought to be explaining to Democrats-turned-independent how far Mr. Obama has moved their party from its traditions. FDR's Social Security and LBJ's Medicare asked all to buy in to supporting it. ObamaCare doesn't; Mr. Obama revels in explaining how "they" will pay for "you." Left unanswered, demagoguery can win elections. And take a generation to undo.

Read the whole piece.

Actual comments from an Obama supporter, in response to a column from the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger:

First:

Obama is a uniter, not a divider. Listen to his speeches. He knows that the capitalist system creates great wealth for a lucky few, who truly did not do it on their own. He knows that America must leave this system in place, subject to aggressive enlightened regulation by those properly educated in government, and then to maximize the benefits for all, just have programs and taxes to spread the wealth around from the lucky few to the deserving many. This is the American way, 21st century style. Learn to love it, enjoy it, or move to Singapore. See how you like that.

Next:

He is ultimately going to unite all Americans into one community where we all enjoy equal success and prosperity through his efforts and policies. You do not seem to appreciative or grateful for the unique gift we have been given with this President. It truly must be seen as a gift, for how else could someone unknown to all of us, a person whose career was registering the downtrodden to vote, and helping in state government emerge from literally nothing, no background and experience, and beat the Clinton machine to become the most powerful man in the world. A gift that must be experienced and savored.