Welcome to Obamaland

“Once you vote black, you never go back: Obama 2012” says the pin being worn on the Democratic Convention floor.

Welcome to Obama Land, where Bill Clinton is more popular than the Commander in Chief and it’s ok to sell racist buttons.

I came home last night from visiting with some neighbors to find Bill Clinton on my television. He was in prime form, and the crowd was eating from his hand. Unfortunately, my four-year old was still awake, so I made my way to her room to tell a story or two. We both dozed off, and twenty minutes passed before I could sneak out…but never fear: Clinton was still speaking.

I’ll spare you the details, except to say this: more than one Democrat found themselves wishing that Clinton was on the ticket this election. In fact, I wonder if Clinton himself isn’t wishing he was on the ticket, too(thank heavens for the Twenty Second Amendment). Not only did Clinton stand before Democrats as a master speaker, a circus ring leader, an orator of epic proportions, he is the most successful Democrat in a generation. In spite of winning the White House without wining a majority of the country (thank you, Ross Perot), he learned to work with a Republican controlled Congress to keep the country moving, saw a budget surplus, and even reformed welfare to require more of welfare recipients.

Obama, even with control of both Houses of Congress, couldn’t even pass a budget, let alone move the country from recession to growth, to say nothing of the boom that Clinton saw during his years (and the bust that he left just in time to avoid). There is that Affordable Care Act thing that he’s got to his name, but all that has boiled down to for him is loathing from the right and begrudging gratitude from the left, because who really wants a tax increase?

Which is what it is.

And so, with the cheers for 42 ringing through the auditorium, the pièce de résistance will be when President Obama takes the stage (right after the Gaff in Chief) to tell America why, with 8.3% unemployment, $16 trillion in debt, and nearly 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, he should be awarded a second term.

See, it’s all about the economy, and we aren’t stupid.

With that in mind, here are a few quick hits that you should be aware of going into tonight’s DNC speeches:

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President Obama isn’t just competitive. He vastly overestimates his ability…says the New York Times:

But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

His scope of competition includes important things, like golf and bowling:

Image via CrunchBase

For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

That’s why, says Forbes, Eastwood may have been right: “Obama is a lousy CEO.”

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Barack Obama (Photo credit: jamesomalley)

In 2008, candidate Obama won with a coalition of groups, including the young. Today, with more college graduates than ever living at home (and perhaps staring at “faded Obama posters“) with parents, Obama’s popularity among young voters has dropped. Unemployment for ages 18 to 29 is at 12.7%, higher than the national average and a level that has depressed 1.7 million of them to stop looking for jobs. Says Karl Rove:

Then there are voters ages 18 to 29, among Mr. Obama’s most important supporters in 2008. The roughly 23.7 million “millennials” who voted in 2008 were 18% of the electorate, up 2.9 million voters over the previous presidential race. They gave Mr. Obama 66% to Sen. John McCain‘s 32%, according to exit polls. This margin of roughly eight million votes was a major chunk of Mr. Obama’s overall edge of 9.6 million.

But youthful enthusiasm for Mr. Obama has waned. In October 2008, 78% of voters 18-29 told Gallup they would definitely vote that year. Now it’s 58%.

There’s also evidence that fewer younger people are registered. A November 2011 study from Tufts University found that 43% of the decline in Nevada’s voter rolls since 2008 came from voters ages 18-24. Similarly, while North Carolina’s rolls rose by 93,709 over that period, more than 48,000 younger voters were dropped from the rolls, 80% of them Democrats.

Mr. Obama’s lead over Mr. Romney in the latest JZ Analytics poll among voters ages 18-29 is 49% to 41%. If young voters turn out this fall in the same numbers as in 2008 and give Mr. Obama this eight-point margin, it will take 2.8 million votes from Mr. Obama’s total and add more than 3.3 million to Mr. Romney’s tally.

Ouch. With 53% of all 18-24 year-olds back home with mom and dad, robust growth will be needed to get them back, but the 2.2.% of growth we’ve seen since 2009 just isn’t cutting it.

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What do you do when your narrative doesn’t fit the facts? Explain them? Take responsibility for them? Change plans to compensate?

Silly me. Obviously, you ignore all that and just plow forward with the narrative. Duh. Leave fact checking to the fact checkers.

Among other problems in the Democratic narrative over the last couple nights is the jobs situation. We’ve been hearing a lot about 4.5 million new jobs. If that were true, the question would be, what was all that from the Republicans last week about “are you better off?” Clearly, with 4.5 million new jobs, we are.

However, if it’s not clear to you, let FactCheck.org clarify: there has not been 4.5 million new jobs.

The keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, also said there have been 4.5 million “new jobs” under Obama. The fact is the economy has regained only 4 million of the 4.3 million jobs lost since Obama took office.

And that’s just one of many.

What else can we expect tonight? And how will the spin doctors tell it tomorrow.

[New York Times][Forbes][WSJ][FactCheck.org]