A. B. Stoddard is not sanguine about the prospects for the president’s reelection:

As the Republican race begins in earnest, and Obama kicks off his own reelection campaign, it is increasingly clear that the path to an Obama victory is anything but clear. Stubborn joblessness, soaring gas prices, the still-rising cost of healthcare insurance, the apathy of Obama supporters, the erosion of support from white working-class and suburban voters and the considerable sums of secret money conservatives promise to pour into the campaign all pose challenges to his plan to win again. Taken together, they might be insurmountable.

What’s encouraging to me (as someone who looks forward with great eagerness to a new resident in the White House in less than two years) is that their political ear remains as tin as ever. It should be getting more and more clear that the Obama people were never the vaunted political genii that the bien pensant proclaimed them to be in 2008. They were just in the right place, at the right time. With a candidate with the right skin color.