Demoralized as Hell: Pay no attention to the empty seats

Pseudo­lus: (to Hys­terium) Calm your­self down! I’ll tell you when it’s time to panic!

Miles Glo­rio­sus: (notic­ing the hour­glass) I smell mis­chief here!

Pseudo­lus: It’s time.

A funny thing Hap­pened on the way to the Forum 1966

Vot­ers aren’t reject­ing Obama because they don’t know him, they are reject­ing him because they finally do.

DaT­e­chGuy James Carvelle chan­nels Pseudo­lus 9÷13÷11

Every polit­i­cal cam­paign has cer­tain “set pieces”. They are as pre­dictable as a Glo­be­trot­ter vic­tory, as chore­o­graphed as a Broad­way dance num­ber and as news­wor­thy as Red Sox sell­out at Fen­way Park.

Yes­ter­day Barack Obama “offi­cially” launched his re-​election cam­paign. Every­one knew it was com­ing and the MSM head­lines reflected this:

Politico: Obama kick­off: Hope, change and Mitt

The Hill: The gloves come off as Pres­i­dent Obama launches reelec­tion cam­paign

The New York Times: Obama For­mally Kicks Off Cam­paign in Ohio and Vir­ginia

CNN: Obama out­lines case for re-​election at first offi­cial cam­paign rally

There was actual news at that launch, Big news! But it took Bre​it​bart​.com to report it:

Obama Launches Cam­paign in Empty Arena

Here is para­graph one:

Barack Obama launched his cam­paign in unspec­tac­u­lar fash­ion today at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, the largest col­lege in the cru­cial swing state. A photo posted to twit­ter by Mitt Romney’s cam­paign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals sparse atten­dance. The above image, accord­ing to Williams, was taken dur­ing the President’s first offi­cial cam­paign speech

And here is the photo:

Bre​it​bart​.com links to a Toledo Blade story not­ing lots of empty seats and one of the president’s own sites quotes the far left Think progress’ fig­ure of 70% full.

Now that’s not an “empty sta­dium” but the pres­i­dent being unable to fill a 20,000 seat sta­dium when just 2 years before he drew 35,000 in the same state is News par­tic­u­larly for the open­ing day of a cam­paign. To put it in per­spec­tive, imag­ine A Red Sox home opener with empty bleach­ers in Fen­way Park.

I guess Julia was busy yesterday.

The MSM decided this wasn’t wor­thy of a head­line, where DID the MSM decide to bring this up. Let’s see:

Politico: Para­graph 9

If the care­fully chore­o­graphed kick off was any indi­ca­tion, Obama will face some chal­lenges in recap­tur­ing the 2008 magic — espe­cially among young vot­ers who weath­ered three years of sour­ing job prospects and ris­ing col­lege costs.

The cam­paign was only able to muster 14,000 sup­port­ers at the first event in an arena designed to hold more than 18,000. Sev­eral thou­sand empty seats ringed its upper deck, mostly out of view from the cameras.

The Hill: Para­graph 12

But the arena was not a sell out. The 14,000 in atten­dence left empty sec­tions in the upper deck of the 18,300 seat arena, a dif­fer­ent image than four years ago when the pres­i­dent — then a fresh-​faced sen­a­tor who changed the polit­i­cal land­scape — addressed sell out crowds across the country.

The New York Times: Para­graph 13

The atmos­phere at both ral­lies was buoy­ant and the crowds were siz­able, though in Colum­bus the turnout did not fill the Schot­ten­stein Center’s 18,300 seats. David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the pres­i­dent, said he was happy with the crowds at this point not­ing that they dwarfed those that turned out for Mr. Romney.

CNN: Para­graph 14

The Ohio arena, which holds around 20,000 peo­ple, appeared to be around two-​thirds to three-​quarters full, with around half of the seat­ing in the upper deck empty. The Colum­bus fire depart­ment esti­mated the crowd size at 14,000. While smaller in size than many Obama ral­lies dur­ing the 2008 cam­paign, the crowd dwarfed the size of any rally held this cycle by Romney.

The Obama cam­paign knew this day was com­ing for almost 3 years. They had for­ever to plan it. Yet in a strong union state, a swing state, the state where Issue 2 was one of the few Demo­c­ra­tic suc­cess sto­ries of 2011 Obama can’t fill a 20,000 per­son stadium!

What does it mean? It means the same thing I said six months ago when PPP called Obama “Way up in Ohio”:

Ride Right Through them, they’re demor­al­ized as Hell!

I sub­mit 30 years ago Pre-​internet, Pre-​fox, Pre-​Rush this photo see the light of day, instead of Jake Tap­per ask­ing David Axel­rod about the lack of a full sta­dium on national TV.

Why is any­one scared of these guys?

Update: Stacy sug­gests a new Hash­tag for the campaign

Update 2: How scared is the left? They are argu­ing the photo but not the num­bers. Details here.

Update 3: Stacy Links again and points out some­thing impor­tant:

Look: I’ve known the guys on Team Mitt pretty well for a cou­ple of years now. When I went up to Mass­a­chu­setts to cover the Scott Brown cam­paign in Jan­u­ary 2010, one of the first cam­paign staffers I met was Eric Ferhn­strom, one of Romney’s top advis­ers. If Ferhn­strom and the rest of the Rom­ney guys were good enough to beat a Demo­c­rat for Ted Kennedy’s seat, they deserve a cer­tain amount of con­fi­dence now that it’s their job to beat Obama. Let ‘em do their job.

Mitt’s staff has pitched a nearly per­fect game (etch-​sketch not with­stand­ing) if they keep it up we’ll reach the point where the left is so scared they will be sprout­ing Neo Con­fed­er­ate Sex Panic again.