Democrats Now Believe Obama Could Lose

With five months until Election Day, Barack Obama faced a grim new reality in June 2012: Republicans believed Mitt Romney could win — and Democrats believed Obama could lose.

The blows came in rapid succession. The bitter loss in Wisconsin's gubernatorial recall election — Republican Scott Walker survived the attempt to unseat him — revved up conservatives nationwide, including the millionaire donors who had bankrolled Walker's defense. Anemic job-creation and economic-growth data undercut the White House's central argument. And Bill Clinton, the 42nd President, freelanced through two television interviews: in one he lauded Romney's business record as "sterling"; in another he broke with the Obama line on extending the Bush-era tax cuts.

Veteran Democratic strategists from previous presidential campaigns began openly wondering whether the Obama re-election operation had the right message. The trajectory looked rough, with a potentially adverse Supreme Court decision on the health care law looming, more bad economic news expected from Europe, and worrisome polling on the horizon.

Then there was the media freak show. Matt Drudge's caustic website kept driving the news cycle with negative, mocking items about Obama, Joe Biden, and their wives. The latest proof of Drudge's potency: Ed Klein's virulently anti-Obama book The Amateur — barred from major TV appearances and mostly ignored by mainstream media — rode Drudge's promotion to the No. 1 slot on the New York Times nonfiction list.

June 2012 was Obama's cruelest month of the campaign. That he survived it — the Supreme Court upheld the health care law later that month, and he won in November — is a reminder that campaigns are marathons measured in months, not weeks.

This article summarizes contemporaneous reporting, including Time magazine's June 2012 coverage of the Obama campaign's difficult stretch.