It was all going so perfectly for President Barack Obama.
He had painted his opponent, former Gov. Mitt Romney, as an out-of-touch rich guy with elevators for his wife's multiple Cadillacs and bank accounts throughout the Caribbean. Romney had no plan—or at least none he was willing to discuss with voters. He was bellicose and callow on foreign policy. And The Groups—women, Hispanics, African-Americans, union members, public employees— were lined up so solidly behind the president he absolutely could not lose.
And then, on October 3 at about 9:04 p.m., Romney took to the stage in Denver and reset the campaign. He was not out of touch at all. He made sense. He had solid ideas, a sense of hope. He connected. He laughed. He seemed confident. The president looked down at his notes. He came across as not wanting to be there. He offered little reason to give him another term.
That night was followed closely by Vice President Joe Biden's neighing, braying debate performance—an effort only a deeply partisan Democrat could've loved. Then there was the Al Smith Dinner, where Romney seemed uncommonly gracious, sensible, and downright funny.
The cascade of cognitive dissonance these Romney appearances unleashed on the nation were like the waves slashing the coast because of Hurricane Sandy. They destroyed the landscape in their path and left something decidedly different, something Democrats now recognize as a true and serious threat to the president's re-election hopes. He can lose, and they know it.
And if Obama does, if he becomes only the sixth president in the last 100 years to lose re-election, he will have no one to blame but himself. He created a Romney so far removed from the real Romney that when voters saw the real Romney they realized they had been had. And voters don't like to be had.
