Is Obama Beating Himself?

Holman Jenkins, at the Wall Street Journal's site, is the latest to comment on the overwhelming negativity and dishonesty of the Obama campaign...

Team Obama can also have no illusion about the purpose of its campaign strategy. It doesn't kid itself that its attacks on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital will cause voters to flock to Obama. If anything, Mr. Obama knows his tactics cost him donor and voter enthusiasm on his own side.

The goal is to drive up Romney negatives. The payoff the campaign hopes for is that voters who would never vote for Mr. Obama will prefer to stay home rather than vote for that rich so-and-so Romney. The White House strategy is a "shrink-the-electorate" strategy. Team Obama will play the Mormon card at some point too. Count on it.

Yup. To quote myself again,

I'm tired of the idea that [Mitt Romney's] got to be a bad guy because a) he's been successful and b) Obama's record is dismal so he can't run on it. Again, some of his policies I'll defend, and some I won't, and anyone who doesn't like his policies is free to vote against him, but the character assassination coming out of the Obama machine, and the non-critical way in which many seem to have accepted and spread it, is repugnant to me.

...Obama can't run on his record, so the entire campaign strategy has got to be to make Mitt Romney unacceptable to 50.1% of the voters. So that's what they're doing. They are running the ridiculous "outsourcing" accusations...and, at the fringes, they're doing things like the "Dogs Against Romney" attacks.

I know, that's how the game is played. But that doesn't make it any less unpleasant...