Obama: “This Shouldn’t Be Close, But It’s Close.”

By Joe Cunningham | 10:00 AM on September 14, 2016

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*President Barack Obama speaks about the Baton Rouge, La., shooting of police officers, Sunday, July 17, 2016, from the briefing room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)*

President Barack Obama spoke to donors in New York yesterday, and made comments that sound suspiciously like panic from the face of the Democratic Party: The race is close. And, given recent polling trends, it’s not something he just said to inspire donors to fork over more, either.

“This shouldn’t be close, but it’s close,” Obama told donors Tuesday night at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee here on the Upper East Side. “The presidential race, we should win. But Donald Trump got the nomination, so weird stuff happens.”

Obama’s remarks come on the cusp of what has actually been a good week for Trump and a terrible one for Hillary Clinton. Starting around August 29, Clinton began what has essentially been a freefall, while Trump has been climbing, according to the RealClearPolitics tracker. It’s not the first time this cycle we’ve seen it, but the news has been particularly harsh on Hillary for the past couple of weeks.

Obama going out and saying this is a sign that Democrats are worried. And they should be. It’s long been held that the Republicans nominated the one person who could lose to Hillary Clinton, but what fewer people expected was that the Democrats would nominate the one person who could lose to Donald Trump. Whether or not that happens is another question entirely.

However, Trump (or maybe just his campaign) has actually been making smart decisions. Someone clearly took away his phone so he can’t tweet, and he has stayed relatively on message (as much as a Donald Trump can, at least). It does not particularly thrill me that he could win, and I’m still not voting on him, but his supporters should count their blessings as it could certainly be worse.

Oh, and there’s on more gem from Obama’s remarks:

“You have a nominee of a major party that shows no awareness of just basic rudimentary domestic or foreign policy, advertises his ignorance every day, who proclaims his role model for leadership is Vladimir Putin,” Obama said.

I have no idea why he’s talking about the 2008 election’s Democratic nominee, but whatever. His call, I guess.