Obama 2012 Is Getting Dangerously Cocky

For months, Michael Tomasky has been telling people that Barack Obama will win reelection easily. "But now I'm jumpy," he writes in the Daily Beast, "because everybody else, and I mean everybody, seems to think this now, too." And that, sadly, includes the Obama campaign, which "is sounding ridiculously overconfident." Yesterday, for instance, campaign manager Jim Messina told the New York Times that Arizona "is going to be a swing state," even though the latest poll has Romney up by 11 points.

There are reasons for concern here. A bunch of the states Obama won in 2008 now look like they're up for grabs, and his fundraising isn't nearly as impressive as people thought it would be. Besides, "the press won't want a runaway race all summer, so it will manufacture a close contest even if Romney doesn't have the wherewithal to provide one," Tomasky writes. So yes, Obama is ahead, but "only what I would call perilously ahead—a phrase his team would do well to remember." Catch Tomasky's full column here. (More Barack Obama stories.)