Opinion: Ignore the Illusory Polls: Obama Will Probably Lose

"YO!"

(NEWSER) – The polls have been shifting President Obama's way of late, and Democrats seem to be a confident bunch. At the Daily Beast, Michael Medved tries to burst that balloon: He thinks Obama is probably going to lose. At the moment, polls shows that most peopleexpect Obama to win—mainly because he's the incumbent. That's the reason Democrats are confident, but "logic and history should reassure (Republicans) that the race will inevitably tilt in their direction," he writes.

An incumbent president running for re-election is nowhere near the lock to win that conventional wisdom suggests, writes Medved, especially when the nation's economy is in such bad shape. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, is built on lazy "perceptions"—hey, things can't be that bad, or he wouldn't be up in the polls—rather than substance, he argues. It's working for now, but when people "reconnect the sorry state of the nation with the available choices in leadership, neither common sense nor historical precedent" points to a second term for Obama. "Both past and present suggest that the future will make him a likely loser." Click for Medved's full column.