I blame more his obviously bad job performance, the crappy economy, and his inability to argue how his next term will be different due to no plans to do anything different. Nit that the strategy was good, and especially that the debates and his team’s spinning of them weren’t important. It’s just that his early lead came about because no one was paying attention back then.
Here’s the deal. You win the Presidency in 2008, and spend all of 2009 and 2010...on jobs, budget cutting within the federal government, tax reform, and rebuilding the economy. Your party takes great numbers out of the November 2010 election and comes right back....looking great and the economy is actually showing positive signs.
Then you sign up to do a little bit of immigration reform, find five things to improve healthcare in America which amounts to 175 pages of legislative paperwork that you can read in one afternoon, and then agree to a Republican proposal over energy.
You’d walk into 2012 and re-win the Presidency easily. But he couldn’t do it....he had a totally different game-plan, which was set up to fail.