The Wintour of their discontent [updated]

A bit more on the god-awful "New York Night" raffle to "win" a dinner with Obama and a couple of the "most incredible women in the world" (that would be an actress and a woman best known for faux gardening and real vacationing). And, er, Anna Wintour. (Video here.) If you both know and care who she is, this great opportunity -- but you must enter now! -- is for you. John Podhoretz has a little fun with it and concludes that the Obama team, like its leader, seems to be out of touch with those non-incredible types otherwise known as "regular people":

But why, pray tell, is Wintour informing the nation of a dinner to which the nation will not be invited, and at which, one might surmise from the eating habits of the rich and famous, the menu will include a salad of three lettuce leaves without dressing with a Tic Tac for dessert?

“It’ll be a fantastic evening, and you can join us,” she says. What? Actually dine with Anna Wintour — a woman who, it is said, will have you fired if you dare to speak to her in the Condé Nast elevator? Will she even bother to look at you? In the commercial, she can barely bring herself to look at the camera.

Of course she will! “We’re saving the two best seats in the house for you,” she says — by which she must mean the seats near the kitchen. Either those, or the ones at a table featuring whichever Condé Nast editor is getting canned next.

Then comes the kicker: “You have to enter to win. Enter right now at BarackObama dot com, slash New York Night.”

And there we have it. The Obama campaign has become a raffle. The winning prize is dinner with Wintour and those other people (movie star, president, his wife). And as in all raffles, you present something valuable of yours as the means of entry.

In this case, that means personal information about yourself for the Obama campaign to capture and then pester you within an inch of your life between now and November.

Read the rest. Of course they're hucksters, but it's the ineptitude that surprises. I'm beginning to believe all the Obama-campaign-is-in-big-trouble stories. Here's one:

A growing chorus of Democrats, citing a shifting mood among voters, are wondering why Obama isn't doing better than he is five months out from the election.

"I'm scared as [expletive]," one top Democratic strategist told The Washington Examiner, granted anonymity to candidly discuss Obama's re-election prospects. "This message from the campaign is clearly a laughable attempt to gloss over a terrible patch for the president."

Added Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, "It's gone from 'We expect he'll be re-elected' to 'We think he'll be re-elected' to 'We hope he'll be re-elected' to 'He'll probably be re-elected if everything goes right.' Yes, they have something to worry about."

The economy added just 69,000 jobs in May, well below projections, and the unemployment rate inched up to 8.2 percent at a time when voters are intently focused on the issue of jobs.

Moreover, Obama's early attacks on Romney's tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital backfired to an extent when other Democrats -- including former President Clinton and Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker -- defended Romney's career and private equity investments in general.

(Rush Limbaugh said Clinton was taken to the Cory Booker Memorial Woodshed for remarking that Mitt Romney had done "good work" at Bain, had a "sterling business career," and was definitely qualified to be president. If the Obama people are touchy about the qualification issue, we understand why.) 

It does seem a bit early for the Obama campaign to be trotting out this line:

"The only poll that really matters is Nov. 6, Election Day."

Isn't that something losers resort to in the final couple of weeks? I guess Messina and company aren't the A-Team after all.

This is interesting: The small-donor well may have run dry for Obama.

***
Afterthought: I failed to grasp, until talking with husband as we drove to the bus stop this morning, the most absurd and even insulting aspect of Obama's "New York Night": that it's an attempt to appeal to Women. This is what the Obama campaign believes matters to women voters:

Stylish clothes (and accessories!)
Fashion magazines
Celebrities who wear glamorous clothes (and accessories)
Actresses, especially actresses who star in TV shows about "relationships" and  expensive clothes (especially shoes)

And you thought women cared about kids, jobs, the high cost of gas and groceries, and all that boring stuff.

***
Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link!
***
The same to Doug Ross!
***
Most recent posts here. Follow us on Twitter here. Amazon store here.