OBAMA THE POL – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  A remarkable edition of "Meet the Press" yesterday exploded the myth of an all-powerful Obama political machine.  From the Washington Free Beacon:

Meet The Press host Chuck Todd and his Sunday panelists outlined the Democratic Party’s heavy losses under the Obama administration, with guest Marc Caputo saying the idea of the “Obama political machine” was a “lie” that couldn’t win without him on a ballot.

Under Obama, Democrats have lost 13 Senate seats and 69 House seats in Congress, and the results are even more staggering on a local level. Democrats have lost 12 governorships, including Kentucky last week with the election of Matt Bevin, 30 state legislative chambers and more than 900 state legislative seats. That’s the worst showing for an incumbent president’s party since the Richard Nixon years, due to the taint of Watergate.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said the Democrats were getting “smoked” by Republicans strategically, although she appeared to bring it all back to gerrymandering without actually saying it.

“What’s happening is the Democratic Party is getting smoked strategically by the Republican Party,” Maddow said. “They invested heavily, particularly in advance of the 2010 cycle, in winning state legislative seats all across the country that nobody in the national press cared about. They flipped enough of them to flip enough legislatures to flip the congressional map that locks it in for a decade, and the Republicans are thinking that way. Democrats just aren’t.”

Politico reporter Marc Caputo said the idea of the Barack Obama political machine was nonsense.

“The Barack Obama political machine and oh, we’re big data? It’s a lie,” Caputo said. “The Obama political machine without Obama is no machine. They don’t win. That was a largely personality-based campaign in two different cycles.”

Also, Caputo said, Obama simply is not very popular.

COMMENT:  I hope they're right.  Republicans have done very well in state and district elections.  It's the presidency that is tough for them, and that's the greatest prize.  Obama has been elected twice.  Before that, Republican George W. Bush barely won the 2000 and 2004 elections.  Before that was the Democratic Clinton era.  The only time in recent history in which Republicans had a decisive grip on the White House was the age of Reagan. 

Right now, I don't see a Reagan-like candidate emerging.  Add to that the bold press bias that any Republican will face.  It won't be easy next year, but it can be done, if Republicans nominate a solid candidate and stop fighting with each other.

November 9,  2015