A man's gotta know his limitations..

"..Sunday afternoon matinee cancelled.."

Word's going around that the crowds at Obama's campaign speeches are pretty thin these days.

Hell, this ain't new. It started around when the luster began to wear off and people discovered the was a liar and a SCOAMF. It first manifested itself seriously when he went to Massachusetts in 2010 to rally the troops for the insipid Martha Coakley against Scot Brown. That was in a high school gym where the had to draw the curtains across half of the floor to hide the gaping vacancies.

I chronicled the love-fest-throttle-back in a series of posts at The War Planner entitled Cracks Part I, Cracks Part II, Cracks, Part II.5, Cracks..er..3.0? 4.0? Whatevs.., Cracks Part IV,  and Cracks 5.0 that variously point out plummets in the pools and sparse event attendance. O.K., so you don't have to click on all them, I was just intent on showing you that I had all the exists covered years before this became the meme.

However, I would also like to call your attention to the sparse campaign kick-off at Ohio State that this SCOAMF experienced, the one where the upper decks of the were devoid of human form and the Obamatons went through all sorts of mental gymnastics to revise the max seating capacity of that venue so the percentage would not seem so egregious.

But now the limitations of this man's popularity are becoming embarrassingly apparent and it's gotten a little more outrageous. It seems that these crowd down-turns have caused the Pantload's campaign to fumble for excuses to alleviate concerns. The recent one they came up with is a howler:

However, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not drawing the crowds they once could. The New York Times is reporting that the Obama campaign is saying that it is intentionally limiting crowd size at their events because of security and cost:

“We have plenty of time for big rallies,” a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. “Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd.

”Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator." And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.

With this sputtering proffered excuse extant and a definite trend being seen, the Washington Free Beacon has come up with the reducto ad absurdum metaphor for Obama's current campaign trajectory:

The most telling moment of the campaign this week was not Mitt Romney or Joe Biden’s speech to the NAACP convention, but President Obama’s Tuesday appearance in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Nor was it the content of Obama’s message that made his utterances noteworthy. It was the small venue: yet another community college. Now, Kirkwood Community College is no doubt a fine place, but Sports Authority Field at Mile High it is not. And one is unlikely to come across a better indicator of presidential shrinkage.

The White House took desperate pains to note that the president talked to an “overflow crowd.” What it did not mention was that an overflow crowd in a community college gym could not fill the seats in, say, the OSU stadium. There was a time when Obama regaled audiences of 30,000, 75,000, 80,000 people. Now he speaks to true believers at high schools. By the end of the campaign he may well find himself, like Spinal Tap, playing to a threadbare crowd at Themeland Amusement Park in Stockton, California (a city which, fittingly enough, is bankrupt). The sign outside: “PUPPET SHOW AND PRESIDENT OBAMA.”

In borrowing on this metaphor, I want to dredge up one of the most delicious moments in the movie Spinal Tap where scenery and props for an upcoming concert are discussed:

..may be an apt substitute for the now-gone-missing Greek columns this patent phony used in Denver during his bloated inauguration nomination acceptance speech.

(Cross-posted from The War Planner)