Obama: End of the Phenom Phase

A couple of observations coming out of Super Tuesday: The "Phenom" phase of Barack Obama's campaign may be ending. The shine may be off the star. Yes, it's still a tight race between the junior senator from Illinois and the junior senator from New York. But up to this point Obama has had the distinct advantage (and disadvantage) of being less well-known; that era is starting to end.

Most damaging to Obama so far is a New York Times article published several days ago showing he claimed to have "passed" a bill regulating nuclear power plants that never did pass the Senate. Worse yet, he participated in negotiations that watered down the bill to the point of meaninglessness. Lastly, he took campaign contributions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from executives and employees of Exelon (the company the bill was in part meant to regulate).

We can all expect to see more of the same as reporters dig deeper into Obama's record.

Here's another media hit against him that is bound to be used against Obama if he claims the Democratic nomination:

The National Journal last week named him the "most liberal" member of the Senate. That's a great title to claim in the middle of the primaries, when the most liberal Democratic voters are heading to the polls. But it's nothing but an albatross heading into a general election, when Republicans will be looking under every tablecloth to find a way to tag the Democratic nominee as "too liberal" for the country.