President Barack Obama may have already been rattled, as Sarah Palin suggested on Thursday, in the days leading up to his disastrous debate with Mitt Romney on Wednesday because of a potential campaign finance scandal.
But even if the Obama campaign had been consumed with blocking a story in the works by a national news outlet about potential illicit overseas campaign donations, as a Washington Examiner report indicated, advisers still did not think Obama would perform as terribly as he did when sharing a stage with Romney.
“At least two” Obama advisers told The Daily Beast they were “shell-shocked” by Obama’s performance.
And former Obama Chief of Staff William Daley told the news outlet that many had assumed Obama would win, and Romney’s victory allowed people to give his candidacy a second look because opinion is “he had an extremely good night.”
Obama advisers are also worried that Romney’s victory would launch “a new media narrative declaring a Romney comeback, and a tightening of the race.”