What? Me Worried?

According to a story in the Hartford Courant – You have to hunt for it on page A13 – some black holes have made an appearance in Sen. Barack Obama’s cosmos.

He lost Kentucky by 249,000 votes, “the most lopsided loss by either candidate in more than three months. He's lost ground in the nationwide popular vote steadily since March 1, losing a net of a half-million votes to rival Hillary Clinton. He faces another possible big loss next week in Puerto Rico. And early looks at key battleground states such as North Carolina and Ohio suggest troubles with whites, Hispanics and the working class.

“He's having difficulty in the primaries locking down fall battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and has been unable to show he can win in Republican-leaning states such as Kentucky and Indiana.”

And the ruminations of Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, are not comforting.

The big Mo has disappeared: "Momentum has disappeared. Except for that one stretch between February and March where Obama won 11 in a row, momentum has really taken a backseat to the demographics...

"I think there's concern ... that his coalition has big holes in it. He hasn't consolidated the Democratic Party and he isn't any closer than he was after, say, Super Tuesday. That voter bloc, the white working-class voters, they are in places that Democrats need to win. Without Pennsylvania, without Ohio, the electoral-college map gets difficult for Obama. ... There are general election concerns there."

And the endline to the story is a clunker: “But in key battlegrounds, polls suggest Obama faces a tougher challenge than Clinton might.”