It's still ages early in the national election cycle, but President Obama is already showing consistent and growing polling advantage over his Republican rivals.
Reasons for this increasing edge abound, not least of which have been the R candidates themselves, for whom it would be a mistake to say "to know him is to love him."
But this growing aversion to Republican presidential alternatives is more than a personality problem. Well, maybe not with Newt.
The reason American voters are saying, when asked by Republican suitors if they're busy on November 6, that they have to wash their hair, is that those voters are realizing they and the nominee have almost nothing in common.
To win over enough of the Republican base to have a hope of being nominated, the GOP candidates must endorse positions most Americans not only reject, but which are simply too far out to be acceptable in a perspective leader.
Today's ruling by the 9th Circuit in the Prop 8 case has already garnered condemnation from all the 'Pub candidates save Mr. Paul, who holds no hope of seeing the nomination. In coming weeks and months, you will hear these men denounce the decision as "judicial overreach" and "legislating from the bench."
Yet the majority of Americans look at this overreach and legislating and say, if anything, "Oh, well. About time, I guess."
The number of those saying yes to marriage equality has topped 50%, more than twice the number of those who agreed with the right to interracial marriage guaranteed by the Supreme Court in the 1967 Loving case. The "Defense of Marriage" is looking more like Custer's defense at Little Big Horn.
The same disparity between the candidates' "America" and that populated by Americans is found on issue after issue. The GOP contenders stand as one in their opposition to Sharia law, a danger feared by less than a quarter of their countrymen. They stand firm in their determination to continue the Afghanistan war indefinitely, a position shared by only a third of Americans.
Higher taxes on the "job creators?" Heaven forbid! "Americans" would never stand for it! Except the two-thirds of Americans, including 53% of Republicans who are demanding just that.
Legal, safe abortion? Majority. Real environmental protection? Majority. Tougher financial regulation? How 'bout a 6-to-1 majority? Before Occupy.
The base, the fundies, the Tea Party, whatever you wish to call them, are forcing the Republican candidates farther and farther away from the uncertain, always-fluid middle, which is not only much bigger than the edges, but pulls the edges toward it. And that middle is increasingly looking at those candidates and coming to the most damning conclusion every suitor dreads:
"You're nice and all, but I just don't think we have much in common."
Whoever emerges from this cruel and humiliating primary war will have proved himself ready to lead America, but it is an America where almost no actual Americans live. He will be king of an empty country, like Gahan Wilson's victorious conqueror of the waste land.
We speculate a good deal on what a second Obama term might be like, whether he'll set free his inner progressive or remain the cautious compromiser he's proved thus far. Much of what he does will depend on things utterly beyond his control--world events, the composition of Congress, the state of the economy.
But there is one thing we can safely predict about Barack Obama 2.0: he'll be a citizen of the same America as most of us.
The same, sadly, cannot be said of his eventual opponent.