I recall the moment when I realized for the first time — not feared, but realized — that Bush would lose the election.......

Keep that in mind when you hear Barack Obama on the stump talking about “Romnesia.”  Those elementary-school attacks using people’s names are something one usually farms out to surrogates (and is pretty lame regardless).  That comes with the grasping of “binders,” literally grasping in Joe Biden’s case (and literally literally, not Bidenesque “literally”), as a major campaign theme. When the President himself starts using attacks like this, it speaks to his desperation more than his opponent’s positions.  It adds more heft to the argument that the first debate wasn’t a fluke, but demonstrated an actual gap in presidential stature between the two men.