The Democratic Party and mainstream media both bet big on Barack Obama in 2008, and doubled down in 2012. Both institutions wagered that his policies and his purported skills and abilities would benefit America. Now, with scandal and disaster breaking on nearly every front, those bets are coming back to haunt them.

Joseph Curl, writing in the Washington Times,  speaks of President Obama’s “terminal velocity,” with the economy in “free fall, ObamaCare being a contributing if not driving factor, and the GOP nominating candidates who can win, and the president looking detached with his compulsive golf habit. He posits that other Democrats find themselves in a no-win situation:

Democrats will have nowhere to run. If they flee the president, they’ll look weak, defensive — and guilty. If they back his failed policies, they’ll look even worse. Republicans never cease to amaze at their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but even top Democrats are now predicting a bloodbath for the party on Nov. 4.

And following a bloodbath, 2015 would bring a GOP-controlled House and Senate, capable of sending legislation to President Obama for his signature or veto. A veto would put Democrat Senators on the spot, forcing them to join Obama’s camp in preventing measures from taking effect, something that ought to be a worry for those facing re-election in 2016, and realizing that Obama’s problems are not getting any better, laying the path to yet another bloodbath that could end their poltiical careers.

But there is also the possibility of constituting a Special Select Committee like the one that investigated Watergate, to inquire more deeply into the IRS scandals. Note that a felony has been admitted to by the IRS, but so far the attorney general has failed to pursue the matter with a criminal investigation, and the IRS commissioner is refusing to call for a special counsel.

Our media enemies are also in deep doo-doo. Roger L. Simon writes at PJ Media:

They [the MSM] may be in the tank for Obama, but much more than that they are in the tank for themselves — a whole lifestyle and world view that has been going on for decades, moral narcissism distilled to its purest essence.

It is that world view and lifestyle that is under threat in the debacle that is the Obama administration.  This world view, promulgating supposedly altruistic values,  but actually stemming from a profound need to be thought of as good for their beliefs irrespective of results of those beliefs, is in a precarious position as never before.  The disintegration of a politician or a political party is bad enough. Far worse is the disintegration of a personality, the disintegration of the self. That is intolerable.

The real reason these media folks cannot face reality is that to do so would mean to see their very persons, everything they have ever stood for, or thought they stood for, or pretended to themselves they stood for, dissolving in a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Roger is profoundly correct here. The New York Times hacks (and that’s what they are for front-paging the closure of a couple of lanes on a bridge for weeks and ignoring the corruption at the IRS) are sustained by their self-concept as virtuous crusaders and prestigious members of an enlightened elite. With the exception of those who inherited or married money (like Thomas Friedman), they do not have the luxury lifestyle that those they write about enjoy. As Hillary Clinton has demonstrated so convincingly, this leads to a sense of having sacrificed, of being noble. And a nagging sense that things are not quite right, that they are owed something more.

But when reality repudiates their vision, it leads to a psychological crisis. Roger correctly warns:

Get ready for endless tantrums of many sorts.  When moral narcissism of the level we have been experiencing breaks down, anything can happen.  The media will do almost anything to preserve their fragile selves. Evasion, distraction and outright lies will be continuous and may reach unprecedented levels.  

The mainstream media has been in trouble for years, but their silence about the ills of the Obama administration has finished them off as never before.  They will stumble on, but from here on in they will be, as was said of the U.S. during the Vietnam era, a “pitiful, helpless giant.”

The technological revolution that is the internet has already undermined the financial foundations of the broadcast networks and the daily newspapers that constitute the core of media support for Obama. When a crisis of credibility and a potential psychological breakdown are added to the mix, there is a recipe for a kind of implosion.