The stupidities keep accumulating. Barack Obama isn't even ready for the midnight to five AM graveyard shift, much less prime time. In the Tuesday labor union debate (the one that preceded last night's gay debate), Obama actually referred to the "president of Canada". As David Frum, a native of Toronto notes, Canada doesn't have a president, only a prime minister.

Los Angeles-based African-American commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson noted this week,

But even if Obama had done and said everything right on foreign policy issues, his slide was inevitable. In fact, there were signs that Obama could hit the wall with voters, and the issue would be his fitness to wear the tag of commander-in-chief.

It would be worse for Obama, Hutchinson continues, if he should by some miracle beat out Clinton or Edwards for the Democratic nomination. His political and foreign policy missteps would make it virtually impossible for him to unhinge one, let alone two states away from the Southern Republican bloc.

And where the fault lies, Hutchinson believes, is clear.

Though it's still early in the presidential game one thing is clear, Obama is the first casualty of Obama.

If Hutchinson is correct, are we witnessing an odd symmetry here -- what was supposed to be the Democratic equivalent in the realm of "straight talking" heading for the same oblivion confronting his Republican counterpart?