Vin Suprynowicz

It’s Benghazi, stupid.

Who elected Barack Obama president, four years ago? A mass of enthusiastic if somewhat naive young black people — many of them first-time voters — and curiously enough a lot of older white voters, among them my Mom, bless her.

These two apparently disparate groups shared a high level of excitement over the prospect of electing America’s first black president, thus proving this nation had finally escaped the surly bonds of racism.

I’m not making fun of either of these groups. It’s human nature to sometimes put hope ahead of experience. There’s that old saying about second marriages.

But where are the swooning Obama crowds of 2008, today? Gone. The venues are smaller, this time around, yet Democrat organizers still bus in union members to beef up crowd counts.

The unions are hard at work, mind you. Their get-out-the-vote efforts here in Southern Nevada are impressive, even if they do indiscriminately register non-citizens, and then intimidate them to go to the polls, brushing aside explanations that these “registered voters” commit a crime if they vote (which can be done in Nevada merely by presenting a union card and a power bill: See my colleague Glenn Cook’s Nov. 4 column, www.lvrj.com/columnists/Glenn_Cook.html.)

Aided by an in-the-tank Mainstream Media which is about to go over the cliff like lemmings rather than report the truth on Benghazi, can the Culinary and the SEIU and the teachers unions marshal enough of these “new voters” to carry Nevada for the Democrats? Maybe.

Nationwide, though, there are still those aforementioned Old White People to contend with. Many of them served in the armed forces, or have loved ones who did. And despite the best efforts of that Mainstream Media at obfuscation and misdirection, these folks aren’t dumb. They want to know about Benghazi.

Barack Obama deserves to lose re-election based on the economy, alone, mind you. Not his fault? Only in the sense that no one else trying to rescue a free-market economy by applying Marxist dogma learned at the knee of Communist Frank Marshall Davis and shoveling long-discredited Keynesian “stimulus” loot into the maws of his corrupt campaign-donor bankers would have fared any better.

(Yes, Democrats now get more from Wall Street than Republicans, though both are well in the bag, which is why Goldman-Sachs has run the Treasury for decades. And I say “long-discredited” because it was FDR’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, who told a congressional committee in closed-door session on May 9, 1939: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot!”)

But now comes Benghazi.

On Oct. 29, Investors Business Daily editorialized: “The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours, more than enough time for any planes based at Sigonella Air Base in Italy, just 480 miles away, to arrive. According to Fox News, two separate Tier One Special Ops forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators. So who told them to wait?

“Curiously, Gen. Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command, has been relieved of his post after only a year and a half on the job. According to James S. Robbins in the Washington Times, Ham got the same e-mails regarding the terrorist attack by the al-Qaida linked Ansar al-Sharia and immediately began organizing a rescue attempt.

“Gen. Ham is said to have told the Pentagon he had a rapid response team ready and was told to stand down. Ham then reportedly said screw it, he was going to send help and was promptly told he was being relieved of his command. …

“In an interview with Denver News 9 reporter Kyle Clark (Oct. 26), President Obama dodged the question of whether cries for help were ignored and who gave the orders, saying only: ‘The election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened.’

“Oh, yes it does, Mr. President, just as it did in 1980,” the IBD editorialists conclude. “You are the commander in chief, and the American people want to know what you did when the phone was ringing at 3 a.m. and why no help was sent.”

Without naming a single source who can be held to account, the pro-Obama Washington Post reported Friday that “U.S. intelligence officials” say CIA operatives tried to fight their way through the consulate, but failed.

That would seem to imply everything possible was done. But why then was Gen. Ham apparently relieved for trying to launch a military rescue mission? Why was the AC-130 Specter gunship refused permission to fire on the attackers’ mortar positions?

To keep secret the funneling of arms through Benghazi to yet another gang of Islamic extremists in Syria? Has that been OK’d by Congress?

This has been a seven-week full-court press of lies, designed to cover up the way four American heroes were left to die rather than admit the massive fraud and failure of Obama’s Mideast foreign policy from the get-go.

The “Arab Spring”? Tell that to millions of Muslim women who are no longer allowed to drive cars, work outside the home, learn to read, or wear anything but an old tent. And it’s the Republicans who are supposed to be waging a “War on Women”?

Yes, I’ve seen the electoral maps. I understand the math that says the winner must capture the majority of electoral votes on 11 “swing” states — Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

But I can’t see how the Obama ticket counts past 264.

Candidate Obama carried Wisconsin in 2008 by 14 points. With Obama a modest four points ahead, the state was already considered a toss-up — a week back, when hardly anyone knew about the Last Stand in Benghazi of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Obama carried Michigan in 2008 by 16 points. With Obama showing a thin three-point lead, the state was already considered a toss-up — a week back, when hardly anyone knew about the Last Stand in Benghazi of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Truth is, Obama’s best shot was to get out early, demonizing Mitt Romney as a soulless corporate raider. They tried. But the more people have actually seen of Romney, the more that’s worn off. Romney doesn’t have to be great — he just has to seem normal. His victory in the first of three presidential debates was devastating to Democratic attempts to portray him as some out-of-touch monster.

Since then, Barack Obama’s equally desperate attempts to divert attention from his inexplicable and stunning dereliction of duty in Libya — standing by and doing nothing while two former Navy SEALs in their 40s gave their last full measure for the nation that Barack Obama despises, holding the fort for SEVEN HOURS — have failed.

Add that to the fact that the Democrats for the full past year have deliberately written off the white male voter — the guy who’s going to march to the polls Tuesday in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, chant “Where’s my job, you bum?” and pound the Romney button — and I suspect these pretty colored maps are nothing but a remembrance of times past, a shimmering, fading, left-wing dream.

Rasmussen reports as of Wednesday Oct. 31 that 16 percent of white Democrats now support Romney. That’s “Democrats.”

So I suspect America is once again going red. If Romney takes Florida, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina, it’s over. (Of the four, I suspect only Ohio is really still in play for Mr. Obama.)

But if Romney adds Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin? Then Barack Obama marks the high-water mark of bankrupt American state-socialism. He’s the new Jimmy Carter, his collapse and disgrace likely ushering in enough years of Republican rule that by the time it ends we can hope the loyal opposition will no longer be Democrat-Socialist, but instead Laissez-Faire Libertarian.

Note that I don’t offer up Mitt Romney as a government-slasher who’s going to (voluntarily) end the Drug War, close the Federal Reserve, give us back silver money and disentangle us from our bankrupt occupation of scores of nations overseas. That would be former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who’s on the ballot in all 50 states on the Libertarian line and will still get my vote.

I just suspect this election is about to swing, Barack Obama is history, and that if a majority DOES put feel-good patter and a month’s worth of juiced unemployment numbers ahead of their sober responsibility to the nation, voting to saddle us with this character a second time, the dam is about to break, more facts are about to tumble out concerning what this narcissistic poseur has really been up to, and his champions are going to have some serious ’splaining to do.