Et tu, Halperin?

Mark Halperin of Time Magazine isn't considered the most unbiased of journalists.

Which makes this piece so devastating.

Barack Obama is being politically crushed in a vise. From above, by elite opinion about his competence. From below, by mass anger and anxiety over unemployment. And it is too late for him to do anything about this predicament until after November's elections.

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

It's one thing for Republicans to say it.

But when left of center reporters discuss left of center power players describing the President as in over his head, that's news.

Perhaps Republicans already have their slogan for 2012.

"We told ya so."