Jim Wooten thinks it’s getting close to the tipping point for Barack Obama:

Democrats know something, and desperation is setting in. They have a novice campaigner who wanders off message. With every advantage in the primaries, Obama couldn’t win the big states — New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania — against Hillary Clinton, even when he got to define the rules for running against him. She could never risk alienating the base she’ll need in 2012; John McCain and Sarah Palin have no such constraints — hence the panic.

For a “change” candidate, Obama appears to be a man locked in time, unable to move past criticism, unable to move from the grip of the Democratic left, unable to adapt to the changed reality that the campaign is not the referendum on the war in Iraq or on the administration of George W. Bush that he’d envisioned.

He’s begun to sound dated. Last week, for example, he devoted valuable campaign days — less than two months remain — into explaining a silly “lipstick on a pig” line. The McCain campaign had reacted, accusing him of making the reference to Palin. “I don’t care what they say about me,” Obama responded. “But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and ‘Swiftboat politics.’ Enough is enough,” he said. (The Swiftboat reference is from the 2004 campaign of John Kerry).

He is certainly right in this regard: most everything about Obama seems predictable and old. The policies — multilateralism above all else and big government at home — are a mix of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson. His insistence that John McCain stop “lying” about his record is vintage Bob Dole.  His “woe is me, beset by mean Republicans” is warmed-over John Kerry. And because this campaign has gone on forever, his own message (“change we can believe in”) is so dated and hackneyed he can hardly use it any longer.

It is ironic that John McCain seems fresher, in part because of his very unconventional Convention speech (sounding very unRepublican in front of Republicans) and in part because of his VP pick. He is also benefiting now, ironically, from the minimal coverage he received previously. Many people literally haven’t heard his message before.

This doesn’t mean the race is done. Not by a long shot. But if Obama loses his lead for good, there will be plenty of similarities with past Democrats — Mondale, Kerry, and Dukakis, to name a few.