Why is the President barely winning in unconstested elections?

Rascist...Democrats.

The cognitive dissonance is deconstructed by John Podoretz:

Instantly, the Obama-defensive media sprang into action and located the nefarious explanation for these dreadful numbers: To wit, the voters are evil.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza said the results “have drawn a collective eyeroll from Democrats — and many others who closely follow national politics — who ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism. No, none of these Democrats are willing to put their name to that allegation . . . But it is without question the prevalent viewpoint they hold privately.”

Wait a minute. Haven’t I been told for 30 years now — and by such media eminences as the longtime Washington Postie Thomas B. Edsall — that dastardly Democratic racists in Southern states had left their party for the more cruelly Caucasian climes of the GOP and had thereby turned Dixie into a Republican stronghold?

Why, yes I have. But despite the theory that the GOP had sucked in all the available racists in a 12-state area over the past 30 years, apparently there are still melanin-hating meshugenahs in the Democratic camp. It took having a black president to smoke them out at last. They were so clever at hiding their tracks that they probably even voted for the black candidate in 2008.

Only rather than switching parties like a normal evil racist would do, they chose to stay Democrats in 2012 just so they could embarrass and humiliate Obama.

Those who assert that Obama’s poor showing among voters in his own party is due to the one factor he can’t control are not doing him any favors. They are, instead, helping create a smoke screen of self-delusion.

It seems to be part of an overall mindset.

See also the Taranto Principle:

According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans. According to Mr. Taranto, in 2004 the press quietly went along with Senator Jean-Francois Kerry's exaggerated claims to heroism and military prowess, thus encouraging his braggadocio and leaving him utterly unprepared when his fellow vets stepped forward and demonstrated that he had been a dreadful showoff in Vietnam.