The first rule of Campaign Club is to pick a venue that produces an overflow crowd.  The second rule of Campaign Club is that the first rule is critically important for the kickoff event.  Barack Obama and his team managed to violate both rules, and Breitbart’s Alexander Marlow noticed:

Barack Obama launched his campaign in unspectacular fashion today at Ohio State University, the largest college in the crucial swing state.  A photo posted to twitter by Mitt Romney’s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams reveals sparse attendance.  The above image, according to Williams, was taken during the President’s first official campaign speech.

Here’s the photo, with lots of open seats:

I haven’t seen that many open seats since the last Starland Vocal Band reunion concert.  Afternoon Delight this isn’t.

Of course, the Obama campaign expected overflow crowds at OSU, according to ABC News:

Four years after “Obamamania” swept college campuses and across the country, we will get a glimpse of what the phenomenon looks like the second time around. The Obama campaign expects overflow crowds at both OSU and VCU as part of carefully orchestrated optics. Aides want to portray the president as still highly popular among young people and still able to energize large crowds.

So much for Obamamania.  Why, I doubt that the campaign had more than two or three fainters in this crowd. They did, however, try rearranging deck chairs on this particular Titanic to make it look as though the ship wasn’t sinking:

But the event fell short of the 20,000 supporters the campaign had forecast as organizers moved people from seats to the arena floor in front of the dais to project fullness to television audiences. Obama volunteers had worked feverishly over the last week to gin up a crowd, making multiple calls to residents believed to be supportive of the president.

Twitter was abuzz with photos and comments about vast areas of empty seats in the arena’s upper deck.

That pretty much sums up this President, doesn’t it?  He projects an image of fullness, but he’s mainly an empty suit.  And four years later, he’s not fooling nearly enough people to succeed.