Obviously, the Obama campaign is maintaining that the many odds are all still pointing in President Obama’s favor, and in New Hampshire over the weekend, senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett helped to propagate that message in an interview with MSNBC.

Mika: It seemed like that [binders full of women] got a great response. …I think that was something that resonated.

Jarrett: Well, of course it did, because in this day and time, you need to find a binder full of women? It resonates not just here in New Hampshire, but everywhere I’ve been. Women are saying, ‘What is going on?’ Are we really going back to that kind of philosophy, or are we going to go forward? … The national polls are all over the place. You can find a poll that says just about anything, and where we really look is the battleground states. And in the battleground states, the president is still double digits ahead when it comes to women. Why is that? Because I think women know that the president, their entire life, has been on their side fighting for them. …

So, I suppose that with “women know that the president… has been on their side fighting for them,” the implication is that Mitt Romney has somehow been fighting against women? Yes, women are indeed wondering, “What is going on?” …With the economy, with jobs, with the deficit; which is exactly why, ever since the first debate in which Mitt Romney and Barack Obama stood side-by-side and compared their policies without all of the extra noise, women somehow managed to stop “thinking with their ladyparts,” as Team Obama would have them do, and instead realized that Mitt Romney isn’t the dastardly, backwards, women-hating figure Team O had painted him to be. The “binders” dustup certainly did resonate, but I don’t think it resonated in the way Jarrett is hoping it did — what resonated was just how petty and trifling the Obama campaign’s attacks have become.

That is precisely why the gender gap has been steadily shrinking into practically nothing: Obama’s small-potatoes attacks and message of increased government dependence are having the opposite of the empowering effect for which they’re shooting, and the Democrats’ reliance on the ostensible gender gap shows just how much trouble they’re really in.