It isn’t quite panic yet, but the sounds emanating from Obamaland are certainly nervous. If you are David Axelrod, chief strategist for President Obama’s reelection campaign, you are well aware of your idol’s fall, and doubtless less than thrilled to get this question from CNN’s Candy Crowley: “Something that the president said this week struck me. . . . He said it’s not as cool to be an Obama supporter as it was in 2008. . . . I think he’s right. I think it’s not as cool to be an Obama supporter now. How do you get cool back into this?”
Gee, how do you compare a campaign that was based entirely on vapid promises and vaporous sentiment with a referendum on actual job performance? Axelrod denied (unconvincingly) that the 2008 campaign had been a “cult of personality,” and assured Crowley that once the campaign gets “fully engaged and the choices become clear, you are going to see a great deal of activity out there on his behalf.” In a signal of just how feeble the case for Obama’s reelection is, Axelrod fell back on the bogeyman: “I think one of the things that’s going to inform that campaign is whether that Republican candidate is going to yield to some of the forces within his own party or her own party that is driving their — their party further to the right.”
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For the record, there has never been a time in the past 50 years that the Democrats have not claimed to detect a frightening rightward tilt in the GOP — even as the party has nominated such wild-eyed radicals as George H. W. Bush, John McCain, and George W. (“compassionate conservative”) Bush.
Crowley pointed out that support for the president among independents has declined from 52 percent in the 2008 election to 42 percent today, and that even among staunch liberals, 89 percent of whom voted for Obama in 2008, support has dipped to 64 percent. How does the Obama team recreate a victory in light of these numbers?
She might have added so much more to that question. She might have asked how an incumbent requests reelection when the unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent. Even more worrisome, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fully half of the jobless are now long-term unemployed, meaning they have been without jobs for 27 weeks or longer. That is the highest percentage of long-term unemployed since the Labor Department starting keeping such records in 1948.
She might have asked how an incumbent achieves a vote of confidence when commodity prices on food and fuel are rising and, relatedly, the value of the dollar is plunging; the housing market has yet to recover from the crash despite (or, more likely, because of) the president’s Home Affordable Modification Plan, which has prevented markets from clearing; a record one in seven Americans now receives Food Stamps; one out of six Americans is on Medicaid; and a whopping 62.5 percent of respondents say the nation is on the wrong track.
When the economy is strong, elections can turn on a variety of issues. But when the economy is poor, elections are seldom about anything else. The 1980 race was illustrative.
Though the Carter/Reagan race is remembered now as a landslide for Reagan, the contours of the victory were not apparent during the campaign. As late as October 29, Gallup had the race as a dead heat, with Reagan at 44 percent and Carter at 43 (it was a three-man race). Other polling showed larger margins for Reagan but nothing like the ten -point margin of victory he achieved. At the time, the contest was perceived as close.
It was after the first and only debate, a week before Election Day, that voters definitively moved into Reagan’s column. At the time, inflation was running at 13.5 percent, unemployment was 7 percent, and interest rates were 21 percent. American hostages remained in Tehran. President Carter’s approval ratings hovered in the 30s during the final year of his tenure.
Why wasn’t Carter perceived as hopelessly weak? Perhaps because as bad as things were, voters needed to be confident about the challenger’s fitness. Carter had succeeded to some degree in frightening voters about Reagan’s (you guessed it) right-wing extremism. Reagan’s reassuring debate performance allayed those fears. And Reagan’s summation drilled to the heart of voters’ concerns. Ask yourself, Reagan advised, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
The economy today is in some respects worse than it was in 1980. Barring a catastrophe, little else will matter in 2012. Any credible Republican can defeat President Obama — which is why Mr. Axelrod is already smearing as “extremist” a person whose name he does not know.
Axelrod is asked to play a bad hand in a high stakes poker game. He can only bluff or fold. Since he can not fold his hand, he has to bluff and distract his opponents.
Distraction is a key strategy that the liberals are well versed in. Watch for them to create a smokescreen crisis and then argue that Obama is the only man that can fix in. For those that still support Obama, they will of course buy in.
The limousine liberals are not feeling the pain that the middle class are experiencing. Cronies of the president, such as the fat cats on Wall Street, Jeffrey Immelt (GE paid no taxes)and the unions will stand fast. But they don't represent the majority of voters.
Obama will try to use his community organizing skill to continue to fool the sleep walkers among our populace. Anyone that thinks logically will not want to continue his employment in 2012.
"It was after the first and only debate, a week before Election Day, that voters definitively moved into Reagan’s column."
Indeed. And debates may very well prove decisive in the current election.
The thing with Obama's usual tricks is that they only work when he is the only one talking. The usual ploys--constructing convenient straw men to attack, acting like he's the only adult in the room, proclaiming his moderation whilst all around him are extremists, issuing feel-good but ultimately meaningless platitudes--all are tricks of the teleprompter. They don't work in any situation where he is challenged in any way.
And they won't work in a debate. In a debate, he will be challenged with the things he does not want to talk about: his track record, and where he stands on previous promises made (and there have been many promises, and few have been kept). The platitudes and the voice-of-moderation and the "we are the ones we have been waiting for" shtick will fall apart like wet cardboard when the actual record of his Presidency is brought to light.
Hence, a prediction: the Obama campaign will do everything possible to avoid a debate, and if absolutely pressed on having a debate, will have as few as possible and as late as possible. They will do everything in their power to keep him out of any venue that he does not have total control over. That spells out a fairly clear strategy for the Republican candidate--push for debates as early and as frequently as possible, and use the debates to discuss what the President has done so far.
The left needs to be called on their Swiss Cheese relativism.
When it's convenient, they point to the holes and surrounding scent and proclaim that this is the cheese, when truth hurts them they point at the same hole and say, that's empty air - real cheese is yellow.
The fiscal right is no better: demanding morality only about their money/taxes etc., but they can't wait to dump God on everything else.(maybe we should set aside the "social issues" for this election")so they can battle over the thirty pieces of silver.
It is hard to hit a shifting target - which is why they loathe God and His absolute truth (that set's us all free)
I like the poker analogy; it's as good as any. The 2008 "Hope and Change" tag line and strategy will not deliver the votes, nor will the media propagated mass hypnosis. If the American people take the time to look on the table, all the cards have been played by this administration.
What remains for the Obama re-election campaign, is convincing the American people of two things: 1) that the societal and personal challenges that Americans face simply do not exist or are at least grossly exaggerated by the Republicans. 2) Painting any challenger as the modern political manifestation of Ebenezer Scrooge. - Queue the TV spot of the Republican nominee rolling wheel-chaired Granny off the cliff.
I hope the GOP nominee is smart and politically agile enough to counter and go on the offensive. It’s true, conservatism is largely a defensive political posture, but windows of opportunity do open, now is one of those times. Obama is vulnerable, and he knows it. So let the GOP press the advantage.
According to MikeB, anyone who isn't a socialist is some form of extremist.
There are precious few areas of overlap between the birchers and the modern Republicans, but that doesn't matter, because according to Mike, they are both extremists, and that is more important than what they actually believe or do.
Mike B--leave it to you to jump in w/ some comment designed to make conservatives look crazy. I really don't know why you keep punishing yourself by reading NRO.
As for the "John Birch" comment, I'll confess to not knowing very much about it--except for the fact that it is held up by people like you as the conservative equivalent of the Weathemen. So I went to today's most reliable source of info--Wikipedia! It says:
"The John Birch Society is an American radical right-wing[1][2] political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic[3][4] and personal freedom."
I don't see the "radical" stuff in here, and if that's an accurate assessment of where they stand, I might just join!
Either way--anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom all sound like good principle from where I'm standing. Which is obviously WAY to the right of where you're standing.
Oh, and the column was about how Obama is going to paint an unnamed opponent as radical and extreme. Sound familiar? Any comments that might actually be on point?
Leftist don't own the words extreme/extremist/Extremism quite as much as they think they do.
It's like the left falsely accusing the right of being Nazis and draconian etc. You see, the left so often projects onto the right that which they are themselves.
It's Statism-Leftism 101; tyranny is the end, lies are the means.
The Birchers were kooks. One of them publicly accused Ike of being a closet communist.
WFB rescued conservatism from the fringe.
As far as MikeB is concerned, I feel no need to defend my ideology of individualism and limited government so long as his side has Cynthia McKinney running to Libya to praise Q and say America is inferior to Libya in key ways.
The word "extremist" should justifiably be hung on liberals like a millstone around their necks. One example among many is their support of same sex "marriage". The very idea of two men "marrying" one another is breath-takingly radical and yet is casually endorsed by the entire liberal establishment. Now that's extreme.
I take it back. The Birchers were not kooks. No more than any American Jewish anti-Nazi political organization in the 1930s were. No more than Churchill was in the 1930s when he could see what the rest of the world did not want to see.
How can you be a kook when you see Soviet tanks rolling through the capital cities of Eastern Europe? Or the Soviets blockading West Berlin in order to starve it into submission? Or watch as Stalin's man Alger Hiss had FDR's ear at Yalta?
Kooks? For opposing the longest enduring evil of the 20th Century? I'll take 'em. You can have the "Free Mumia" crowd.
I do think his liberalism is most often a vehicle for expressing rage. How else would you explain attacks on people rather than ideas? It is a bitterness couched in sarcasm, and its favorite tool is the ad hominem fallacy.
Go to any liberal forum and attempt to make a rational defence of a conservative idea. It won't take long for someone to make you the topic of discussion rather than the idea you expouse.
"Gee, how do you compare a campaign that was based entirely on vapid promises and vaporous sentiment with a referendum on actual job performance?"
This is the single best one-sentence summation of liberal politics I have ever read.
Hello KentB and CitizenC!
Just ask MikeB a direct, frank and unambiguous question that requires an honest answer. Watching him squirm is like watching a two year old caught red handed in the cookie jar explaining himself.
This Presidient has a rhetorical habit that may be more annoying than W's sytax. In virtually every policy speech he creates a phony and outrageous straw man. "There are those who want to (insert made up position/quality here)". Whether it is throwing grandma off the train, sending children to bed hungry or returning to Jim Crow laws, he makes these absurd and unfounded accusations and implies the opposition supports them-and gets away with it. When has he ever been asked in a press conference to identify anyone taking the extreme positions he describes? Never. Very annoying.
As usual, Axelrod and his ultra-liberal buddies think the American people are stupid. Calling any Republican extreme will not work this time around. The American public now realizes that Obama is so extremely far out in "no man's land" to the left that it would take Indiana Jones to find him if he ever got lost.
I can't tell you how many of my liberal acquaintences have told me that the would never vote for Obama again.
On top of that, these are people who have been Democrats all of their lives. But they are not just going to stay home and not vote, they are going to vote for the Republican no matter who he or she is!! It seems Obama is probably in more trouble than even he and his advisors recognize.
"As usual, Axelrod and his ultra-liberal buddies think the American people are stupid."
Be careful. I once had a friend who asked me why politicians treat us with such contempt.
I explained that you had to look at it from the politician's point of view.
As a politician I lie, I cheat, I steal, I break the law with impunity and I scoff at everyone. And yet, given all that I have done, people still re-elect me to office. Why would I have anything but contempt for the people?
Times change but people remain the same. If we are lucky the election will be close but in our favor. The question is will we have more than our share of good luck in 2012? I am afraid for our future.
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