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Obama's Aura of Defeat
Whether he ultimately wins or loses, I agree with this. Obama has been campaigning as a desperate, scrappy, and someone embittered challenger. He doesn't look like an incumbent with good news about his future leadership.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/obamas-aura-of-defeat/
Obama?s Aura of Defeat
In an argument that was echoed and amplified around the liberal twittersphere yesterday, New York?s Jonathan Chait made the case that the Romney campaign has bluffed the press into covering the last two weeks of the campaign as though Obama?s losing. Like George W. Bush in 2000, who famously (and probably foolishly) campaigned in California to lend himself an air of inevitability in the closing days of the campaign, Team Romney?s current brash confidence is designed to persuade the media to overlook the underlying numbers that still point to an advantage for the incumbent. And it?s working, Chait argues: The ?widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead,? he writes, ?is Romney?s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.?
I agree with Chait that the numbers still show Obama with a slightly clearer path than Romney to an (excruciatingly narrow) electoral college victory. But if you?re looking for a reason (besides, of course, the national polling showing an ever-so-slight Romney edge) why the media narrative has tilted toward the Republicans over the last week or so, I think the Romney campaign?s guarantee of victory has mattered much less than the Obama campaign?s recent aura of defeat.
Losing campaigns have a certain feel to them: They go negative hard, try out new messaging very late in the game, hype issues that only their core supporters are focused on, and try to turn non-gaffes and minor slip-ups by their opponents into massive, election-turning scandals. Think of John McCain?s desperate hope that elevating Joe the Plumber would change the shape of the 2008 race, and you have the template for how tin-eared and desperate a losing presidential campaign often sounds ? and ever since the first debate cost Obama his air of inevitability, he and his surrogates have sounded more like McCain did with Joe the Plumber than like a typical incumbent president on his way to re-election. A winning presidential campaign would not normally be hyping non-issues like Big Bird and ?binders full of women? in its quest for a closing argument, or rolling out a new spin on its second-term agenda with just two weeks left in the race, or pushing so many advertising chips into dishonest attacks on its rival?s position on abortion. A winning presidential campaign would typically be talking about the issues that voters cite as most important ? jobs, the economy, the deficit ? rather than trying to bring up Planned Parenthood and PBS at every opportunity. A winning presidential campaign would not typically have coined the term ?Romnesia,? let alone worked it into their candidate?s speeches.
Now this is not a normal re-election campaign. When incumbent president win, they usually expand their original majorities, but barring a completely unexpected polling shift, Obama?s 2008 majority will shrink no matter what. He?s been running a heavily negative campaign from the beginning, and the late-game approach has only accentuated aspects of the White House?s strategy (the focus on social issues, the quest for ?shiny objects? ? hey, bayonets! ? to change the subject from the economy, etc.) that have been present all along. What the press has read as signs of ?Joe the Plumber?-esque desperation over the last few weeks may not be signs of an impending defeat; it may just be the way that Obama has to win, if win he does. But if so, it won?t look like the winning re-election campaigns we?ve seen in the recent past, and that reporters have grown accustomed to covering.
Re: Obama's Aura of Defeat
Straight from the horse's mouth in, I think, 2008.
"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."
That's exactly what Obama is doing now...
Karma is a b!tch!
Completely disagree with the article. Kinda hack writing, honestly, but it's the kind of article that starts popping up when one side knows their candidate is probably going to lose and they have to start trashing the guy who is about to win re-election.
Before the first debate, Obama was running like a candidate who had it in the bag. He was playing it safe, too safe, and trusted that Mitt Romney's extremist positions would get him in trouble when he tried to etch-a-sketch for the general election. Unfortunately for Obama, a lot of undecided voters bought in to Romney's sudden tack to the center flip-flop in the first debate. Obama no longer could play defense and try to coast to victory, so he had to come out swinging and join Romney in the mud.
Right now the Democrats are likely to hold the exact same Senate Majority they enjoy now (Thanks Akin and Indiana Tea Party guy!), and will gain seats in the house. Even if he doesn't win re-election in a landslide, he'll have a more friendly congress to deal with as the Republicans lick their wounds and the 20 or so freshman tea party congresspeople from purple districts are gone. The only really dangerous scenario is a popular vote loss/electoral college win for Obama. If that happens it will probably cast a shadow over his second term.