Predicting the results in a presidential election is always precarious, especially over 100 days before the actual voting. But conflicting polls notwithstanding, Barack Obama is facing a triple threat to his re-election that will be very hard to overcome.
The triple threat includes one obvious problem, one readily apparent problem, and one very subtle problem. And none of them are fixable by anything Obama can do at this point.
The obvious problem is the economy. On this one, Obama is stuck with what it is. Nothing he can do, at this point, is going to have any real impact on the numbers that will be forthcoming (primarily the monthly unemployment figures) between now and the election. And those numbers are not going to be pretty. At best, the unemployment percentage might tick down to 8.0, maybe even 7.9. But even if it does get that low (it is currently at 8.2), the public perception is going to be that the economy is in a rut, as in stalled, and that Obama wasn’t able to get the car completely out of the ditch (to use the metaphor he has used in the past).
Regarding the economy, Obama will try to paint the Republicans as the problem, claiming that they put the car in the ditch and then blocked the tow truck he wanted to use to get the car out of the ditch.
It is a nice metaphor, and it might sway some independents (those critical swing voters) who find Mitt Romney completely unacceptable as an alternative to Obama. But it won’t help him with the voters who don’t pay that much attention to the campaign rhetoric but instead just vote what they feel the country needs. And on the economy, most of them are going to feel the country needs a change.
Obama will also continue to try to make Romney appear completely unacceptable, and on this point, he has a great target, because Romney is a God-awful candidate. He has virtually no discernible people skills, probably because he knows relatively few real people, and he is so anxious to say the right thing at the right time to the audience of the moment that he has created a flip-flop, empty-suit image of himself that even staunch Republicans acknowledge is a problem.
But if the car is still in the ditch, as it will be, most voters are going to ignore the fact that the driver of the other tow truck is a scoundrel and will vote for him anyway.
The readily-apparent problem is the fund-raising deficit Obama faces. It’s bad enough for Obama that the Romney campaign and the Republican Party are way ahead of the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party in their respective fund-raising results to date. The most recent figures from last month have Romney raising over 105 million to Obama’s 70. And those figures match the disparity from previous months.
But the real money threat to Obama will come from the right-wing Super PACs, which is where Romney will have as much as a billion dollars at his disposal. (Obama will be lucky to end up with half that much.)
And never mind that the Super PACs are supposed to be independent of the actual campaigns. When you have a political operative like Karl Rove running one of the biggest Republican Super PACs, you can be sure there will be sufficient coordination to push Romney’s candidacy most effectively.
Obama will attempt to combat the money disparity by using the powers of his office, granting certain contracts to districts where he can be a hero and otherwise doing things that only presidents can do. George H.W. Bush tried a bunch of those moves in 1992, when the economy was also bad (albeit not as bad as this one), and we know how successful he was in his efforts.
Money absolutely can buy an election, especially when the economy is stuck in a ditch. Romney and his Rove-directed Super PACs will flood the airwaves with anti-Obama ads. They will also use direct mail campaigns, robo-phone calls, and a bunch of other neat gimmicks to create the impression that Obama is a jerk. They also might try to make Romney look like a good guy, even though that would be a waste of their money. But, trust me, they’ll have enough of it that it won’t matter.
The very subtle problem is the explosion of voter suppression laws in many states. These laws have been enacted under the guise of preventing voter fraud, even though actual accounts of voter fraud are almost non-existent.
Their real purpose is to suppress the vote of those more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans; hence the laws are being enacted in states where Republicans control the state houses and legislatures. Such laws, requiring government-issued identification cards, some of which must be specially applied for as much as 60 days before the election, will depress the vote of those more inclined demographically to vote Democratic (i.e., low-income minorities, the low-income and shut-in elderly, and students).
The effect of these laws can be immense, especially in an otherwise close election. And, since the country votes for president state-by-state (the popular vote is not determinative, as we learned all too well in 2000), in tightly contested states, a voter ID law can swing the state to Romney by depressing the vote that Obama would otherwise have received.
Pennsylvania is a good example of this possibility. There, where a new voter ID law is in effect, the Republican Speaker of the House recently stated that the new law would “allow Governor Romney to win Pennsylvania.” Predictions of as many as 750,000 suppressed votes in that state support his statement. Other “swing states” with similar laws are Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan.
Obama’s campaign will certainly try to get their voters to the polls, but in closely contested states, those laws may be too much to overcome.
Obama is personable, he is intelligent, and he can deliver a great speech. But against this triple threat of obstacles, if he is going to win re-election, it will take a much larger miracle than the one that got him elected four years ago.
If so much money is going to be raised and spent on the election why can’t it have an effect on improving the economy? If there is any validity to the trickle down effect theory of economics why can’t the money paid to advertising agencies, actors, t.v. stations, etc. filter down to hiring more waiters to serve those actors and media people, more producers of video tape, etc.?
Ed, I hope you are correct in your prediction. Yes, Obama is as you describe him, personable and intelligent, and he is a great rhetorician. If only he were a capable president, he would win hands down. Romney has flaws. But we need to remember what so many voters forgot in 2008: we are electing a president, not a messiah. With respect to campaign money, I remind your readers that in 2008 Obama was the first presidential candidate in history to refuse federal matching funds so that he could spend as much as he wished–and Obama had enough to outspend McCain by at least 2 to 1. Super PACs exist only because there must be some way of circumventing campaign finance laws–which have the effect, invariably, of benefitting incumbents by imposing prohibitive start-up costs on challengers. And with regard to voter ID laws, what the PA Republican Speaker meant was that Romney will win PA if the Democrats cannot count on the usual number of unregistered voters, fictional persons registered by the likes of ACORN, and dead people from turning out. If accounts of voter fraud are thin, it is because politicos will not allow them to be investigated. The Holder Justice Department epitomizes this. Have you seen the undercover video of an imposter claiming to be Eric Holder being approved at the DC polls? I don’t suppose they showed it on MSNBC. Seriously, a conservative estimate is that 2 million dead voters are on the rolls across the country. Guess which party they vote for. I live in Chicago. I know. Having said all this, if I disregard your snarkiness about Republicans, I think your analysis is sound. But, as you say, no one can confidently predict the outcome this far in advance. Too many butterflies can flap their wings before November.
Reason #4: Obama is barely competent. Poor judgment, no basis of understanding the core of important issues, inept at legislation.
* He was asleep at the switch for nearly 3 years on the economy.
* He has not produced an energy policy.
* He has not proposed comprehensive tax reform.
* All of his budgets are so egregiously bad that they have all been voted down UNANIMOUSLY in both the House AND Senate (there’s bipartisanship for you).
* Too many more to list.
Reason #5: Obama is a fraud. A guy who looks great in a suit, writes beautifully, speaks wonderfully, but can’t execute. I’ve seen it a million times in the business world. No experience, over 90 golf outings (a record), over 150 fundraisers (a record), and his “Autobiographies” now shown to be nearly fiction.
Reason #6: Obama is untrustworthy. Romney’s flip flopping not withstanding, Obama is the world record holder for saying one thing and doing another. (If you want all the examples, I would have to create a multi page document.) He is now, also, an inveterate liar. Now, in every speech or interview, he tells at least one blatant verifiable lie, and often several.
His hard core supporters will forgive all of this under the concept of “the lesser of two evils”, but people like me, independents, who voted for him on the basis of “hope”, are disgusted and done with him.
Obama is a great speaker, with very little to back it up. Romney is a terrible speaker with a track record of accomplished substance.
Obama is cool. Romney is not. It turns out, however, that being cool is not a criteria for President, especially when that’s all you got.