Obama krijgt waarschijnlijk zijn tweede termijn, maar met veel liefde zal het niet gaan. In plaats van de enthousiaste meute die in 2008 stond te popelen om de nieuwe belofte in het Witte Huis te krijgen, moet Obama vechten voor iedere stem. Daarna zal hij vier jaar lang in de loopgraven moeten doorbrengen om zijn hervormingen uit zijn eerste termijn veilig te stellen.

Mitt Romney is Obama’s grootste bedreiging. Niet om waar Romney voor staat – dat kan namelijk iedere dag veranderen – maar omdat het enthousiasme voor Obama zelf zó enorm laag is dat steeds meer mensen een keuze tussen Obama en Romney zien als een keuze tussen lood of oud ijzer. Gedesillusioneerde Democraten zullen in een strijd tussen Romney en Obama thuis blijven of uit boosheid misschien zelfs op Romney stemmen. Het is precies dat sentiment dat Team Romney wil voeden door politiek in het midden te blijven en de verschillen tussen hem en Obama te minimaliseren.

Team Romney ondertussen vaart een gevaarlijke koers. Romney mag niet te ver afdrijven van Obama, maar ook weer niet te veel naar links overhellen om onacceptabel te zijn voor de rechtse kiezers in de Republikeinse voorverkiezingen. Maar als hij slaagt in die spagaat en hij wordt de kandidaat, dan wordt Obama gedwongen zelf naar links te gaan bewegen om het broodnodige ideologische contrast met zijn opponent te creëren. Er moet immers wat te kiezen zijn. Het gevaar is duidelijk: schuift Obama te veel op naar links, dan wordt Romney vanzelf aantrekkelijker als de veilige kandidaat van het midden. En daar, in het electorale midden, worden de verkiezingen gewonnen.

Zie hier waarom Obama in de campagne veel liever een rechtse extremist als Rick Perry als opponent heeft. Als het aan Obama ligt worden de verkiezingen van 2012 dus al beslist tijdens de Republikeinse primaries.

Contrast
Het soort opponent dat Obama wil is daarmee duidelijk. Wat hij inhoudelijk tijdens de verkiezingscampagne zal proberen te vermijden is een referendum over vier jaar Obama. Want qua gerealiseerde, populaire hervormingen heeft Obama niet bepaald een sterk CV voor zo’n referendum. Ja, hij heeft voor een Democratische president in zijn eerste termijn veel bereikt, meer dan bijvoorbeeld Bill Clinton. Maar voor iemand die zo geweldig kan communiceren met mensen is het verrassend hoe Obama er de afgelopen 3,5 jaar niet in geslaagd is duidelijk te maken waarom zijn hervormingen goed zijn voor het land en de mensen.

Zijn tegenstanders hebben vervolgens die braakliggende ruimte gepakt om zijn hervormingen negatief te framen. Obama heeft dus qua beleid veel bereikt, maar zijn tegenstanders hebben de veel belangrijkere perceptie gekaapt en ingekleurd. Hierdoor kan het gebeuren dat de door een grote meerderheid van Amerikanen verlangde hervorming van het zorgverzekeringsstelsel nu in peilingen negatief beoordeeld wordt.

Niet dat de Republikeinen een beter voorstel hebben – verre van dat zelfs – maar ze zijn er in ieder geval in geslaagd Obama’s meest belangrijke en in het oog springende hervorming af te kraken. En dat heeft gevolgen, want Obama kan zich nu nauwelijks beroepen op belangrijke – en vooral populaire – successen in de binnenlandse politiek.

Het gevolg: neem peilingen als Obama versus een generieke Republikein. Dus niet één van de bestaande Republikeinse kandidaten, maar gewoon een anonieme Republikeinse kandidaat. Dan komt Obama er al maanden peiling na peiling bijzonder slecht vanaf, zoals ook blijkt uit deze meest recente ‘Obama versus “generic” Republican candidate’ van CBS News. (Zie trouwens ook nog even de cijfers onderaan het hierboven gelinkte bericht om te zien hoe smal de marge tussen Obama en Romney is.)

Wie saai praat, wordt als saai beoordeeld
Het zijn zure druiven voor Obama. Hij is de Democratische president die één van de grootste wensen van de Democraten sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog voor elkaar gebokst heeft, namelijk een hervorming van het complete Amerikaanse zorgverzekeringsstelsel. Maar omdat deze getalenteerde communicator ervoor gekozen heeft zijn hele eerste termijn de oersaaie professor uit te hangen in plaats van zijn successen te verkopen, wordt het in november een ware fotofinish.

Eentje die hij waarschijnlijk wel wint omdat hij straks de grotere campagnekas heeft waardoor hij de Republikeinen steeds een stapje voor zal zijn. Net als in 2008 zal hij zijn tegenstander dwingen geld uit te geven in meer staten dan die tegenstander wil. Maar een prettige campagne wordt het niet. En dan moet Obama ook nog maar hopen dat zijn partijkornuiten in ieder geval de Senaat behouden. De kans dat hij vier jaar te maken krijgen met een uiterst vijandig Republikeins Congres is heel groot.

Zoals Sisyfus zal Obama vermoedelijk weinig lol beleven aan die komende vier jaar in dat Witte Huis.

“Bailouts, AIG bonuses, stimulus, health care, cap and trade, taxes. All of the above. Bottom line, Obama and the Democrats inherited an anxious America. One that was willing to give the Democrats a shot at fixing things, but was terrified about the next shoes that could drop. And, in the end, what they saw from Congress was, well, more shoes. What they wanted was a vision for how this country was going to get back on track economically. And, despite talk from many top Democrats, including the president, that they just needed better messaging, it was the message itself that was the problem — not the fact that they didn’t sell it well enough.”

- Rick Klein in The Note

Back from my holidays in Morocco and Spain (it was fun, thank you – we sorta followed the ‘Moorish Trail’), and lo and behold! Barack Obama no longer seems to be in the lead. As the electoral college polls over at the (pro-GOP) Realclearpolitics.com and (more neutral) Fivethirtyeight.com websites show, John McCain has closed the gap. Obama needs to get worried.

The reasons why Obama is losing? It ain’t rocket science:

1. He has not been able to convince voters that he’s made of the right stuff.
2. People doubt him.
3. He’s black. (Well, sorta.) Which doesn’t help, not in the USA anyway.
4. They’re Americans; they can’t handle the truth!

In short, the four reasons that have been toiling in the back of my head ever since Obama became the Democratic candidate-in-waiting.

It also proves another thing: The Media have blown Obama’s candidacy way out of proportion. While the M Crowd was busy salivating over a black presidential candidate, they completely seemed to miss out on the fact that, according to the polls, many voters didn’t share their blinding enthusiasm.

There were some political junkies in the national press corps who were largely able to keep their Obamania-levels low. Kudos to Ben Smith and Glenn Rush, both of Politico.com, Mark Halperin of Time’s The Page, and Jake Tapper, the main man of ABC’s Political Punch.

Okay, so what’s next? It’s going to be Obama week, all week. First, he announces his pick for the veep slot. Sure, he might have offered it to Hillary, like even Ralph Nader predicted – but what, Bubba, if she turned it down, with an eye on 2012….?

Questions, questions. Anyway, Obama will be announcing his pick, which is sure to lead to at least 48 hours of Obamanews. Watch for nasty attacks from right-wing quarters, in an effort to divert Obama’s limelight.

Then, after the veep announcement, the Democrats will hold their convention. Yet another 72 hours (or so) of across the board Obamanews. Watch for nasty… Oh well, you get the drill.

Will it result in a bounce for Obama? Nope. Yes, he’ll give a grandiose speech and The Media will remind you for several days how incredibly special it is to have the First Black Candidate for the presidency, and that it’s history being made, etcetera, and so on.

But because of reasons 1, 2, 3 and 4, the bounce – if there is one at all – will be minimal. If Obama doesn’t close the deal before the end of September, the Clinton Wolfpacks will smell blood. Obama’s shining light will fade, especially if McCain does manage a small bounce.

Because then The Media’s big story will be “John McCain, The Comeback Grandpa”. And that would constitute Reason 5.

Yesterday, I wrote an article called ‘Deconstructing Obama’. In it, I gave a very short rundown of the only strategy that seems to be left to McCain: go personal. The reason being that Obama has had the initiative since day one, it seems.

But perhaps I was wrong. The tracking polls are starting to show dents in Obama’s armour. Over at Real Clear Politics (I’m always careful with these guys as they’re clearly pro-GOP), the latest rundown of tracking polls shows that although Obama is still leading, the margins seem to be getting smaller, not bigger.

That spells trouble for Obama. Of course, Americans being Americans, I would not be surprised if they once again elect someone who will tear their country even further apart. Because that’s what Republicans do: they pretend to be all Christian morals, but before you know it, they’re out with TV-ads calling people traitors and sodomizing your 3-year-old.

Either way, Obama has not yet been able to close the deal and I’m afraid that that’s because people are still very doubtful of him. Of course, American pigheads being American pigheads, they keep noticing that Obama is black. Perhaps that’s it. It can’t be because of ideological reasons. Because how many average Americans read candidate platforms these days?

I‘ve said from day one, so even before the primaries, that Americans were very capable of electing a carbon copy of George W Bush into office. I also predicted that the election would be very close.

When the new King of Expectation beat the Oracle of Chappaqua, I said I was convinced that any generic Republican would win the election. Now, I’m going back to that position. I’ll be keeping it until Obama truly starts improving his poll numbers and significantly moves away from McCain.

John McCain is destined to be the next nominee for the presidency on behalf of the Republican Party. Many Republicans don’t agree with him leading the pack, but votes are votes and all things being equal, McCain has decisively won most of the states during the Republican primary. And there are a number of traits and advantages that will help McCain in his fight against Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton. But there is also a very strong case against McCain; like Clinton, he carries a lot of negatives. And no, his age isn’t one of them.

One of the negatives is so glaringly obvious that it hurts the eyes: McCain is no Stetson-totin’, card-carrying member of the god-fearing Conservative movement. The people whom George W. Bush has been calling his Base for almost 8 years straight.

They are the people who make up approximately 15% of the American electorate that, in continuous polls, still backs Bush. Despite all his drawbacks, that 15% stands tall in the overall 30-35% of the electorate that staunchly stands behind the current occupant of the White House, and they are the very people McCain needs to court if he wants to stand a living chance in hell of winning come November.

That’s why McCain has shown himself to be remarkably elastic these past two years. He got trounced in the most hideous way during the Republican primaries in 2000 by Bush and McCain has been a staunch opponent of almost every decision Bush has taken in the 2000-2006 years. But McCain knows that he needs a large chunk of the Bush Base as well as the president’s well-greased fundraising machine by his side.

And so he has been pandering to the political demands of the Bush Base, which has in turn already started to anger the McCainiacs; the virulently independent, errr, Independents who want nothing to do with what they consider to be the Fundamentalist Nutcase Wing of the Republican Party.

These Republican-leaning independents are generally fed up with two things: the war in Iraq, Bushonomics, and the christian-fundamentalist new laws of the past 8 years. And they don’t want McCain to embrace neither.

So this poses a problem for the 71 year old candidate. He can’t move too much to the right or he’ll estrange the McCainiacs. But he also can’t move too far to the left, or he’ll estrange the Fundamentalist Nutcases.

Unfortunately for McCain, his Democratic opponent – Obama or Clinton – will have a pretty solidified Democratic base, including a lot of left-leaning independents. The latter group especially will be very receptive to Democratic arguments that McCain is in fact Bush-Lite. The hatred against George W. Bush’s politics is red hot among the people in this group and anything McCain does to appease the Fundamentalists will only serve as proof that the Democrats are right.

So with the left-leaning independents safely leaning over to the left and the McCainiacs left in doubt, unless something dramatic happens – to which I’ll get in a sec – my prediction is that it is going to be a very close election once again. (As I already wrote here.) Democrats and the independent voters leaning towards the Democrats will rally to Obama or Clinton, and a lot of Republicans will rally to McCain’s flag. George W. Bush has already voiced his support for McCain so unless that dramatic thing happens, I’m convinced that a fair number of the Bush Base will back McCain. Reluctantly, sure, but they will; “Anyone But Obama / Clinton / a Democrat in the White House”, will be their motto.

But about that dramatic thing… The Fundamentalist Fringe has grown very smart over the years. The banner organisations acting as unofficial leaders of the pack – like the Focus on the Family sect – have already said publicly that they will not endorse McCain. They’re playing hard to get, for the moment. But the question is what they are really after.

Conventional wisdom among the right had it that after Super Tuesday, organisations like Focus on the Family would come out and bless the Republican candidate, whoever he is. But they haven’t so far, and it seems unlikely that they will, no matter what Bush says or does, as long as Mike Huckabee stays in the race. But even if he doesn’t withdraw, he will have to concede defeat – and then what?

Well, then it will come down to the test. The Fundamentalist Fringe will force McCain to convincingly and very publicly embrace their values and ideas, and basically adopt their platform. They will want such a litmus test because of their absolute distrust of McCain, who has been quite blasphemic over the years. Bush had it easy; McCain will have to go the distance to earn the Fundamentalist’s trust.

But it is a trap, a step McCain knows he cannot take. And he will refrain from doing so. As a result, the leading Fundamentalist organisations will not formally endorse him, leaving the door open for a right-wing third party candidate to step in. Possibly Huckabee, or maybe some other fringe-nut. This is McCain’s all too real worst case scenario.

So even if the election will once again be 49 to 49%, with the election decided once again by just one football stadium in either Pennsylvania, Ohio or Florida, it is very likely that the crowd in that stadium won’t be in McCain’s column.

Unless he shows that he is the best politician in the field by being able to unite all Republicans behind him, which would be a feat of such monumental proportions that he should be made president just to honour him.

The prediction still stands. It’s over. And yes, this had a LOT to do with it. (But then again: I basically wrote that story already on January 28.)

The media folks simply wanted a fresh body to suck on.

Hillary Clinton is going to lose the nomination battle. If not the delegates, then most certainly the Democratic ‘hearts and minds’. Should she win the battle, it will be because what Obama did and got was too little, too late. But once the Democratic convention comes rolling along in 6 months, most Dems won’t want her to lead the party into battle with the Republicans — even if she’s got most delegates. However, it may not even come to that; Obama is getting a LOT of traction as his momentum keeps building, and he just might be able to tip the scale. Clinton may win New York, but if Obama wins California, then that will be the ‘watershed moment’ Team Clinton won’t be able to explain away, much less spin. Then it will be over.

And guess what? Zogby et al are already polling an Obama win in California.

Observing the media coverage of the primary war for the Democratic nomination, I can’t help but watch in amazement how the collective mainstream media press has apparently decided to dance around candidate Barack Obama, singing ‘Kumbaya’ loudly and farting in the general direction of the Clintons and John Edwards in the process. Amazement, because it won’t last.

Right now, any attack by the Clintons (or Edwards, or anybody else for that matter) is either completely ignored, or berated as something close to Pure Evil by the MSM. Whatever Bill Clinton says, it is now ‘racist’ or meant to ‘damage Obama’. Even when Clinton calls Obama’s candidacy so far “a fairy tale”, by which Clinton obviously means the non-critical, out-of-this-world aura the MSM has bestowed upon the Senator from Illinois, Clinton is attacked by hissing snakes. The Obama campaign doesn’t have to do squat.

Sure, now you’re thinking that I believe that Bill Clinton isn’t purposely throwing in the race-thing. Of course he is, but get this: that’s not my point. The point is that if/when Obama (or one of his surrogates) throws in some coded sentence that could be interpreted as racially tinged, but also could not, Obama is left alone.

But whenever Clinton says something that could be racially tinged, oh boy – there comes the Cavalry of the 1st Hypocrites Regiment, stormin’ out Fortress Moral Outrage!

Yet what I want to know is: will the press corps still defend Obama against the attack of Republican X during the general election campaign? Will the same press people hiss and harr-umph against a Republican campaign surrogate if/when he says that Obama may have a hidden agenda? Will the same press corps storm out of the fortress again to bash the GOP candidate?

Of course they won’t. As with every long-winded campaign, the dynamics in this campaign will have changed as well within three months or so. Why? Because journalists are human, believe it or not.

Right now just about every journalist who has seen Obama on the stump is impressed by the man’s oratory and rhetorical skills. That is very understandable because he has that gift. I’ve read stories and snippets in the past weeks where editors have said that they’ve had to take junior reporters off the Obama beat because they were clearly on Obama’s side, after visiting just one of the Senator’s campaign events. Veteran journalists come out of an Obama event completely puzzled and confused, asking themselves how in hell they are supposed to write an objective, possibly even critical article about the man.

But give it three months. Like with Bill Clinton in 1992, who was equally able to mesmerize journalists while on the stump, the effects of Obamania will wear off. So will the present knee-jerk reaction towards anything Clinton. Remember, dear Old Timers, how you and your buddies tried to tear down Clinton from the moment he hit the White House? Sure, he may have had the wrong approach towards the press once he sat down behind his desk in the Oval Office but the MSM didn’t exactly give him the time of day either.

So what I’m going to say now is what Bill Clinton has basically argued already – and he should know, because he’s been there, right in the middle of it.

To the Democratic voter who doesn’t want another Republican in the White House: if Barack Obama is nominated as the Democratic candidate, the press will no longer give him quarter. As soon as the ticker tape falls on the Convention in Denver, the very same press corps that danced Kumbaya around Obama will switch to a very different set of priorities.

It will be somewhat like this, straight out of a George Romero movie. The lights will be on and Obama will be looking at the MSM representatives, smiling as they smile back. Then the lights will fail for a second, and when they’re turned back on, he’s suddenly facing a bunch of evil vampires. And they will be out for blood – any blood.

Because political, thick, scandallous blood is the colour of the ink that sells newspapers. It is the drug that powers TV broadcasts, pays salaries, and is the only kind of blood that makes a sound: that of falling coins. Dollar bills will no longer be a grayish-green but rather printed in blood ink, and the owners and shareholders of the media companies can’t wait to rake in the piles.

The very same journalists that are now slamming the Clintons in a fit of fake moral outrage will cry out for racial slurs, and they’ll claw at the target candidate to get even more pungent ones. News must sell, not inform; elections are big moneymakers for advertising departments. All bets will be off, today’s sheep will be wolves, and unlike most Democrats, most Republicans won’t be wagging their moral fingers at their candidate. On the contrary.

Suddenly, Obama will find that he can no longer rely on the vampires to sing Kumbaya, keeping his enemies at bay. Instead, he will find that he’s in dire need of a thick skin and a really good War Room for some heavy duty fast responses. He will find that his one-time friends are not keeping the lions away from him, but are actually pushing him towards the GOP werewolves.

Mark Halperin and John F. Harris got many things right in their book ‘The Way To Win’, which is about campaigning, but they were really right on the money with this advice to any aspiring political campaigner:

“Journalists are never your friends.”

Halperin and Harris should know. They’re vampires.

It isn’t often that one gets to see an example of hatred that is so blinding that spouters of political bile jump into a trap with eyes wide open. Yet that is the case with the right-wing extremists who have thrown themselves like a pack of howling wolves onto Graeme Frost and his family. Like hideous vampires mad for blood who have found a new born baby in its crib, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and the other Undead are feasting on middle-class flesh while their hideous laughter and screaming fills the humid air. But all this time they don’t realise that many, many people who identify with the Frosts are learning a valuable lesson: the right-wing extremists of the GOP hate white, middle-class American familes.

Graeme Frost, as a short reminder, is the 12-year-old son of the Frost family, a quite average, suburbian middle-class American family. Dad has his own job and isn’t doing bad (considering the size of the family), mom is putting all her energy into the family, and the kids all go to school. So far, no problem. But the Frost family allowed the Democratic Party to use Graeme Frost in the party’s denunciation of president’s Bush veto of State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation. The Democrats in Congress wanted the SCHIP scheme expanded to allow more children to be covered by it, but president Bush stood ground on principle, arguing that by expanding it the way the Democrats wanted, the states’ program would become a “federal” program.

Instead of putting a senator or a governor up for the task to rebut the president’s move during the weekly Democratic rebuttal by radio, the Democrats set Graeme Frost front and center, claiming that the boy would have been dead had it not been for SCHIP. The boy has had a life-threatening disease and survived, making Graeme Frost a Democratic poster boy for the Democrats.

True to fashion, the messager was attacked, and not the message itself. The werewolves threw themselves on Frost immediately, yelping that the Frost family was making more than enough money to pay for Graeme’s medical bills themselves. They live in a $260,000 home in Baltimore, Malkin and Limbaugh and the others of Dracula’s Castle pointed out, and daddy Frost even has three cars. To the vampires, this is is proof that the Frosts — and thus many American middle-class families — don’t need the SCHIP money. And even if they did, surely the Frosts could have made do with just one car, selling the two others?

The trap set out for the Undead had big neon signs that were flashing “TRAP!”, but to no avail – the vampires fell right in and are now in fact aiding the Democrats. Because ever since Graeme Frost’s appearance before the Democratic microphone, Malkin and Limbauhg and their ilk have been trashing the average, white, American middle-class family. What’s more, they have been after a family of which the husband and father is self-employed. Hmmm – white, middle-class, self-employed, hard working, some debt there, more than 2 kids — wait a minute! That’s one of the GOP’s most beloved demographics in elections! So far, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has jumped on the matter, putting up a vigorous defense for Frost while Giuliani and Romney’s campaigns seem to have seen the neon signs – and are thus far keeping a distance.

Hee-hee. What a laugh. Not only have the Democrats got most Republicans with a brain cornered because they know that going after a 12-year-old does not look good, the right-wing extremists are — in the name of their beloved GOP — bashing away at your average, middle-class, voting white family. If I were the DNC’s national campaign strategist, I’d put the name ‘Graeme Frost’ right up where with Iraq, social security and health care for the coming presidential election. The Vampires are eager enough to help out the Democratic campaign, it seems, so why not?

So, what’s next. Ummm, how about… An 11-year-old girl called Juanita from Nevada? Or – no, Arizona? Wait wait, even better – Florida!