Politics
How Barack Obama can win the election of 2012
US President Barack Obama AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain
The Obama White House probably watched the Republican primary season with some dismay as a series of candidates including Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, each more bizarre and unelectable than the others, briefly donned the mantle of front-runner before giving way to Mitt Romney. Romney, the likely Republican nominee, feels like a generic representative of his party from a generation ago. He was born to privilege, made a lot of money, is committed to making his rich friends richer, uncomfortable with the more radical social conservatives who constitute the Republican Party base, awkward when confronted with ordinary working Americans, but extremely comfortable with the financial and foreign policy power elite.
With Romney as the Republican nominee, Obama will have a serious opponent. Romney, like Obama, is not a perfect candidate, but he is good enough to muster a strong campaign. There are, however, several things which could break Obama’s way, and over which the campaign has some control, that would sharply improve the president’s reelection chances.
First, while much attention has been paid to the declining enthusiasm felt towards Obama particularly by young voters who do not see 2012 as a crusade or cause comparable to Obama’s historic 2008 campaign as well as by many on the activist left who feel disappointed or even betrayed by Obama’s centrist governance and unwillingness to genuinely take on the right wing and Republican Party, Obama remains very popular among African American voters. High African American voter turnout was an important element of Obama’s success in 2008. Because Obama is now running for reelection, 2012 cannot compare to the excitement Obama generated in 2008 during his bid to become the first African American president.
