Here are four reasons why Barack Obama should lose the Nov. 6 election, and four reasons why he won’t.
Why Obama and the Democrats should lose:
1. He lost sight of why he was elected.
Barack Obama’s 2008 election was historic for reasons other than his race. Obama won by the largest margin for a non-incumbent since 1952. The driving motivation was a desire for “change” after eight years of conservative Republican rule. Yet Obama surrounded himself with people who were largely the architects of past economic and foreign policies.
2. He squandered his first two years.
From the moment Obama was elected, his advisers urged caution, and he wrongly took their advice. This was despite the overwhelming popular mandate he received, and the fact that both houses of Congress were majority Democrat. In his first two years in office, he achieved healthcare reform, which was a historic accomplishment, but little else. Efforts to get Republican cooperation were futile.
3. The American economy is in the tank.
The U.S. national debt now exceeds $16 trillion, the highest in history and far more than when Obama took over in 2009 ($10 trillion). The unemployment rate is still more than 8 per cent. His defenders argue, correctly, that he inherited an economic mess from the Republicans but that argument is more difficult to make as memories fade.
4. The American people still want change.
If the message of the 2008 election was for significant change, this has not happened. The latest poll indicates that only 10 per cent of Americans “approve” of the U.S. Congress, the lowest in history. Even the Communist party in the U.S. achieves a higher rating. But if both parties seemed to be loathed by many Americans, the lessons of modern political history suggest that it is the incumbent party — the Democrats — who will be most affected.
Why Obama and the Democrats will win:
1. He is still very well-liked and trusted.
It was a mystery to many that Americans in 2008 would elect a black man with Kenyan roots and “Hussein” as his middle name over a war hero, John McCain. Since then, millions of dollars have poured into media campaigns to demonize Obama. But he is still viewed as more “likable” than his Republican opponent by a margin of 20 points. That has a broader importance as election day nears. As Michelle Obama argued in her speech to the Democrats this week, being president doesn’t change who you are, “it reveals who you are.”
2. His political opposition is hopeless.
Mitt Romney is a loser and Paul Ryan is a liar. How lucky can Barack Obama be? The often comic, always surreal Republican primary process which coughed up Romney and Ryan as Obama’s rivals will become a case study in how to blow a presidential race. Romney’s only political experience is as governor of Massachusetts but he keeps running away from that. As for Paul Ryan, voted the “biggest brownnoser” by classmates in his senior year of high school, he is still trying to explain the dozen lies and distortions that marked his acceptance speech at the convention. His policies in Congress are like Robin-Hood-in-reverse: take from poor and give to the rich.
3. American conservatives always over-reach.
At the end of the day, Obama’s biggest asset during this presidential campaign is the hubris of his conservative opponents. Aided and abetted by the U.S. Supreme Court with its “Citizens United” decision, billions of anonymous dollars have poisoned this year’s U.S. political process. The calculation has been that America’s billionaires could “buy” the result they want. So far, it appears that Americans will reject that.
4. The American people are not dumb.
In America’s largely conservative media, reinforced by the country’s business elite, the conventional wisdom endures that the U.S. is a “centre-right nation” inherently opposed to any progressive change. But there is no evidence to sustain it. Yes, polls indicate that self-described conservatives in the U.S. outnumber self-described liberals — and that has been apparent since this question was asked. But more Americans also describe themselves as “Democrats” than “Republicans,” and on most social and economic issues, moderate positions are favoured by most Americans.
As the U.S. population becomes more Hispanic and diverse, and the Republicans retreat further into America’s shrinking “white tribe,” the smart money is on the Democrats.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Tony Burman
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