In spite of unemployment, the torrent of botched Obama programs, his socialist associates, nasty partisan speeches, sliding approval in the polls, and less support than in 2008 among blacks and Hispanics, Obama could still win reelection next year.
“Repeatedly throughout his meteoric rise from obscurity to the presidency, the way forward has been opened by the errors and misconceptions of his opponents,” theorized Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a non-profit, libertarian organization. “The free-market economic ideology of the Republican Party is tailor-made to promote Obama’s reelection at a time when much of the country has begun to doubt whether market forces are fair or effective.”
The late Steve Jobs, in a meeting with Obama last year told the President: “You’re headed for a one-term Presidency,” as described by Walter Isaacson in his new biography of Apple’s founder. Jobs stressed the need for more trained engineers and that foreign students with engineering degrees should be kept in this country. “The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done,” Jobs is quoted as saying. Obama shrugged off Jobs’s counsel.
So, whose forecast is on target, that of Loren Thompson or Steve Jobs?
A Sept. 17 CBS News/ New York Times poll found that Obama’s approval dropped to 43 percent and his disapproval rating reached 50 percent. But the vast majority of Democrats approve (78 percent). Only 37 percent of Independents approve of his performance.
On a western campaign trip last month, Obama said, “Let’s see what we can do without Congress. We can’t wait for Congress to do its job. So where they won’t act I will,” he warned. “We’re going to look every single day what we can do without Congress.”
David Plouffe, White House senior adviser said on Meet the Press Oct. 30 the President’s new strategy is, in effect, to “go it alone” without Congress and push by executive fiat for housing changes, student loans, tax cut for the middle class, and construction jobs.
Plouffe insisted that Republicans out in the country agree with the President that the wealthy should pay more in taxes. It is the Republicans in Congress that are blocking the President, he claimed.
The President is a skillful liar. Some websites have listed more than 1,000 prevarications since he took office. So, how can this arrogant, lying President, with seemingly skimpy public support win reelection?
The rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, Obama has claimed time and again. Most people don’t know the top 5 percent pays 59 percent of all federal income taxes according to the National Taxpayers Union.
But “contrary to Republican dogma,” polls indicate that Americans strongly support higher taxes to reduce the deficit and reduce income inequality. Some 19 different polls since the first of the year say this. A Washington Post /ABC News poll in June, for example, found that 61 percent of people believe higher taxes will be necessary to reduce the deficit.
A Pew poll in July found strong support for tax increases to reduce the deficit; 67 percent of people favor raising the wage cap for Social Security taxes, 66 percent are for raising income tax rates on those making more than $250,000, and 62 percent favor limiting tax deductions for large corporations. So, Obama has this going for him.
According to the Pew Research Center, about half of Americans say they support the Occupy Wall Street movement, while nearly as many say they oppose the movement launched last month in New York’s financial district and then to other locations. By contrast, more say they oppose the Tea Party movement than support it.
Because Obama has encouraged the protesters, while knocking the Tea Partiers, these figures are in his favor.
The mainstream news media embraces what veteran CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg has described as a “slobbering love affair” with Obama, slanting the news to give the President favorable treatment whenever possible.
At least five different polls, according to the Media Research Center, found the public strongly believed that the news media was biased in favor of Barack Obama in 2008. A Rasmussen poll, for example found 69 percent were convinced that the press favored Obama and were trying to help him win the election. There is no evidence this bias has receded. Once the Republicans have a standard-bearer, the press likely will go back to kissing Obama’s feet and finding flaws in the GOP nominee.
Nearly twice as many people today are working for all levels of government—22.5 million– than in all kinds of manufacturing—11.5 million—almost an exact reversal as in 1960, according to Steven Moore, a Wall Street Journal editor. Probably each worker has a spouse or other relative who will vote the same way. If most are inclined to cast their ballots for Obama, that will provide a huge voting block. “We have moved from a nation of makers to a nation of takers,” Moore wrote in an article in April.
The U.S. Census Bureau says poverty is at an all-time high. People living on less than $5,500 increased by 4 million from 2008 to 2009. The number of people unemployed for more than six months approaches 50 percent. Millions of Democrat-inclined voters cling to their welfare like Obama once said that middle Americans cling to their guns and religion.
The campaign plans to ramp up the race issue, bloggers say. Voters have been hammered with guilt for being white–in schools, on television, in movies, with racism coming at them from all sides. Obama’s re-election team is banking on it bringing victory in 2012.
Months from now, the economy could rebound, at least improve enough so it appears to be heading back from recession.
Obama also will have the social media team on his side. As the first Facebook president, he holds a wide advantage technologically. The Obama campaign said it had surpassed one million donors, the Chicago Tribune reported Oct. 17. The campaign said that 98 percent of the donations were in amounts of $250 or less. It also disclosed a list of 351 bundlers, who can collect from others in large amounts.
Add probable Chicago fraud, Black Panthers at the polls, union money and door-knocking, and multi-billionaire George Soros dollars to the reelection strategy.
Perhaps the most important element in a possible Obama return was defined by David Horowitz in his book “The Shadow Party.” Leftist activists, he writes in his forward, “are organized in two distinct movements, one exerting pressure from below [This could be the Overcome Wall Street movement] the other exerting pressure from above [radicals in the Obama Administration and allies outside]…Thus could a radical minority impose its will on a moderate majority,” namely Republicans and Independents.
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