SALON.COM : Obama may win a second term - He is now sharply delineating the basic philosophical differences between him and his Republican opponents. Polls are showing the Republican Party slipping to its lowest level

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Obama may win a lot of public opinion by convincing Americans that radical Republican obstructionism is keeping him from enacting ideas they like.

SALON.COM
The art of winning by losing
Obama's fight over jobs with Eric Cantor and the GOP is doomed. But it just might save his presidency
Wednesday, October 5, 2011


The art of winning by losing


Some excerpts :

A miserable economy imposes profound constraints on a president. It’s tough to get around the public’s bottom-line desire to hold the White House occupant accountable for their anxiety.

But this doesn’t mean Obama’s strategy is foolish. It just means that if he’s going to break through to the public in this climate, it will be around the margins; there’s really nothing he can say or propose that will lift his job approval to 60 percent. But the 2012 election will probably be won or lost on the margins, with a swing of a point or two in either direction potentially making the difference. Obama right now is in real danger of being defeated for reelection, but he’s also capable of winning a second term. That’s the promise of the jobs push. Obama is making it clear that he’s going to make this his priority for the foreseeable future.

And there are some subtle signs that he might be reaching at least a few people. On the question of whom they trust more on job creation, voters now prefer Obama by a 49-34 percent spread, according to the new ABC poll. And a recent CBS poll found that 53 percent of voters believe that Obama simply doesn’t have the power to do anything about the economy. This is potentially significant when you compare it to 1992, the last time a president was defeated for reelection because of the economy. That fall, 59 percent of Americans said that George H.W. Bush could do something to fix the economy. Granted, a big part of the difference is probably the public recognition that the economy is in a much deeper hole right now. But it may also be that some voters have been persuaded that Republican obstructionism has tied Obama’s hands.

And there are other areas where Obama is seeking to draw clear contrasts with the GOP, most notably his renewed push for higher taxes on the wealthy — another concept that polls very well on its own, even among Republicans. There’s no illusion on the White House’s part that this will restore Obama’s standing to where it was in the early days of his presidency. But if it boosts him by just a few points — or if it leads 1 or 2 percent of the electorate to decide next year that the GOP is too risky an alternative to four more years of Obama — then it could easily save him from being a one-termer.

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