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Republicans are burying President Obama and many "externalities" and "appearances" seem to give reason to their allegations of Obama's political demise - But this Obama is an extraordinary young man and has a lot of resiliency, endurance, flexibility, stamina, vigor, youth, dynamism, strength, sufferance, tolerance, survival, energy, aliveness, animation, life, shrewdness, Chicago pol magic, intelligent scholar, charm, professorial toughness, bullfighting power against ever charging republican bulls or elephants, and excellent personality qualities.
I think that those that love Obama give us more hints about his personality, skills and capacity than those paid Republicans that are inserting campaign lines and propaganda pills of fear, pessimism, doom, impending catastrophe and even hatred.
And there are even Republicans that think that Obama is a "hard to crack" nut.
POLITICO.COM "The Arena" Forum
August 4, 2011
POLITIOCO.COM "The Arena" Forum - Obama is down but not out
Some positive opinions about President Obama. Some excerpts :
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State Rep. Josh Byrnes Iowa House of Representatives (R) :
I think Obama has two things going for him that makes him hard to beat. First, he is going to raise a record level of money. Secondly, there is not a clear front runner for the Republicans. Most Republicans seem to still be waiting for that dynamic candidate to jump in the race.
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Christopher Hahn Democratic consultant :
In a normal political environment low approval and high unemployment would spell certain doom for an incumbent president. The current political environment is far from normal.
Obama will likely face a tea party fueled extremist who will scare the middle back to the Democratic Party. Regardless of what his base is saying today, they will support the president out of fear of what could come if they don't. Obama will need every cent of the $1 billion he plans to raise for this race to fight off the vicious attacks that will be hurled by shadowy "independent" groups. In the end, the nation will give him four more years.
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Eileen Shields-West Author, 'The World Almanac of Political Campaigns' :
Last Saturday, President Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan declared flat out that "nobody loves Obama." She went on to say, "He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser."
So, is that the end of the once breathtaking Obama story? I think not. As they say in the ring, "He is down, but not out."
For several reasons: There is no significant Republican challenger right now. Even the Republicans themselves seem uncertain whom they favor, many out of the hope that someone else will enter the race. While the debt ceiling crisis, did not turn in the president's favor with a "Grand Bargain" that he could tout, at least it finally got resolved and the president can seize the opportunity and move on, as he is doing with his bus tour of the Midwest on August 15.
Another factor in his favor is his demeanor. Although he may not be "loved" in the sense that Clinton was, I think he is admired for his steadiness in office. Now, perhaps people would like to see him a bit more fired up at times, but generally the American public likes a leader who does not get rattled and who seems to want to do the right thing. These are pluses for Obama.
What could trip Obama up, of course, is the direction of the unemployment rate. It has got to be trending down in the months before the election. Ronald Reagan got a landslide victory in 1984 with 7.2 percent unemployment but he was able to claim that he was bringing it down because it had peaked 23 months before Election Day.
Another possible obstacle to re-election is a "third way." There is a viable, centrist movement underway to elect by Internet convention a third candidate to run in 2012. This third way is trying to register in all fifty states and then conduct a national election for a candidate via the internet. Such a candidacy could possible divide the vote of independents and hurt Obama. Many independents just loved Obama in 2008.
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Diana Furchtgott-Roth Senior fellow, Hudson Institute :
President Obama will win the election if Republicans don’t have a candidate. So far, no leading opponent to Obama has emerged.
Furthermore, as the first African American president, Obama has a broad base of supporters who will fight for his reelection. Finally, his campaign war chest is substantial and will grow in the coming months.
The stagnating economy will help Republicans - I’m not quite sure how the president can run on “Four More Years.” But they need to come up with a leader with charisma and character who can make a compelling case to the American people that lower taxes, less government spending, and less burdensome regulation are the keys to recovery.
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Peter Fenn Democratic media consultant :
It's a long way until Nov. 2012 and Obama has a lot going for him. He made the tough decisions on helping the auto industry and it paid off, saving three million jobs. His stimulus put more money in people's pockets and stopped the bleeding created by the economic meltdown.
The American people believe in him personally and like him. One of the keys to his victory will be to be tougher on the Republican extremism and intransigence, to be a lot more "Give 'em Hell" Harry Truman and a lot less "cool" Calvin Coolidge.
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Aaron David Miller Former State Department official; Wilson Center scholar; author :
I can’t figure out what I’m doing next Tuesday; let alone predict the arc of Obama’s fortunes in November 2012. But I’d say the odds - however gloomy the situation looks now - favor victory. History and the Republicans are on his side.
Since 1980, only one lonely American president - Bush 41 - has failed to gain reelection to a second term. In fact if Obama does win, we’re about to do something historic: three different two-term presidents in a row: Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama. Not since Jefferson, Madison, Monroe has that happened.
Curiously while our local/state/congressional politics crumble, we seem to want a measure of stability and predictability in the one and only national job that we actually have a role in choosing. The fact is, we like these guys; and want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
With no primary challenger and plenty of money, the president also has no credible Republican opponent yet. The question is this; what will be worse by next year? The economy or the his Republican opponent?
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Christine Pelosi Attorney, author and Democratic activist :
Barack Obama will be reelected president of the United States. The work he jas done to rescue the shambled economy he inherited and to tackle jobs, healthcare reform, Wall Street reform, DADT repeal, veterans needs, equal pay, plus the of killing Osama bin Laden will earn him a second term.
While self-described Republican hostage takers have overreached and turned off independents, Obama base voters will come home knowing that we only get a progressive president if we get a progressive Congress and a progressive movement fighting for jobs and shared prosperity.
The economy will foretell all incumbents' job security, including the president's, but you can't beat something with nothing. The weak economic recovery strengthens the case for a Republican nominee, but the weak Republican field missing in action on jobs, growth, and debt solutions strengthens President Obama's political recovery. Sure President Obama took a political hit this week - but at least he was in the arena not cowering in the Mittness Protection Program. If Republicans want to win, they have to do more than root for President Obama and America to fail: they must get in the arena and say what they would do better.
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Garry South Democratic consultant, The Garry South Group :
The Republican field is exceedingly weak, and every one of the candidates have their own electibility problems. You can't beat somebody - and especially a sitting president - with nobody, and the GOP crop isn't even very appealing to Republicans, as witness the revelation that only one in five big George W. Bush bundlers have contributed to any of the current candidates. I'd still put my money on Obama.
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Sandy Maisel Professor of government, Colby College :
The president’s reelection chances are not as rosy as they once were, to be sure, but there is an old saying in politics: You cannot beat someone with no one. As of now, none of the GOP potential candidates has shown the ability to capture the nation’s fancy. As the field looks pretty well set, the president’s chances seem higher than his poll ratings would imply.
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David B. Cohen Associate professor of political science, The University of Akron :
President Ronald Reagan was at 43 percent in the Gallup Poll at the beginning of August 1983 (the exact point in his presidency that Barack Obama is at now). Fifteen months later he won a landslide victory for reelection. Lesson: if twenty four hours is a lifetime in politics, fifteen months is an eon.
Although things look bad for President Obama’s reelection at this moment in time, fortunately for him the election is not next week. It is impossible to predict what will happen over a year from now or to predict whether or not President Obama will be reelected. One thing that political scientists are sure of, however: if the economy improves substantially and unemployment falls, this will help the president immensely. If the economy continues to stagnate or worsen, President Obama is in huge trouble.
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Thomas J. Whalen Professor of Social Science, Boston University :
Everything depends on the quality of opposition being presented. If you have a tea party extremist like Michele Bachmann or a self-professed secessionist like Rick Perry running against you, then President Obama can rest somewhat easier.
But if he has a politically flexible GOP moderate like Mitt Romney - all bets are off. Still, it's never easy to unseat an incumbent president. Even in 1980, when the economy was going south and the Iranian hostage crisis was sapping US.. prestige abroad, Jimmy Carter was still in a virtual dead heat with Ronald Reagan with weeks to go in the race.
It took a bravura nationally televised debate performance by Reagan ("Are you better off now than you were four years ago?") to finally break the electoral log jam. It may require a similar kind of performance to unseat Obama in 2012.
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Jeffrey C. Stewart Professor of Black Studies at University of California at Santa Barbara :
Obama has a good chance of being reelected because of several factors. First is the likely opposition. Prayer Perry? Please. Bachmann? Only if the sky falls. Romney? About as charismatic as chicken soup. And the tea party types will never bite in droves for someone who passed Obamacare before Obama.The others are political zeroes.
Second, as bad as the economy is, the real question for voting blocks like seniors, the aging babyboomers, kids getting ready to go to college is - do you want someone in there who will go along completely with dismantling the New Deal safety and education investment net? As a 65-year old, do you want to see the end of Medicare as we know it? Because that is what will happen if a Republican becomes president in 2012.
Regardless of his numerous weaknesses, and they are legion - just ask Cornel West, the self-appointed presidential critic - Obama has become the president of the United States. As Bush found out, though, becoming legitimated as the president means becoming the hated father-figure who absorbs all of our frustration because the American empire is in decline if not over.
What Obama needs to do is to start preaching with the language of the American Adam, the rhetoric of reinvention, how America is exceptional in our capacity to create something new and spectacular every couple of decades and transform the world. He needs to draw attention to our creativity, which is fueled not weakened by diversity, despite what the xenophobes tell you. He needs to remind America like the football team it is that the game is not over, that we can still pull this out - and so can he if he abandons Washington, takes that message to the people, and becomes rallier-in-chief.
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Greg Dworkin Contributing Editor, Daily Kos :
Events, including the economy, will decide the election, but Obama is holding up remarkably well all things considered, and incumbents are hard to beat. He can lose, but he’ll have a united party behind him and the Republican that will beat him hasn’t materialized yet, nor has a united party behind the nominee.
Romney remains unpopular with a large segment of the GOP base without the skills to recruit them, and as POLITICO points out today, Rick Perry has some major issues to overcome, including questionable appeal outside of Texas to non-Republicans.
And remember, the very serious candidates Pawlenty and Huntsman are, to be charitable, struggling. Bachmann has her own baggage to lug amid questions about her national infrastructure. As to whether Obama goes down or up from here, and whether the Republican brand is steeping in a tea cup (don’t forget, the time will come when the Republican nominee either has to embrace or run from the extremists in the House, and if it’s Romney, that includes Bachmann and Perry), that all remains to be seen.
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Ex-Assemblyman Arthur 'Jerry' Kremer Chairman, Empire Government Strategies; former New York assemblyman :
There is an old expression that you "can't beat somebody with a nobody." It is hard to oust an incumbent without a charismatic smart candidate who is not the captive of the tea party. The tea party is the best thing going for Obama as they will pull the eventual nominee too far to the right. There is lots of time to go before the next election.
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