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Will Barack Obama Lose the 2012 Election?

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Herbert Calhoun
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There are only a few things we know for sure about President Barack Obama: (1) He is one shrewd Chicago politician; (2) The white middle class can't stand his guts; and (3) as a result of (2), he is allergic to dealing with the problems of black voters (the only group that supported him by 95%), even if that happens to be the best move to improve the lot of the nation as a whole.

With the embarrassingly small bump (of only four points) in the polls as a result of killing Osama bin Laden, being "stiffed" by the Republicans at every turn, and no hope of fixing the jobs part of the economy (or the deficit) by 2012, one can easily see that BHO has a very large and a very, very soft underbelly. Any sensible opposing political strategist would see immediately in these imperatives a political calculus that could easily defeat our first black president in 2012.

At a minimum, BHO desperately needs to hold on to his large black turnout to have any chance at being reelected? However, believe it or not, it is precisely this part of his base that represents Obama's Achilles Heel and his greatest challenge. Because the passively racist white middle class cannot stand his guts, BHO repeatedly has had to "pander" to the racist vote by "stiffing" his black voters, giving them little more than the symbolic crumbs they normally would receive from other racist but white politicians. He is quick to "grandstand" in black churches and schools, but when it comes time to hand out the "bennies," blacks are not even getting the crumbs they normally get with racist white politicians. BHO thinks we are all fools and that has been his biggest mistake.

Thus, it is not just Princeton Professor, Dr. Cornel West who is spitting mad at BHO, the rest of us feel mad and humiliated by him too. If this is what black Presidents do to us, then please give us another old familiar Southern racist white president, like LBJ. At least then we know what to expect.

To add insult to injury, Obama has put the ghetto clown, Al Sharpton out front as the (black) face of his 2012 campaign? This weekend on CBS 60 Minutes, Sharpton again repeated the Obama mantra " that blacks had nothing coming from his administration." Appointing Sharpton is just one of many disturbing signs to the ordinary black voter that BHO is either not taking us seriously, is himself a racist in the same vein as white Southern politicians; is not nearly as shrewd as we thought he was; has nothing but utter contempt for his black voters; or has badly misplayed the black side of his own "Southern strategy" to get reelected?   Any way you cut it, by my way of calculating, our first black president is already in grave danger of losing the 2012 election, even though the Republicans have yet to field a viable candidate.  

But there is still more bad news for our basketball playing chief executive: Except for the Wall Street crowd, progressives across the board are certain that BHO, who throughout his first term has been little more than GW lite, has betrayed them royally. First screwing them from the front by continuing Bush's wars, renditions, torture, the Patriot Act; and then from the rear with the way he so readily "caved" to the Republicans on the "evil" Bush tax cuts to the super wealthy. The man has not yet seen a Republican idea that he is not ready to preemptively compromise on?

Obama's only answer to all his reelection woes also betrays a poverty, dumbness and desperation in his reelection strategy. It has been to make more lame speeches, first to Hispanics in Arizona, then to blacks in Tennessee, and this weekend to America's Muslim population on Middle East policy. What Obama cannot know is that his speeches are well past the point of diminishing returns. I now "push the mute button" (as I used to do with W) no longer really needing to hear what he's actually saying. The very fact that his mouth is moving, tells me he is either lying or "selling" us another "wolf ticket." BHO does not know it yet, but with his black constituency, he is just whistling past the 2012 graveyard. We too lie in the polls, when we are preparing to send a message to a president who has betrayed us.

 

How a Republican can beat Barack Obama in 2012

The formula is simple: Get inside BHO's decision loop; hit him where it will hurt most: He can't cater to blacks, the center of his base. Attack him there first by promising to do something about the embarrassing and shameful inner cities. Make it clear that the greatest shame in our nation is that a pre-awarded Nobel Prize-winning basketball playing black President, has actually turned his head away from those who need and supported him the most, black people.

Offer blacks and other poor people an alternative by recycling Richard Nixon and Jack Kempt's inner city free enterprise zones, as a show of good faith.   Anything will be better than what Obama has offered them, which is absolutely nothing. Make "cleaning up" the squalor of our inner cities a priority not just because black people live there, but also because it is a blight on the conscience and the name of a proud democracy, etc.

And then "zero in" on the other theme that is sure to defeat Barack Obama: "It's the Jobs stupid!" Here again, BHO is defenseless for he has no jobs program and has no idea how to go about developing one. Hitting him with this one-two punch in the solar plexus leaves him no margin of error in 2012.  

Are the Republicans smart enough or brave enough to do this? I doubt it, but the man best primed to do so is Romney with his business background and having served as Governor to Massachusetts, he has the right credentials to make a credible stab at the black vote, and will be pleasantly surprised at how easily we can be peeled away from the black traitor, Barack Obama.

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Retired Foreign Service Officer and past Manager of Political and Military Affairs at the US Department of State. For a brief time an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Denver and the University of Washington at (more...)
 
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