It was announced that the Presidential nomination has now been officially clinched by Barack Obama. It was also noted that there seems to be a theme of redemption on the Republican side as Julie Mason of POTUS stated: Romney to redeem his father’s failed run for the White House and Santorum trying to redeem his 18 point loss in the 2006 Senate race. The Republican race is essentially over so we will focus on the Fall contest.
Paul then took us through an exercise about assessing campaigns. There are four main factors that affect a campaign: the parties, the issues, candidate evaluation and the nature of the times. By assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign, each candidate can develop a strategy to win. In 2000 the issues favored the Democrats, the parties were equal as were the candidates. Thus George W. Bush acknowledged that the economy was good focusing on what we could do with the abundance of what we have. He then won by insisting that you can’t trust Al Gore because Clinton cheated on his wife.
Starting with the parties, Obama would appear to have the advantage. The Democrats are united; the Republicans are in the middle of a bruising campaign with the Tea Party fighting the moderates; and it is not clear that Romney has the skills to reunite the Republicans.
Paul prefaced the conversation on issues and ideology by saying that issues do not usually matter much but sometimes they do. Romney and the Republicans can hammer Obama and the Democrats on the growing debt/deficit problems and gas prices if they remain high. Obama and the Democrats can emphasize social issues (particularly with respect to women’s issues and those of interest to the Hispanic community), foreign policy (unless it turns bad and Obama is seen as weak) and the entitlement cuts proposed in the Ryan budget. The wild card is the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Heath Care Act and its political fallout. We described the three most likely outcomes of the court decision (total overturn of the law, overturning the mandate but leaving the rest of the law intact, upholding its constitutionality) each of which could hurt Obama and help Romney, or help Obama and hurt Romney, or not matter much of all. In other words, we came to no consensus on the issue, but it will make for great discussions in the group between the end of June and the opening of the conventions. We left the economy out of this part of the question as we relegated it to the nature of the times.
With respect to the candidates, Obama is favored by his leadership abilities and charisma in addition to the flip-flop reputation and elitist image of his opponent. Romney has the advantage in that he is perceived as a competent manager based on experience in business, government and at the Olympics. He also is from outside Washington which appears to intoxicate anyone who has ever spent time there. Both Romney and Obama have run successful nomination campaigns, but Obama has the advantage of having run a successful Presidential campaign.
The economy is obviously the big elephant in the room. If the economy continues to improve appreciably, most of what was discussed above will have little consequence with a clear advantage to Obama. If the economy goes into another slump (a triple dip) we can look forward to President Romney, #45. A modest improvement in the economy or stagnation foretells a close election where the court decision, price of gasoline, the gender gap, and other factors could become decisive. Perhaps even more important will be the mood of the country between June and November with optimism about the future favoring Obama and pessimism favoring Romney.
Based on this assessment, Obama’s best strategy would appear to define Romney as a flip-flopping Massachusetts politician who is rich and out of touch while stoking the divisions within the Republican party. Romney’s winning strategy appears to be to describe Obama as in over his head and what the country needs is a competent manager who understands how the economy works.
Somebody mentioned that Romney has suggested that Obama is a closet atheist. We do not believe that Romney should be one throwing stone on religion as he is vulnerable on that issue. The President’s statement on the Supreme Court on Monday was also discussed. Some of us thought it was a big deal and not smart to dare the court to overturn it at their peril. Others thought it wasn’t that critical. We also discussed the potential role of negative advertisements in voter suppression. It was pointed out that the most negative campaign in recent history was in 2004 and that the vote was not suppressed. Also mentioned was that the political science literature suggests that negative ads either do not suppress the vote or are over-rated in their effect. Possible third party runs were considered, but they were generally discounted.
In reviewing Presidential elections since 1960, the turnout in millions and % of the voting population was
2008 132.6M 56.8%
2004 122.3M 55.3%
2000 105.6M 51.3%
1996 96.5M 49.1%
1992 104.4M 55.1%
1988 91.6M 50.1%
1984 92.7M 53.1%
1980 86.5M 52.6%
1976 81.6M 53.6%
1972 77.7M 55.2%
1968 73.2M 60.8%
1964 70.6M 61.9%
1960 68.8M 63.1%
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