Ok... I'm Gonna Get Shit For This... But The Hand-Wringing Is Gonna Be Here A While... Months Maybe [View all]

[WillyT]

I post this for information... NOT division...

No emboldened passages, no snark short-cuts, no hidden agenda... just plain putting it out.

And I think the advice might be worth considering.



Democrats Jittery Over Obama’s Sputtering 2012 Campaign
Obama’s party is worried that the economy may sink the president’s reelection and worry that he has not reacted strongly enough. Eleanor Clift on why his campaign seems out of sync.
Eleanor Clift - DailyBeast
Jun 8, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

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If the next five months are anything like the last two, Barack Obama is toast. That’s what many Democrats are saying privately, and it’s not about Wisconsin.

The effort to recall Scott Walker failed, but exit polls show the president holding an edge in the state, which hasn’t voted Republican since 1984. It’s the weak job numbers from last week that has Democrats panicking. There’s a sense that the economy has stalled, and that the Obama campaign is stuck in a time warp with a message that assumes steady if slow progress, when the jobs picture may not get better.

“Our real concern is that they’re just sleepwalking,” says a Democratic strategist, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing the Obama campaign. His fear, echoed by many, is that Obama’s responses to the dire economic conditions fall far short of the bold leadership needed.

The latest gimmick rolled out by the White House, a To-Do list aimed at Congress that fits on a Post-it note, is emblematic of what’s missing. “A To-Do list is for little things, like picking up the dry cleaning; you don’t put "schedule your son’s MRI" or “buy a new house” on the list,” says this frustrated Democrat.

Hand-wringing is a common malady during presidential campaigns, and Obama has a history of hanging back, listening to his own internal clock, and then acting just when others think all is lost. Campaigns have a rhythm, but the worry among Democrats is that the Obama team is so focused on disparaging Mitt Romney that they haven’t laid out in a clear and compelling way what Obama would do in a second term. “If all Romney has to say is, 'I’ll do better,’ Obama will lose,” says Sam Popkin, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and author of The Candidate: What it Takes to Win—and Hold—the White House.

People still quote the phrase from the Clinton ’92 war room, “It's the economy, stupid.” Another phrase written on the blackboard by then-strategist James Carville is equally relevant today, “Change vs. more of the same.”

“The man who campaigned in ’08 on hope and change is now, whether he likes it or not, more of the same—and he has to make more of the same look better,” says Popkin. The American Jobs Act that Obama introduced earlier this year is languishing in Congress with no apparent hope of passage. “He has never said what his next three steps are. People have to have confidence he has a plan, and he hasn’t told us.”

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More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/08/democrats-jittery-over-obama-s-sputtering-2012-campaign.html