Barack Obama’s Long Route

All the presidents have said it, but this time Barack Obama is probably right: The 2012 United States presidential election will be “crucial.”* Beyond the failure or the success of the United States’ first black president, it is the American model that is at stake. Which social protections should we have? What role does the federal government have? How united will the citizens be? Given how much weight is being given to the economy, as well as the contrast between the candidates’ stances on other issues like climate change, the issue will overtake Washington, even if it often seems to be the least of Americans’ worries.

The Republican primary campaigns show this every day: The two parties have never been as far apart on the ideas map. Democrats reckon that salvaging the middle class requires a second New Deal, meaning investment in infrastructure and maintaining social protections put in place under Franklin Roosevelt. They believe this is necessary even if Barack Obama, who is wooing the center, favors large budgetary reductions ($3 trillion in 10 years for a current deficit of $1.5 trillion), which will not fail to affect the retirement or health insurance systems.

The Republicans wish to clean out the dead wood. They are in favor of privatizing retirements, or “personalizing” them, as their public relations specialists prefer to call it. The former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, has preferred to adopt positions not too far from the center. “There are Democrats who love America as Republicans do,” he said during the Dec. 15 debate in Iowa. However, some Republicans challenge the wisdom from the 20th century, such as the desirability of a distributive retirement system, health insurance for seniors, taxes on revenue, federal environmental regulations, trade union rights and even traits of the institutional system, such as the lifelong appointment of federal judges.

This contrast is the argument on which Barack Obama will build his campaign. “In 2008, the message was ‘Washington is broken.’ This time, it will be, ‘The Republican Party is broken, and I will be the one who will save you from their schemes,'”* foresees Paul Taylor of the Pew Hispanic Center, a center for Latino studies. The American president has started to mark out his angles of attack during the 57 rallies which he has held in 2011 in swing states, doing this in front of the donors who continue to pressure him during fundraisers. “The very heart of America” is “at stake,”* he repeats. On Dec. 6 in Osawatomie, Kansas, he expressed his vision: “I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules.”

Obama proclaims that he has not proved himself unworthy. He also listed the changes which he has presided over: “I was determined to rebuild this economy based on what this country has always done best — not just buying and consuming, but … selling those goods all around the world, stamped with three proud words: Made in America. And that’s why one of the first decisions that I made as president was to save the U.S. auto industry from collapse.” Change, he insists, has come in the form of health insurance, accepting homosexuals in the Army and the end of the war in Iraq. Be that as it may, the polls are bad. For the first time, the majority (52 percent) is leaning against his re-election, according to an AP survey published on Dec. 16.

And yet, Barack Obama’s entourage is confident. With one eye on the unemployment level (practically identical to what it was in 1983, one year before Ronald Reagan was re-elected in a landslide) and the other on the demographic changes, which favor the non-white candidate, the campaign team is already plowing through the dozen states where the election is at stake. As everyone remembers from Florida in 2000, the outcome is not decided on a national proportion, but state by state, according to a system which favors experts in electoral strategy.

Recurrent Disillusionment

According to a study by the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, the groups that voted for the Democratic senator in 2008 (blacks and Latinos) are expanding. This gradual change could compensate for the already noticeable disaffection of uneducated whites in 2008 — a category whose proportion in the population is on the decline. In 2008, minorities represented 18 percent of the electoral register. The Center for American Progress estimates that their proportion will be 28 percent in 2012. The white working class representation (a category which, since Ronald Reagan, has voted mainly Republican) does not cease to erode: It has gone from 50 percent to 39 percent in 10 years. In 2008, Barack Obama won over 43 percent of the white vote.

Despite the recurrent disillusionment of his 2008 supporters, Obama should be able to count on them. As proof of this, Obama cites the number of small donors — over a million — who have already contributed to his campaign. After nearly $100 million was collected by the end of October, Mr. Obama had more money than all his adversaries put together. The campaign to re-conquer the disillusioned has started. They are inspired by the prospect that if Obama is elected for a second and last term, he will be able to become the reformer which he has not been able — or dared — to be. It is forgotten that he will probably have to continue to make do with a hostile Congress: One of the chambers, at least, should remain in the hands of the Republicans.

For Barack Obama, the election result rests on a simple equation: Will the advance that demography has given him be sufficient enough to compensate for the handicap, which is the state of the economy? To all the 2008 followers, on Dec. 12, during a televised interview, he gave a few words: “Don’t judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative.”**

*Editor’s Note: This quote, accurately translated, could not be verified.

**Editor’s Note: This quote was originally attributed to Joe Biden; Barack Obama was quoting Biden’s statement.