Only Half of the U.S. Is with Barack

On the eve of Election Day on Tuesday Nov. 6, the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for the White House remains where it has been during the whole campaign, with the Democratic president maintaining a narrow lead, especially in swing states (such as Ohio), and the former Republican governor lagging a little behind. But this does not mean that nothing has changed. Barack Obama, the charismatic champion elected by a new generation in 2008, was hastily awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and praised in books and artwork. Even if he wins the election, he will come out belittled, a “normal president” risking rejection like Carter in 1980 and Bush Senior in 1992. He did control the economic crisis and launch healthcare measures — but without managing to inspire unity or pushing for agreements with the Republicans in Congress.

Romney erased the image of an extremist in the grip of Tea Party activists with which the powerful Democratic machine wanted to saddle him. The governor of the progressive state of Massachusetts approved a healthcare reform that was a copy of Obama’s. It triggered an anathema on the right. About foreign policy he only proposes “effervescent” versions of the president’s ideas. Besides, his fiscal plan — less taxes and less public expenditures but more military expenditures — left the moderate voters puzzled, particularly the less wealthy, women and immigrants.

Neither the eclipse of Obama from prophet to politician, unable to warm the heart of the average American “Joe Six Pack,” who is worried by the $50,000 average annual salary that can fall to $30,000 for a new employee, nor the comeback of capitalist Romney in favor of the layoff to the centrists, seems to have reversed the situation. Nate Silver’s survey for Real Clear Politics gives a seven in 10 chance to the Democrats. The paradox is explained by analyzing unemployment data published yesterday: 171,000 new positions and an unemployment rate that has dropped to 7.9 percent, a modest 0.1 under the 8 percent figure that by tradition eliminates any president. The economist James Marple, in an essay that should inspire people in Europe, says, “Forget about the prophets of doom. The American economy shows an incredible strength in the face of serious predicaments. Even though there are still doubts regarding the fate of the fiscal cliff and the sluggish global economy, the U.S. generates jobs at a respectable pace.”*

If on Tuesday Obama joins these 171,000 people and keeps his job, the reason will be these figures and nothing else. Charisma was his 2008 signature; but the 7.9 percent unemployment rate, the economic stimulus of Bernanke and the Federal Reserve, and the bailout of the automobile industry are his 2012 signature. Have a look at the state of Ohio, which has been voting for the winning president for half a century. All I know about America and all the traditional political analysis of masters such as David Broder and Bill Schneider would leave us to assume that the president would have difficulty with the quarrelsome voters in one of the last “Made in the U.S.A.” manufacturing areas. Instead, Obama is leading and Romney is struggling. Why? Because as Michigan lives through General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, Ohio lives through the automotive industry. Obama’s plan means that the unemployment rate is “only” seven percent and that 150,000 automotive positions were protected. In the 1990’s there were 1,100,000 workers in Ohio; today 657,000 remain. Many of them are sensitive to the appeals of Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan to reduce taxes and expenditures and to launch start-ups, and might share these views. But when they look at their loans, at their salary that does not increase, at the children they need to send to college, they think that Obama and Bernanke’s grey status quo is — for now — reassuring. These opinions of the Ohio workers are shared by Nobel candidate and MIT economist Peter Diamond and famous Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, who argue, “… the U.S. has an unemployment crisis and a public debt problem.” Obama talked academically about the “job emergency,” while Romney, non-extremist and encouraging on TV, focused on the “debt problem” without clarifying how the tax cuts, modest cuts to social expenditures and steep increases in military expenditures could solve it. According to the old American saying “first things first,” these problems must be solved one at a time. Independent and moderate voters especially think today about the “job crisis,” and will focus on the “debt problem” tomorrow.

In its last hours, the campaign, which cost a remarkable $6 billion (4.6 billion euros), was left in the hands of the statistics and “Big Data” experts who — it might entertain readers to know — apply the computer calculus methodology created for baseball, as in the movie “Moneyball,” to politics. Nate Silver, blogger for the austere New York Times, learned the ropes with game results at “Baseball Prospectus.” That gives you the opportunity to examine the curves and diagrams for hours, until you go blind. The result, national or state-by-state, changes little: Obama has three chances out of four to win, leaving Romney with longer odds. The skeptical political scientists Brooks, Scarborough and Podhoretz sneer, “If Romney wins, all of Nate Silver’s followers will have to go back to baseball.” Nonsense: “probability” is not certainty, but you would never get on a plane that has a one in four chance of crashing, while you would rush to buy a lottery ticket that has a one in four chance of being the winning ticket.

Those are extreme probabilities. The certainties for Obama or Romney are the problems to come: jobs to create; innovation and production to sustain even if they are better off than Europe; the public debt problem that will turn into a crisis if it is not tackled; a deficit in the domestic demand that remains abysmal with spendthrift consumers; social inequality that does not protest in the manner of Occupy Wall Street but witnesses young people and the middle class losing their purchasing power and social status; and Washington and its polarized politics unable to negotiate agreements between the White House and Congress. In conclusion, the Obama-Bernanke plan seems more realistic and less ideological than Romney’s call for the market: The electorate is aware that no Republican has voted for a tax increase since 1990, a whole generation. But as the old Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post, “Anyone who saw Obama as the new Bob Kennedy was seriously mistaken.”** The comparison is unfair to the young president: The U.S. is now divided and lacks places of common social life that schools, military service, playgrounds or popular neighborhoods once provided. Citizens of the digital economy and those of the old economy do not meet anymore unless they run into each other in the street. Obama had given hopes not of an embrace between the two worlds, but at least of the possibility of a dialogue between these two Americas — and he failed. He might be reelected, but only by half of the democracy. This year, there is no dream; only dollars, jobs and bills to be paid every month.

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

** Editor’s Note: This sentiment is expressed in Richard Cohen’s Post article “The President Who Seems Not to Care,” though this exact quote could not be verified.