Democrats on the Attack

Obama’s big problem is that victory will be decided by the economy.

Just one week after the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., the Democratic Party opens their own in Charlotte, N.C. The two parties have chosen swing states to try to persuade them in their favor. Both Florida and North Carolina voted Democrat in the Obama storm of 2008, but both also voted for the Republican candidate in 2004.

In Tampa, influenced by tea party radicalism and armed with The King, the Republicans made a show of pure conservatism and spared no criticism of their rivals, who now face the task of defending the management of the past four years in the middle of a difficult economic situation, without the enthusiasm in 2008 that led to the emergence of the first black president in U.S. history. I will never forget the spectacle that the Washington Mall offered the icy day of Barack Obama’s inauguration. Since then, Obama has been confronted with an inheritance from Bush that included two open-ended wars and a brutal economic crisis, the worst since 1929, which has bankrupted financial institutions, burst the real estate bubble, left three million Americans out of work and forced massive interventions by the Federal Reserve that raised the deficit to intolerable levels. But as Jeb Bush said in Tampa, Obama cannot forever blame his predecessor for how bad things are going four years later.

All of this amid a growing political polarization that has blocked Congress from reaching consensus on immigration, raising the debt ceiling or closing the prison at Guantánamo as Obama promised, which has resulted in the logical disappointment of many young voters, Independents and Hispanics who gave their support in 2008. The latter, which are already 16.5 percent of the population, will vote Democrat in a ratio of two-to-one, although they have yet to realize the enormous political influence that the polls offer.

Yesterday a senator friend told me from Tampa that Republicans are giving up on the Hispanic vote because “Romney had not worked it enough.” Moreover, 94 percent of African Americans (13.5 percent of the population) declared that they will vote overwhelmingly for Obama. Nothing similar has ever happened before. Jews, few but influential, also offer a 70 percent Democrat vote despite Obama’s scuffles with Netanyahu, who makes no secret of his sympathy for Romney. Finally, women, who comprise 50 percent of the population, show increasing signs of irritation with some Republican positions on issues like abortion and the right to choose, while the gay vote is traditionally Democratic.

Effects remain to be seen of the new phenomenon of the so-called super-PACs (Political Action Committees), which have come into play for the first time thanks to a decision by the Supreme Court that, under the protection of the First Amendment, allows large corporations to give unlimited contributions to campaigns by way of “independent expenditures,” that is to say, expenditures not coordinated with the campaigns. It would not be surprising for the major interests of Wall Street, the oil giants, the pharmaceutical industry, the coal industry or medical insurance companies to decide to enter the race with unlimited financial means — and one can venture a guess as to whom they will support. Some states such as Montana have already complained about the intrusion of enormous sums of money during the primaries that altered the local political game.

So far, the Democrats have managed to focus the debate on their areas of interest, on moral questions like abortion or social ones such as the fact that the rich pay very few taxes. Romney himself, who earned $20 million in 2011, confesses to have paid only 13 percent in taxes, and if proposals made by Paul Ryan in Tampa go forward, he could end up paying less than 1 percent. It is clear that this is the debate Obama wants instead of debating the economic situation, where he has less success to show and which is precisely the debate Romney will now insist on. In fact, no U.S. president has been re-elected with higher than 7 percent unemployment, and the rate is currently 8.3 percent.

Obama’s big problem is that victory will not be determined by either foreign policy or security, where he can show success such as the death of bin Laden, but rather by the economy, and that explains his growing nervousness with the Europeans’ delay in resolving their problems.

Obama does not have it easy because more than 60 percent of Americans think that the country is going in the wrong direction, and if Europe gets worse, it will be impossible. And he needs to win to consolidate health care reform (the Affordable Care Act), which is his major achievement; if he does not win in November, the Republicans will dismantle it — as Romney has just promised in Tampa — and with it will disappear the great legacy of his presidency. For that reason alone he cannot risk being a single-term president. The fact is that the American heartland runs deep, and that’s why Obama, just like Woody Allen, is more popular on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Either way, Americans face a fascinating election with two radically different philosophies in relation to the role of government and how to fix the economy.