Winning the Future?
Obama’s reelection chances are looking good right now, but the next nine months are full of storm clouds.
By John Heilemann
Published Feb 10, 2012
New York Magazine
Late last September, the Democratic political strategist Doug Sosnik wrote a six-page memo, with a 28-slide deck of charts and graphs, and sent it to his friends and clients—a collection of corporate pooh-bahs, heavy-hitting politicos, and miscreant pundits. The dispatching of memos is something that Sosnik does sporadically, when the spirit moves him.
On this occasion, his topic was one about which Sosnik, who in 1995 and 1996 served as White House political director for Bill Clinton, knows more than a little: the underlying dynamics of how an incumbent gets himself reelected (or not); and, by extension, their implications for the current occupant of the Oval Office.
At the time when Sosnik penned his memo, many Democrats were growing increasingly pessimistic about Barack Obama’s prospects for winning a second term. Sosnik was less gloomy, but his point was that the president had to move quickly to address his problems or risk defeat. “Conventional wisdom suggests that Obama’s best chance to turn the corner will come at the beginning of the general-election campaign when he’ll square off with the Republican nominee,” he wrote. “But recent presidential history suggests that it is more likely that Obama’s fate will be influenced more by what he does or does not do in the next several months.”
The next several months, of course, turned out to be good ones—very good ones—for Obama. In his year-end showdown with Republicans over the payroll-tax-cut extension, the president beat the opposition bloody. As the unemployment rate has steadily (if only slightly) declined, his approval ratings have steadily improved. Armed with a retooled and more populist message, Obama has been sharper, more effective on the hustings. His Republican rivals have been engaged in a nasty, brutish, and prolonged spectacle that has simultaneously diminished all of them and exacerbated intraparty divisions that may prove quite hard to heal.
(More here.)
By John Heilemann
Published Feb 10, 2012
New York Magazine
Late last September, the Democratic political strategist Doug Sosnik wrote a six-page memo, with a 28-slide deck of charts and graphs, and sent it to his friends and clients—a collection of corporate pooh-bahs, heavy-hitting politicos, and miscreant pundits. The dispatching of memos is something that Sosnik does sporadically, when the spirit moves him.
On this occasion, his topic was one about which Sosnik, who in 1995 and 1996 served as White House political director for Bill Clinton, knows more than a little: the underlying dynamics of how an incumbent gets himself reelected (or not); and, by extension, their implications for the current occupant of the Oval Office.
At the time when Sosnik penned his memo, many Democrats were growing increasingly pessimistic about Barack Obama’s prospects for winning a second term. Sosnik was less gloomy, but his point was that the president had to move quickly to address his problems or risk defeat. “Conventional wisdom suggests that Obama’s best chance to turn the corner will come at the beginning of the general-election campaign when he’ll square off with the Republican nominee,” he wrote. “But recent presidential history suggests that it is more likely that Obama’s fate will be influenced more by what he does or does not do in the next several months.”
The next several months, of course, turned out to be good ones—very good ones—for Obama. In his year-end showdown with Republicans over the payroll-tax-cut extension, the president beat the opposition bloody. As the unemployment rate has steadily (if only slightly) declined, his approval ratings have steadily improved. Armed with a retooled and more populist message, Obama has been sharper, more effective on the hustings. His Republican rivals have been engaged in a nasty, brutish, and prolonged spectacle that has simultaneously diminished all of them and exacerbated intraparty divisions that may prove quite hard to heal.
(More here.)
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