Guest from the Right: T. Paine

The Impending Defeat of a Progressive President

"The common wisdom among our partisan leftist friends, including the mainstream liberal media, is that the upcoming presidential election will be a close one. But in the end, their champion Barrack Obama will indeed emerge triumphant and send that “selfish 1%’er” Mitt Romney running back to obscurity to lick his wounds. I strongly suspect that this is more a matter of misplaced faith on their behalf than on common sense. Ronald Reagan was 9 points behind Jimmy Carter in the month prior to that election, and as we all know, the Gipper won in a landslide. I would submit to my leftist friends that they are about to experience a similar shellacking in 18 days.

When it comes down to it, common sense dictates that America will not re-elect Obama to the presidency. In 2008, Barrack Obama was a fairly unknown candidate who spoke eloquently about grandiose ideals such as generic hope and change. In 2012, President Obama now is a known candidate with a dismal record on which he has to run. The result of his record pretty much suggests that his re-election is indeed doomed. President Obama has angered or disappointed far too many people and specific demographics thereof to get the kind of support or even voter turn-out for him that he received in his first election. Let’s look at a few specifics as to why I think this portends the end of his administration accordingly.

First off, it is with a high degree of certainty that I think that those conservative folks who voted for John McCain in 2008 will not be voting for Barrack Obama in 2012. Obama thus will pick up none of those votes accordingly. That said, there are millions of independent people that did vote for Obama in 2008 when he was a well-spoken but virtually unknown quantity that are sorely disappointed in his performance who will not vote for him again in 2012. The net result will be a loss for Obama.

President Obama carried a staggering percentage of the black vote in 2012, however, he has angered many church-going black people including prominent pastors due to his recent stance in support of gay marriage. While Obama will still easily get a majority of the black vote again, he will not have anywhere near the percentage that he did in the first election. Again, this is a net loss for Obama.

The Jewish vote in America has also historically been a strong support group for the Democratic candidate, and indeed Obama captured a majority of their votes in 2008. That said, Obama’s policy of “placing daylight between America and Israel” has made Israel feel more vulnerable to ever rising anti-Jewish terrorist groups and states in the Middle East. Obama’s suggestion that a return to the indefensible 1967 borders for Israel as a starting point for negotiations with the Palestinians drew the ire of Prime Minister Netanyahu and alienated many of the Jewish people. Obama’s seeming indifference in actions, if not always in his rhetoric, towards preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is a huge existential threat to Israel’s survival. These factors have ensured that Obama will lose a significant percentage of the Jewish vote in America for this election.

The youth vote was wildly enthusiastic and turn out for Obama was huge from this constituency in 2008. Now, four years later, 50% of college graduates are unable to find employment and enthusiasm for Obama based on his poor stewardship of the economy and job market for these young people will ensure that far fewer of them will turn out to vote, and of those that do vote, many of them will not pull the lever for Obama this time.

The Catholic vote was slightly in favor of Obama in 2008. Now with Obama’s assault on Catholicism and Americans’ first amendment right to practice their religion via his Obamacare HHS mandate, there are millions of Catholics that will not vote for Obama this time around. Another net loss for Obama.

Next, small business owners have seen a dramatic increase in their costs of doing business and are fearful of the impact that Obamacare will have on their bottom lines. These and other negative factors that Obama has created in the economy through his policies have made it so that small businesses are unable to grow and hire more people, hence the horrible unemployment numbers still. For that reason, most small business owners will not be voting for Obama on November 6th either.

Then there is the veteran vote to consider. While this group has historically been more reliably Republican in their voting tendencies, Obama has done nothing to endear those folks in the armed forces to himself. Indeed, Obama has made it even more difficult for military members to vote absentee out of fear of this, accordingly. You will see Romney get an even greater percentage of this group than McCain did in 2008. Net gain goes to Romney.

Even among the bed-wetting on-fire progressives that voted for Obama in 2008 there is much anger and resentment towards him for not going even further in his attempts to usher in a worker’s paradise. The enthusiasm gap and waning support from the most ideological of his base will suffer accordingly and result in less voter turn-out from this group too. Another net loss for Obama.

Lastly, there is the blue collar working class folks who have seen true unemployment remain above 8% for nearly all of Obama’s tenure. Gas prices, food prices, and even health care costs have dramatically skyrocketed directly due to Obama’s policies over the last four years. People ultimately will always vote with their pocket books, and Obama has not done anything to alleviate the burden for America, and particularly for this constituency group. This is a huge net loss for Obama.

The bottom line is that President Obama will lose, in some cases by huge margins, many votes from the preceding groups of American voters. There is no single group where Obama stands to gain in voter support over the 2008 election. With that said, common sense and simple arithmetic tells me that on Wednesday November 7th, President-elect Romney will be celebrating, as will a strong majority of Americans. May God bless America again accordingly!

(You can read T. Paine daily at Saving Common Sense)