Quote of the Day: Barack Obama Shouldn’t Use Bush’s Re-Election Strategy

Our political Quote fo the Day comes from The Daily Beast’s John Avlon who says Barack Obama should not try and use George W. Bush’s re-election strategy. Here’s how he begins his piece:

The buzz is that President Obama is going to use Bush-Cheney ’04 as his re-elect model. This is a bad idea on at least five different levels.

He then elaborates on these five levels, and ends his post with this:

The balancing act in politics is inspiring the base without alienating the center of the electorate. Ultimately elections in America are won by the candidate who connects with moderates and the middle class. Thirteen months out, it is clear that President Obama has an uphill climb toward reelection ahead of him. His greatest asset is the weakness of the Republican field and his still-high personal approval ratings. But everything from job approval numbers to the unemployment rate to the consumer price index bodes badly for the president. If he wins reelection, it will be a much narrower victory than he enjoyed in 2008. Swing states like Indiana and North Carolina are unlikely to come back into his fold. He won independent voters by 8 percent last election but now his independent approval rating is underwater at 37 percent, with Mitt Romney carrying a 55 percent approval among independents in a head-to-head contrast.

Reaching for the last presidential reelect playbook smacks of a lack of imagination by Team Obama. Yes, the president needs to reignite support of his progressive base, which has suffered because of unrealistic expectations that collided with an enduringly bad global economy. But while playing to the base might feel good to Democratic Party consultants, a look at the national numbers shows that it threatens to take a long-shot and make it worse, guaranteeing a razor thin reelect at best by focusing on the base at the expense of independents and the center.

And if Obama wins this way, yes, he will win but it will make him yet another President who turns out to seem to be by choice of the base by the base and for the base, at least in the eyes of many immediately following a (base) mobilization victory on election day. He could then try to woo independents and the center but the larger issue would remain: how America and its new and old media are set up to marginalize independents and centrists as either afterthoughts or mushy people who aren’t smart enough to join the country’s race towards polarization and totallyautomatically agree with one side or another. An Obama victory in the way in which Avlon fears could mean a win for Obama and (yet) another defeat for the country’s increasingly defanged political enter.

Read his whole post from beginning to end.