Brace Yourself: Obama's Path to Re-election

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general and author of The Art of War:

 

"Know your enemy and know yourself;

in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.

When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself,

your chances of winning or losing are equal.

 

If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself,

you are sure to be defeated in every battle."

 

 

Although he's from West-byGD-Virginia, I don't know him personally, but I do nevertheless heart Chris Stirewalt. And he is scaring me to pieces this morning. But well and good that he is, because we must know "the enemy" ... or "the opposition," if you'd rather.

 

.... The establishment press is consumed with the idea that Romney has a “narrow path.” That’s true, in the sense that he daggone well better win Ohio or he won’t win the election. But that’s been true of every Republican since Abe Lincoln.

Obama’s path is somewhat geographically narrow in that he probably needs to win three of the five big Eastern swing states: Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida.

But demographically, it’s ultra-narrow.

Team Obama wants to hold down turnout for Romney in the ‘burbs and with blue-collar voters, while simultaneously squeezing out every vote from key Democratic groups: government worker unions, Hispanics, blacks, the poor, etc.

This is not a strategy for a broad victory, but a narrow one, won in Salvadoran neighborhoods in Northern Virginia, black precincts in Philadelphia and a dozen state-capital counties where AFSCME can drive turnout.

Here’s the Obama vision for the cycle: While Obama and allied groups barrage Mitt Romney with negative advertising to hold down the Republican’s margins with independents and suburbanites, Team Obama will be using its own resources and groups like the ones Soros is now funding to recruit, equip and mobilize supporters on the left.

By the fall, Obama hopes to see Democratic intensity up, Republican intensity down and smart-phone wielding campaign workers blanketing the blue precincts of purple states.

If Romney fails in his central task – to prosecute Obama’s economic record – then this kind of narrow, base-versus-base strategy can deliver a victory for Obama.

Read It All: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/08/obamas-own-narrow-path-to-victory/?cmpid=cmty_twitter_Obama%E2%80%99s_Own_Narrow_Path_to_Victory#ixzz1uI3WJXmN

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

"By the fall, Obama hopes to see Democratic intensity up, Republican intensity down ..." That word "hopes" reminds me of Mencken's famous definition: "Hope is a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible." I'm not ready to say Obama's hope is impossible, but it is improbable. In the weeks ahead, we're likely to see a steady drip, drip, drip of incidents like yesterday's -- when Joe Biden announced his support for gay marriage. Word has already spread that Biden was speaking for Obama, covertly letting the Dim base know that Obama is really on the side of gay marriage but is politically constrained from saying so. If this notion becomes widespread, it will probably do more to weaken Democratic intensity in the fall than boost it; that's because two large sectors of the Dim base, black churchgoers and Hispanics, are strongly against gay marriage. If the idea spreads among these two sectors that a second Obama term could see widespread legalization of gay marriage, some blacks and Hispanics may stay home on election day. This is just one example -- and a small one -- of the kind of thing that could peel away some of the "surefire" votes that Obama so desperately needs. I'd be willing to bet that, come November 6th, GOP intensity will exceed Dim intensity. I'm putting my money on Mencken -- and Romney.