Obama to Face Democratic Challenger in 2012

Obama is having to re-engineer his entire campaign to deal with a challenger. His opponent has a better message, more accomplishments and real dedication to the American people. Who would dare step-up and challenge Mr. Hope and Change? Well, Obama, the candidate,  would.

Obama’s facing a real re-election obstacle – his own record. Between failing to meet his own goals and committing acts of war in more countries than any President since WWII, he won’t want to stand on what he’s done. Obama will have no choice but to make more statements about how bad things will be if we don’t re-elect him.

Candidate Obama:

Will tell us that unemployment will continue to go down and be at 5% within his next term. Candidate Obama will re-promise more transparency, more bi-partisanship, more of everything that makes America great.

President Obama:

He can’t talk about having held unemployment under 8% as he promised. He can’t talk about having created two million jobs (or even held the employed workforce at the same level as when he entered office). He won’t be able to point to the vast green energy sector he created. He won’t want to talk about his health care reform once everyone’s health insurance premiums go up or they realize that the plan they were told they could keep .. doesn’t exist anymore.

Candidate Obama:

Will tell us of how he will continue to work hard to strengthen the economic climate for business and business-owners. He will tell us that he is dedicated to balancing the budget and reforming entitlements. He will tell us that he is firm on border security.

President Obama:

Could talk about the government takeover of GM and Chrysler, but that’s not advisable considering how much they still owe the American people and that bath we’re going to take when the government sells our stock for a loss. He could use the NLRB vs. Boeing issue to talk about his success in arm-twisting businesses to go union or go to another country. Obama may choose to talk about how he cut the deficit in half in his first term – then again… maybe not. And if none of that works, he could just talk about his administration’s program to provide well-made American guns to the needy Mexican drug cartels.

And then there’s what happens when they both speak at the same time. He’s talked about putting alligators in moats as a border security option, put Joe Biden in charge of budget negotiation meetings and gotten schooled by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyaho over Obama’s idea to return Israel to the pre-1967 lines.

Obama cannot run on his foreign relations nor domestic policy record. Will the teleprompter-dependent orator put up cardboard cutouts of George Bush? Obama could then point at G.W. Bush while he tells America that if we don’t re-elect him, we’ll get four more years of the same policies that got us into four simultaneous conflicts, caused commodity, fuel and food prices to shoot through the roof and that continue to erode the value of our homes – all while failing to mention that those were his policies. Candidate Obama will blame Bush, but he’ll also bring back that ace-in-the-hole – “Things would have been much worse if not for me”.

That tired approach will certainly come into play over and over. Obama will continue to ask everyone else to prove a negative or at least accept that his statement is proof of that negative. . The trouble for the golfer-in-chief is that the electorate can go the other direction – “Things would have been better if Anyone else had gotten elected”.