There will be so many things to talk about with Obama vs. Romney from here to November, but the one that nobody will want to talk about very much in polite society, even in what has a chance to be the meanest presidential campaign for all times, is race.
It works against the President this time, in a big way.
Last time, there were just weren’t enough reasons for enough white voters to vote against the black guy, as much as they wanted to. This time there are plenty.
And please don’t believe a single poll on this issue.
If there is one great truth about polling in this country, at least when it comes to race, is that people lie through their teeth. Mostly because they don’t want to look like some lousy, scummy bigot — even talking to an anonymous voice on the telephone.
Of course this election will be about the economy, and Obama’s record on it, no matter how much broad-daylight looting of this country went on during the eight years of Bush-Cheney.
You want to know why George W. Bush is still the only living President with an approval rating under 50%? It isn’t just because of all the Americans killed and wounded in a war built on lies in Iraq. It is also because of the economy Obama inherited from him, one nobody wanted to touch with a stick at the time.
Oh, Obama ran against the Bush economy once. But won’t be able to do it again, even though he’s sure going to try. He has to run on his own record this time, on the economy, on jobs. Does Romney have a better plan? He does not. His plan, his platform — and the reason Obama is in huge trouble against him — is as simple as Romney sounds sometimes on the stump:
He’s not Barack Obama in 2012 the way Obama wasn’t Bush in 2008.
“There has only been one real plan from the Republicans, really for the last four years,” Mario Cuomo says. “Get rid of Obama. That’s it. Now they try to convince you that whomever you replace him with will be better, even though that should be an absurdly childish and stupid and perhaps even greedy notion.”
Still: This isn’t ’08 for Obama.
It means he’s not only NOT running against Bush, he is not running against old John McCain, a terrible candidate, or Sarah Palin.
When it was over four years ago, even people who didn’t want to vote for a black presidential candidate — but did in the end — congratulated themselves on America finally putting a black man in the White House.
It won’t work that way this time. Race won’t be the only issue, not in a world of these gas prices, not in an America with this kind of unemployment. But you better believe it will be a huge issue.
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