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Wonderful as it would be to continue to ignore the fact that there's a Presidential election next year - after all, we just had national elections, didn't we? - it's getting to be that time again where political junkies start looking at the preparations for the exploration of the possibilities . . . made apparent by contemplating potential strategies for the primaries that will dictate the candidates for the general election. Whew!
This makes less politically aware types--read: 'normal people'--look upon us with horror, but that is merely a detail. Besides, you're probably used to it by now.
So, let's go. The two wild cards here are:
1) 2008's financial circumstances will not automatically be 2012's. Lots of people (for given value of 'lots') are already making this mistake, most notably in accepting uncritically the 'news' that the Obama campaign plans to raise a billion dollars for the 2012 race. This is considered plausible pretty explicitly because the Obama campaign raised $750 million in 2008, as opposed to McCain's $368 million. Surely he can do better this time around, right?
Maybe. And maybe not. Barack Obama did raise quite a lot of cash in 2008; however, roughly half of the above total represents the money that Obama raised - and mostly spent - in the process of losing the primaries to Hillary Clinton*. All in all, by June of 2008 Obama had accumulated $350 million and spent $278 million of it (Clinton had accumulated $243 million and spent $217 million; McCain, who had a much easier primary season, raised $144 million and spent $117 million). This does not mean that the President is incapable of raising even more money this go-round; but the only realistic way that it will happen would be if his opponent ends up raising a comparable amount. If there is no contested primary on the Democratic side - and the expectation is that there will effectively not be one - then do not expect the same cash flow until the general election starts.
2) The electorate of 2008 will not be the same as that of 2012. To use two obvious examples: first, remember all those dewy-eyed 2008 young Obama voters? Well, right now they're looking at a 19.1% unemployment rate. It's unlikely to be much better in 2012, which should make the answer to the question "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" particularly poignant. As for the hopeful new crop of college students to be brought into Obama Nation . . . well, the President's not exactly a Shiny New Object at this point, huh?
But the real question will be independent voters. In 2008 they went for the President in a big way; in 2010 they went for the GOP, to the point where states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida (all places where Obama won) are now effectively enemy territory. Or perhaps 'occupied' territory is a better term; the President can still win those states - and will win at least some of them - but he will not have the same assistance there in 2012 that he did in 2008.
Bottom line: if you're trying to work out how the next election is going to turn out, start by not trying to redo the last one. It's not inevitable that conditions will be the same this time around.
*Yes. I wrote 'losing.' Barack Obama lost the popular vote, lost the primaries in eight out of the ten most populous states, and only won enough pledged delegates to gain a plurality of primary votes, not a majority. His campaign team brilliantly manipulated the caucus/primary system to yank enough pledged delegates to get that plurality, and the Democratic party's super-delegates did the rest. Nothing illegal, nothing immoral, but this was the greatest single act of power-gaming in American political history since the election of 1824.
