2012: a choice or a referendum?

No wonder the president is running scared:

A majority of Americans expect Barack Obama to be a one-term president, an assessment on which, in past elections, the public more often has been right than wrong.

Just 37 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say they expect Obama to win re-election in November 2012; 55 percent instead expect the eventual Republican nominee to win.

And this poll tends to tilt slightly toward the Democrats.  No wonder the Obama campaign is going on the attack, slamming presumptive Republican frontrunners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney as out of the mainstream, with Ben LaBolt, press secretary for Obama’s re-election effort, writing, “They would return to policies that have been tried before and done nothing to improve economic security for the middle class, rewarding special interests who can afford to pay for lobbyists instead of looking out for working families.”

Good job, Mr. LaBolt, you can sure pack a lot of White House clichés into one sentence.

Now, what about the president’s policies which have increased economic anxiety in the middle class while rewarding special interests who can afford to pay for lobbyists and have connections to top Democrats, well, the campaign prefers not to talk about the president’s actual record as it would rather focus on the horrible, not good, very bad Republicans:

With a still-struggling economy and a base that remains less than enthused about the 2012 election, Obama must turn the race into a choice between two candidates, as opposed to a referendum on his first four years in office.

“Try to make the GOP candidate the issue in the election instead of Obama’s handling of the economy,” summarized Neil Newhouse, who is polling for Romney’s campaign, of the president’s strategy. “Good luck with that.”

Perhaps, as 1980, the race can be both a choice between the two candidates and a referendum on the incumbent.  And we all know how that turned out for the Democrats.