In an insightful post today on the Corner, Victor Davis Hanson sketches out the contours of the president’s 2012 campaign:
For the next year, we are going to see a lot of this them/us rhetoric, as each group is revved up to get out the vote in record numbers, thereby cobbling together a bare majority. Targeting enemies of the people, who otherwise apparently would be doing great without such oppression, is Richard Nixon’s strategy in reverse, but will be characterized by even greater polarization. The new venom, I guess, still beats the now tired “Bush’s fault,” or running on 9.1 percent unemployment, $5 trillion in new debt, a sluggish GDP, high gas and food prices, record annual deficits, credit downrating, a moribund housing market, nearly 50 million on food stamps, Solyndra, and Fast and Furious.
Emphasis added. Instead of the guy who wanted us to look beyond red states and blue states to focus instead on the United States, the incumbent President of the United States intends to play to the grievances of the various interest groups who make up his party’s coalition.
Will rallying his party’s faithful — and their allied groups — be enough for me to eke out a victory next fall? We’ll have to consult the demographers to answer that.