Prominent Democratic consultant agrees with Dick Morris that Obama is in trouble

Ken Hechtman writes:

In the introduction to Dick Morris’s video that you linked, he writes:

In this video commentary, I size up the chances for Obama’s re-election. I conclude that a sagging economy, inflation, and high unemployment will make his re-election unlikely. And I say that the three mainstays of Obama’s electoral coalition won’t be as strongly for him as they once were.

Stanley Greenberg is sounding the alarm on this trend. He’s got three reports out in the last couple of days (here, here, and here) that all say the same thing.

Obama is in trouble with his key demographics: blacks and Hispanics, young people and unmarried women, what Greenberg calls the Rising American Electorate or RAEs.

He’s losing their support because there hasn’t been any economic recovery for them and there isn’t going to be, no matter what happens with the national statistics.

Greenberg has to end with a positive suggestion, and his only mandate is to tell the Democrats how to campaign, not how to govern, so that’s what he does. He suggests some new messaging that he says tested well. Maybe it did. But I’m not convinced it’s going to work in a year and a half. I don’t even believe Stan Greenberg believes it. If he has any memory of working on the 1992 election, there’s no way he believes his own advice now.

Messaging alone isn’t going to do it if real conditions don’t change. And the longer the trends of off-shoring, falling wages, and temporary and precarious employment continue, the more the Democrats own those trends. Campaigning against them is campaigning against their own record in office. Nobody’s going to believe them when they say they’re going to change things that got worse under four years of their rule.

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Rick Darby writes:

Ken Hechtman makes sense. What worries me is that the Republicans will revert to type and nominate a mediocrity who’s done enough favors and slapped the right backs – and he’ll win, strictly on a rebound vote. Then we’ll be lumbered with a liberal or pseudo-conservative, and what there is of a constitutional revival will die of fuel starvation.

Or maybe another year and a half of Obama will teach a never-to-be-forgotten lesson.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 08, 2011 09:38 AM | Send