The making of another run for the White house by Barack Obama: Inertia and Momentum!

Keywords or Terms: Democratic Nominee;  Courage to Challenge; Campaign Strategy; President Obama; Achievements; The Economy; Adaptability; Inertia; Momentum; Winning the Future; Bedeviling the Campaign Process; and Winning one for the underprivileged, the poor, the elderly and the middle class.

More than four years ago, President Barack Obama launched his first campaign for the White House; and, won the keys to the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With nothing but one very familiar message, HOPE, President Obama campaigned across the country and overseas to become the first African American to inherit the office in over two centuries. By his rise to the highest office, the land of freedom and liberty lived up to its creed: “We hold this true to be self-evident that all men are created equal”. Many Americans were overtly impressed and some skeptics were somehow overwhelmed by the love and support for a rainbow like coalition of people in support of a young sweet looking, close to baby-face mixed blood man with a broad smile and probably a perfect dentition. Today, that youthful look found in President Barack Obama, a mere four years ago, has turned to gray and the man is looking much older than even he, could have imagined when he first ran for the Presidency. The blog tonight explores another campaign for the White House, by Barack Hussein Obama II, the President of the United States of America.

President Barack Obama kicked off his second campaign for the oval office in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday, May 5^th, 2012. After cress-crossing the nation in the past two months, with various possible themes for his campaign, the now seasoned politician has made a decision to extend his reign over the free world for another four years. Would he be able to do that? This question is left for time to tell. However, unlike four years ago, President Obama seems more confident, better prepared and probably well qualified to win another term, if he can overcome criticisms for his handling of the America economy by the ultra right and mostly Republicans. Once again, unlike four years ago, when prominent and well articulate national political strategists and journalists were falling over each other, with a few dreaming about cooking dinner and having a nice quiet evening, with relatively unknown youthful looking Democratic aspirant for the White House, now the drum of criticisms and some apprehensions over his record on the economy, are gradually piling.

The idea behind the apprehension of the President’s handling of the economy is coming from the deep cognitive bias that we all have a personal interest, in the political economy of this nation. Whenever we perceive the performance of our Presidents, not up to par in any aspect of the nation’s management, we deserve answers; and, rightfully ask questions. At least, if members of his political party are kinder or softer regarding his performance, the opposition party is often more aggressive against the President in a general elections year. Unfortunately, this time around, there is a more aggressive, probably distrustful and abusive members of the opposition party, the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party; with its propaganda news outlet or machine, that have chosen to deride the President no matter what he does. In about all aspects of the nation’s political economy, the ultra right conservative Republicans have worked hard to discredit the President of the United States, even when the aspect(s) of the nation’s management they are asking questions about are not directly within the jurisdictions of the Presidential Powers.

The failure of the White House to drum up its successes in the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency can partly be blamed for the affronts and criticisms from the opposition party. However, some political strategists maintain that some of the criticisms really have nothing to do with the President’s performance, but rather: prejudice! From a nation stricken by an unprecedented recession, the lack of understanding of how deep the problem of the nation’s economy was and the tepid corrective policy instruments recommended to address the Republican President induced recession, is the real bane of the problem; and, the current criticism of the President’s handling of the economy; is probably unjustifiable. The less than critical spending on recovery projects and programs compounded the President’s efforts; and, made it seem that much was not being done to create jobs and confront the unemployment problem. The divided and probably antagonistic partisanship in congress doubly compounded the problem. Some economists and policy makers argue though, that if the Obama’s administration had gotten heavy handed on recovery spending, there was the likelihood of hyper-inflation that could have made the unemployment problem worse. Avid supporters of the President however insist that with a divided congress, the Obama’s administration had been unable to move the needle of unemployment as fast as it could.

Over the weekend, the Obama’s campaign team lounged the second run for the White House with the following achievements of the administration, highlighting in a released forward campaign video, laudable praise for the President's efforts. What are the President’s achievements as addressed or espoused in the video? With a reflective President, the Obama campaign team document his achievement as follows: 1) Fighting for a strong and secured middle class America; 2) Tax cut for businesses eighteen times; 3) Creating 466,000 New Manufacturing jobs;  4)  Increased Natural gas production; 5) Stopping unfair credit card fees and eliminating devious financial practices by enacting the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; 6) Wall Street Reforms; 7) Reduction of drug costs for seniors; 8) Investing $100 Billion in Science and Stem Research; 9) Ending Iraq war; 10) Liberating Libya from the oppression of Qaddafi; 11) Brought to justice Osama Bin Laden; 12) Increasing incentives to hire unemployed veterans; 13) Ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the military; 14) Extending Unemployment benefits for Americans; 15) Signing into law, the Lilly-led Better fair pay act of 2009, thereby guaranteeing equal pay for women; 16) Health Care Reform Law; 17) Lowering Seniors' Drug Costs; 18) Doubling College Pell Grant; 19) Guaranteeing coverage for contraception under the Patients Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA); 20) Installed the first Latina Supreme Court Judge; 21) Protection of Medicare and Social Security;  and, 22) Saving the Auto Industry. Further, the video projected the President as a compassionate, hard working and dedicated leader who believe strongly in fairness. In addition to these accomplishments, the Obama's campaign team says, President Obama deserves another term in order to complete other goals that his administration had set out to accomplish. To this latter request came the presumptive Republican candidate's campaign press release that: Americans know they are not better off than they were four years ago!

President Obama's inertia to win over converts and counter Mitt Romney's campaign to ouster the President of United States, may be halted if his campaign is unable to debunk the following outlandish claims by some far right antagonists, a few of which are subscribed to by Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican Party flag-bearer. These outlandish claims include: 1) Roughly 12.5 million American still remain unemployed; 2) President Obama loves by-passing congress with the use of executive fiat; 3) President Obama's Administration engaged in gun-running and illegal searches; 4) President Obama's Administration engages in obstructing justice; 5) President Obama's administration attempt to control media and protect criminal banking cartels; 6) President Obama's Administration commits war crimes; 7) President Obama's Administration loves assassinating Americans. As ridiculous and frivolous some of these claims are, there are some voters who truly believe them; and a few far right Republicans, who know many of these claims are untrue, but will rather they stick on the President, so they could unseat him from office. These are the challenges that the President and his campaign team have to deal with in order for him to retain the office of the Presidency.

The Obama's campaign team and the President have been pulling their weight in debunking a few of these outlandish claims, as you will find, in one of the comments ascribed to Josh Earnest, President Obama's principal deputy press secretary: "The President has a vision of an America, where everyone engages in fair play, does their share and gets a fair shot." While this comment has a lot of relevance to the position of the President and his campaign on several issues, including women welfare, fair taxation code, income differentials, and poverty; it also, addresses the issue of inequality in America. Unless the issues of inequality in income, in opportunities and the housing debacle problems are resolved, it is going to be challenging to over turn the problems facing the American Economy; these are part of the reasons why the Obama's campaign team must advance proposals to address these issues, apart from the ad-lib in his kick-up campaign over the weekend.

With the growing inequality in income, it is rather difficult to continue to claim that, the nation needs to continue to subscribe to cutting taxes for the rich and fighting expensive foreign wars where our national interest is hardly at stake. The famous one percent, who have be doubling their income share from former excessive deregulation of Wall Street and overzealous compensation of Corporations' Chief Executive Officers in the past administration, make it difficult for many poor to believe that they have a stake in the country. Many of the rich groups in the country, which Mitt Romney is part of, and is attempting to continue to conserve, have had some fantastical increases in income and wealth; and have had their investment interests protected at all cost, to the disadvantage of the ninety-nine percent unprotected. In terms of trend of income inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor has been rather overwhelming and outstripping the experience of many of the earlier generations of Americans since the first world war. In summation, the Elites in America are not necessarily concerned about income inequality in America; however, President Obama is, and has made the argument for fighting income inequality in America as part of the corner stone of his campaign for the second term in the oval office. Would the far right allow him to succeed in a second run? 

President Obama campaign team has to define Mitt Romney for the public at large, very early in the process of seeking the White House for the second time, if it is to maintain the momentum of support that seems to be in his favor for now. His campaign team, has to take the bull by the horn, collect all past campaign comments of Mitt Romney from his Massachusetts days in his run for the governorship and senate seat and make them issues of relevance in their definition of who Mitt Romney is. The slogan of winning the future may be great; however, you cannot win the future, if you do not go very hard and heavily on a candidate that is bent on playing to the whims and caprices of the ultra right in his campaign effort. The fight for the White House this time around, is not only to win the future, it is to debunk prejudices and devious comments from the Republicans; it is to build a fortified fortress against the conservatives, ultra-right voters, who have consistently waylaid the President since his first day in office; it is a fight to end all fights; it is a battle to end all wars against women, the elderly, the poor and middle-class Americans; it is a fight that cannot be taken for granted as long as Republicans are defining corporations as persons and allowing them to exploit that definition in bedeviling the campaign process into legislative offices and the White House.