Will Obama Win or Not Lose in 2012?
Robyn Blumner

I'm beginning to think that President Barack Obama is not going to win reelection in 2012. At best he is going to "not lose."

There's a difference between winning a contest and not losing it. While both scenarios share the same temporal features, a declared winner demonstrates their superiority, vanquishes their opponent and gives off the appearance of success. The "non-loser" is just the last man standing, maybe because their opponent wasn't up to the challenge or they caught a lucky break.

This thought occurred to me as I watched Obama and his jobs message traverse the heartland in his big, black, fortified bus. The president is trying to get across that he understands the American people's frustration with the stagnant economy and high unemployment. He promises a new jobs plan next month, even though it's likely to be "dead on arrival" thanks to House Republicans. Obama seems to have lost his ability to inspire.

Sequestering yourself in an ominous-looking bus convoy doesn't say, "The public's interests are my interests," but rather it communicates, "I can't hear you." More like a pop star on his entourage tour bus, Obama would do better making his way around on Air Force One. At least then people would think, "here comes the president," not, "here comes Beyonce."

Obama has a record to run on, and proudly so, even if the economy has not rebounded to anyone's liking. He should win reelection not just because "President Rick Perry" would remake America as Texas, where the number of workers earning federal minimum wage or less is greater than those in California, Florida and Illinois combined, health insurance is but a dream to one in four residents and public schools survive on table scraps.

President Obama's record of accomplishment as president is the anti-Perry model of government.

Obama saved the Detroit car industry, secured reforms that will bring health insurance to nearly everyone, appointed two Supreme Court justices who stand with people over corporations, put constraints on a reckless Wall Street, brought consumer-friendly regulators like Elizabeth Warren into government, got Congress to repeal the discriminatory "don't ask, don't tell" law, extended a strong, if only temporary, safety net for unemployed Americans, and used a stimulus package to stop the hemorrhaging of American jobs and avoid a Depression.

All this was done while battling the headwinds of stiff Republican resistance.

As Obama formulates a narrative for his reelection, he needs to sear into the consciousness of Americans what the nation looked like when he took office.

On January 20, 2009, inauguration day, we were in the throes of the biggest one-month loss in jobs in decades with a plunge of 779,000. The U.S. economy shed an average of 753,000 jobs in each of the first three months of that year. Before Obama had time to properly arrange his clothes in his White House closet, he was facing an economy in recession that had shed more than 5 million jobs, with no end in sight.

Then there was the other present that George W. Bush left behind: a whopping budget deficit. According to PolitiFact, two weeks before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office determined that the projected deficit for fiscal year 2009 was $1.2 trillion.

Obama has to tell the real story of the $787 billion economic stimulus package. The public thinks it failed and that it is the driver of our national debt problems, neither of which is true. Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, was one of many in his field who credited the stimulus package with preventing complete economic disaster, giving it an overall grade of B+. If anything, the stimulus package didn't go far enough.

Despite the ongoing gloom, Obama saved the day. There is no reason for him to squeak out a 2012 victory from people who are largely voting against his opponent. He deserves to win, not just "not lose." But he has to start making that case.

Twitter: @ihavenet

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