The conventional wisdom about Barack Obama’s path to reelection is that, though the president is unpopular, he will run a strongly negative campaign against the GOP nominee – tarring him as a radical or (in the case of Mitt Romney) an unprincipled flip-flopper. Thus, voters who might not be happy with him will nevertheless support his reelection because it’s better to back the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.
The template for this is supposedly the George W. Bush 2004 campaign, which is ironic because Democrats howled in protest over the allegedly extreme negativity of that contest. Regardless, Obama hopes to do what Bush did to John Kerry: attack him so relentlessly that people can’t support him.
What to make of this approach? Put simply: It is a weak political strategy with little historical evidence to validate it.
Link to article:Morning Jay: Can Obama Win By Attacking the GOP? | The Weekly Standard
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