President Barack Obama: in deep trouble

Barack Obama's re-election bid is already in deep trouble Newt Gingrich may not have got the memo but the battle for the Republican nomination is over. Some in the Romney campaign were hoping for a February end but others were fearing it would go on until June and a small number of Republicans even predicted a convention fight in August. All in all, April is not a bad result for Mitt Romney - long enough to test him, short enough to allow him to focus solely on the general for the final six months. Despite the very recent and ugly and negative primaries, Romney's struggle with conservatives and the relative difficulty he had in overcoming a lacklustre field, Republicans - who tend to fall in line more readily than Democrats - are already uniting behind him. President Barack Obama: in deep trouble The RealClearPolitics poll average puts President Barack Obama at 47 percent and Romney at 44.2 percent - statistically insignificant lead of 2.2 percent. Drill down into the numbers of the latest CBS poll and there are ominous signs for Obama. Only 33 percent of Americans believe the economy is moving in the right direction. A mere 16 percent feel they are getting ahead financially. Some 38 percent think their situation will get worse if Obama is re-elected, 26 percent think it will get better. A cursory look back at incumbent versus challenger presidential races does not give Obama much comfort. In April 1976, President Gerald Ford was in about the same position as Obama is now. He lost the 1976 general election to Jimmy Carter by two points. In April 1980, President Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan by 38 points to 32 points with John Anderson on 22. In November 1980, Reagan won by 10 points. In April 1992, President George H.W. Bush was on 46 percent and Bill Clinton on 26 percent. In November 1992, Clinton won by six points. In April 2004, President George W. Bush was on 50 percent and John Kerry on 44 percent. In November 2004, Bush won by two points. We are already past the point at which it seems plausible that 2012 will be a repeat of 1996 when the incumbent (Clinton) cruised to a comfortable eight-point victory over the challenger (Bob Dole). Rather, we are probably looking at a 1992 scenario - an incumbent defeat - or a 2004 race - the incumbent (or the challenger) eking out a narrow victory. All the signs are that Obama will try to do to Romney what Bush did to Kerry in 2004 - make the election turn on the character of the challenger rather than being a referendum on the incumbent. It was brutal, it was ugly and it was a process of grinding out a win on the basis of consolidating the Republican base and dividing the country. The Romney campaign, which includes a number of people who helped map out and execute that strategy for Bush, is all too aware of the dangers of Romney falling into the same trap as Kerry and allowing himself to be defined by Obama. Romney may be a wealthy, somewhat aloof blue blood from Massachusetts but he is no John Kerry. Indeed, the central part of his biography - the turnaround businessman - is almost ideally suited to this election, which is likely to be a transactional one in which voters ask: "Who can best deal with this economy?" Just as Bush's allies turned what seemed to be Kerry's biggest strength - his Vietnam record in an election about national security - against him by a merciless "Swiftboating", Obama will seek to do the same to Romney by making his business record about pillaging from the poor. But Americans are much less likely than Europeans to succumb to the temptations of class warfare. If he is to pull it off, Obama needs to do much better than jibing that he was not "born with a silver spoon in my mouth" and demanding Romney's tax returns. The slow improvement in the economy thus far in 2012 might not help Obama, just as better numbers did not stop George H.W. Bush losing to Clinton in 1992. In fact, Bush's insistence that things were getting better when few in the country felt that way added insult to injury and made him seem out of touch. Obama can't talk about the economy being bad because he would be held responsible for it. But going too far in talking it up could be just as disastrous. Politically, he has to thread the needle. Romney's likeability numbers are anaemic at this stage but they may well not need to be. To paraphrase Obama's ill-judged snipe at Hillary Clinton in 2008, he could well be "likeable enough" already, given that the focus will in all likelihood be on Obama. Obama will keep trying to talk about something, anything other than the economy - contraception and dogs being the most recent examples - but Romney has the relatively straightforward task of being disciplined enough to talk relentlessly about jobs and the economy.  Certainly, Romney will never win the "guy you'd like to have a beer with" test, as Bush did in 2000. But 2012 will not be about that - there's more at stake than in 2000. And as Nate Silver argues, Romney has room to grow and favourability ratings at this stage are unreliable indicators for November. If you viewed all this solely through the prism of media coverage and listened just to Washington pundits, you'd conclude that Obama has about an 80 percent chances of victory. In reality, his chances are much closer to 50:50, perhaps even with Romney holding an advantage (though many things can and will happen in six months). This cognitive dissonance is partly because of a liberal tilt but also because most reporters and talking heads live in bubbles of comfortable affluence insulated from the economic pain most Americans are facing. Even without factoring in the likely negative political impact of, say, Obamacare being struck down by the Supreme Court in June, Obama's re-election bid is already in deep trouble. Only a fool would underestimate Obama's campaign machine, his ability to raise money and the fact that he remains personally likeable to a majority of Americans despite the state of the country. Anyone who argues at this stage that Obama is doomed to defeat is deluding themselves. But the reality of this campaign is that it is likely to be brutal, very close - and could well result in Mitt Romney becoming the 45th President of the United States next January 20th. ________ London Daily Mail