Obama's Hyphenated America: Identity Politics by the Great Divider

Obama's Hyphenated America

Then a student at Vanderbilt, she said John McCain was dull in comparison.



Coulson, now 25 and a Wall Street consultant, finds no trace of that Obama today.

“His rhetoric is aimed just at specific groups of people, not as someone who would bring the country together,” she said.

Identity politics is something you do when you don't have the worst economy since World War II, according to David Woodard, a Clemson University political science professor. “He cannot say anything about the economy and win,” Woodard explained.

From his mini-amnesty pitch to Hispanics, his support of gay marriage and his “identity” comments on the death of a black youth, to his turning contraception into a wedge issue, President Obama is shaping his electoral path to victory with identity politics.