Since Congressional Democrats are not exactly champing at the bit to fight for the president's PASS AMERICAN JOBS ACT NOW!! (Senate votes are lacking), his campaign strategizers figure they had better distract those amorphous swing voters from the crappy economy and unemployment crisis post-haste.
According to a N.Y.Times blog post by John Harwood, Obama will use social issues and his security state cred as wedges between what he calls his "like-minded thinkers" and the unwashed, uneducated right-wing rabble who jeer at gay soldiers at Republican debates. He will appeal to the sensibilities of the so-called "monied burbs" and run a campaign celebrating EGAD: the Environment, Gay Rights, Abortion Rights and the Drone killings of Al Qaeda suspects as well as the big get on Osama bin Laden. It's the Snob Appeal, stupid!
(Yes, it's OK to cheer for presidentially-ordered assassinations as long as a Democrat does them. Look at it this way: Obama outlawed torture at his ostentatious signing statement when he first took office. He is being merciful by using computerized Drone attacks to put enemies of The Homeland out of their misery quickly, without resorting to water-boarding first. Plus, he is being open and transparent about his murders. If Bush were still president, we would never have known that the CIA and the military are now one great big family and are killing American citizens. So eat your peas, civil libertarians. Don't let perfect due process be the enemy of some damned good pragmatism).
But back to the Harwood article: if it is even close to accurate, Obama will abandon the old-school Democratic plank (labor, the social safety net, poverty, the economy) and focus on what matters most to "lifestyle liberals" who are not particularly worried about their own money supplies. He has already voiced his disgust at the redneck crowd booing a gay soldier at a recent Republican debate. Therefore, he is one of "Us." (if you make over $250,000, that is). Shared outrage at the right-wing fringe is now reason enough to vote for Obama and feel all warm and self-satisfied. Pay no attention to 20 percent unemployment and 50 million uninsured and the highest childhood poverty rate in history.
And for God's sake, get over that white liberal guilt further instilled in you by Melissa Harris-Lacewell-Talkwell-Perry, accusing you of insidious racism if you no longer feel the Barry love. Agonize with Salon's Joan Walsh as she takes paragraphs and paragraphs to explain that she really, really likes and respects Melissa as a person but golly gee, it's not fair to call Obama critics insidious racists, yo. And that of course, the disappointment in Obama is no reason at all not to actually vote for him again. Because, think of the alternative.
And if you have some free time, do check out the Patchwork Nation website where the Obama operatives apparently gleaned the demographic info on their targeted "Monied Burbs." You can go to the map and find out where your particular locale fits in. I looked up my county (Ulster, NY) and was not surprised to find out I live not in a Monied Burb, but in a Service Center. I apparently used to live in a Monied Burb (Orange County). And that is so weird, because one of the towns (Kiryas Joel) in "monied" Orange County was recently rated as the poorest of the dirt poor municipalities in the entire nation!
Another category is the Evangelical Epicenter (Obama will likely avoid those towns like the plague). Then there are Tractor Central and Military Bastion (battlegrounds for sure) and Immigration Nation ( another issue to be kicked down the road into the next millenium) and one called Mormon Outpost (Romney shoo-in) and an agonizing one for Joan Walsh dubbed Minority Central (no Black Caucus slipper-wearers allowed).
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