Does Obama Unconsciously Want To Lose?

Our listless, hapless, distracted, depressed president might be looking for a soft bit of canvas to flop on.

There are only two ways to look at the Obama re-election campaign right now: Either the upstart candidate who stunned the world when he defeated the Clinton machine to capture the Democratic nomination three years ago has lost every bit of that massive mojo, or the bruised and battered president, after three years in office, just doesn’t want another spin in the Oval Office.

How else to explain the nonstop missteps, the stammering and stuttering campaign, not to mention the brazen attacks on American voters, who, he has said, have “fallen behind,” lost their “ambition and imagination,” gotten “lazy” and “a bit soft” - this is a guy seeking the support of America?!

Curl has a good point about Obama's future, if he won:

He knows that over the next four years, with automatic budget cuts set to take effect and the American people’s rising ire over the profligate spending in Washington, he’s going to have no money to redistribute to the masses.

So, why bother? It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Who needs it? Why preside over a government that, instead of giving everything to everybody free, takes it all away, cuts so deeply that nearly every American will be affected? Especially if you think Americans are lazy, lack ambition - they’ll never rise to the challenge, so why not just bail?

That's an interesting point -- Obama likes playing the redistributionist hero. He's unhappy because he can't play that role now.

Would he be able to play that role in 2013 and 2014, if he won?

There is a big reason Obama would like to hang on: Vindication. Just as he thought the recovery would be automatic in 2009, freeing him up to pursue whatever political agenda he liked, trusting that the Recovery Fairy would sprinkle some expansion pixie dust on America and fix everything, I think he still believes that it's coming. Just a little delayed. And it will be a big recovery, because of his policies, not despite them.

So he could be imagining that if he can just get through this brief, half-decade-long rough patch, the days where he gets to play Liberal Hero again are just around the corner.

Would he be able to spend like gangbusters? Not as much, but the Republicans couldn't do much to stop him when he was unpopular; if the economy recovered, and he was back to being on the news everyday to talk about how awesome he is, they'd be able to restrain him even less.

So I don't know about this claim. Interesting, but I can see him genuinely holding out hope that his big ObamaRecovery is just lost in the mail, but will get here any day now.

posted by Ace at 11:32 AM

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