TEAM OBAMA Campaign Stategy

I read about it everywhere, but still I was going around in circles trying to figure President Obama’s campaign strategy, until it hit me.  His campaign strategy is going around in circles – in a clever way.   Let me explain…

To put things into perspective, consider the three D’s, Distract, Divert, Divide.  The three (and others)  D’s have been used in many ways over many years, but recently to describe the overall strategy of Team Obama (TO).  There is an excellent article by Bradley Blakeman which codifies the TO strategy in this way.   However, the 3D’s leaves little room for more positive aspects.  To my mind it is a little severe, a little harsh, a little cynical, and not quite accurate.   Think of the three D’s as a wrapper for containing, classifying, and categorizing the campaign activities.   We could bump it up to seven D’s by adding Distrust, Disrespect, Demonize, and Deceive, but the seven D’s would have the same issues. 

The wrapper, or model, proposed here is as easy as ABCDE – only one D.  These are Achievements, Blame, Class Warfare, Distrust, and Excellent me.  It does show how the campaign can be contained, classified, categorized, understood, and interpreted.   With an accompanying short list of clarifying examples, the TO strategy can be viewed as follows.

A – Achievements of the first term.  Creation of jobs,  Green initiative,  Affordable Care Act, stringent banking regulations, save the country by bring  to a standstill the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

B – Blame.  Usually it’s former President Bush, but depending on the issue at hand it could be the Republicans, even the Supreme Court.

C – Class warfare, rich vs. poor, down-and-out vs. fat cats.  This is the central campaign theme; it lies at the heart of the three D’s analysis.  To divide and conquer is an age old and very powerful strategy that has brought down empires – not just opposing election year candidates.  This theme is highlighted almost weekly in the President’s and his surrogates’ speeches.   However, don’t overlook the reports of the vast number of Americans on some sort of federal funding.  Most notably and obviously is the increasing number of people on Food Stamps, including folks with lots of money in the bank.  What happens to someone who applies for and accepts food stamps is that consciously or not such folks begin to regard themselves in a type class enmity against the rich.  It’s a great campaign strategy, and the government pays for it.

D – Distrust, in this case of Romney.  Most of the campaign rhetoric directed against Governor Romney has its roots in distrust.  Killing companies as a venture capitalist, reducing employment and job creation in Massachusetts, outsourcing of jobs, and being out of touch with the common American are just four examples.  One issue to come is Romney’s Mormon religion.  It is not quite clear that TO knows how to play this one, but they are probing, listening, and testing ideas. 

E – Excellent me.  TO will highlight what a likable fellow the President is.  He likes sports, family vacations, joking with the press, beer with the boys, singing, and more.  He’s a tough guy who won’t let us down.  (This one we didn’t quite know until the floodgate of WH leaks in recent weeks.)   He has a lovely wife and beautiful children.  Michelle is working tirelessly trying to help Americans eat more nutritiously.  

In the graphic below, the TO strategy/campaign wheel is shown with percentages, the weights.  Each percentage estimates time to be focused on the respective A, B, C, D, or E. 

The TO strategy is nimble, willing to jump from one spoke of the wheel to another as needed, ready for example, to respond to any bad economic news with a solid appeal to a “B,”  ready to deal with any spike or jump in the polls for Romney with a “D” – a rostrum for every malady.  With A, E being positive and the others negative, the TO campaign strategy clocks in at 80% negative.  

Through all of this, TO is probing for resonance – just like Hope and Change resonated perfectly in the last cycle.  They are trying all of these points multiple times trying to find which issue resonates best with the voters they need.  They do use focus groups, but their value is temporal, and the exercise must be repeated frequently.    Their current motto, Forward, is a little blurry in what it means, but TO has limited options.  My personal view is that TO decided sometime back to look for single issues that will resonate with single constituencies, and multiply that across all the constituencies they are targeting.   Thus they need this entire wheel, or circle, of jump-off points. 

Put in the ABCDE context, it would seem the TO must prepare a spectrum of responses to every event that comes along, while still messaging principle campaign themes.

What is important in most games, and this political game has enormous stakes, is to notice what’s not there.  Here’s what does not seems apparent in TO’s master plan.  Each should fit in one of the ABCDE slots, but none are present.

• Vision for America – except maybe we’re just to be another country among equals or except for the recurring “fair shot – fair share” message.
• A plan for moving forward – naturally this includes actions and budgets.  Is it clear that only a few remain who would believe in the sincerity of a WH proposal for a self-paying program?
• Issues and beliefs in the broad scope – I believe this; my opponent believes that. The choice is clear.  What we get are the trivialities, derisions, and divisiveness currently machinated by TO.
• Building on what we’ve done – this is most obviously missing in all messages.
• Exceptionalism – this, the national state of mind, is what made this country great.
• World leadership – TO seems to have deferred leadership to other countries.  I don’t think the President realizes there are serious people out that that for whatever reason want what we have (power and wealth) and will not hesitate to take it from us.  Moreover, I don’t think he sees the wisdom of the old metaphor, that when you give away the keys to the castle you won’t likely get them back.

In actuality, the ABCDE container appears fit most campaign strategies of most candidates, with “C” being replaced by “Central Campaign Theme(s).”