Barack Obama’s fundamental challenge tonight in his speech before 75,000 people at Invesco stadium is to recast the message of the general election campaign to fundamentally alter the political landscape and reverse an adverse trend in the polls that has now produced a race that is effectively deadlock.
A once nine-point lead is now down to a statistical tie in recent polls, signaling that Obama needs a fairly significant mid-course change of direction. Tonight is Obama’s chance to reinvigorate his campaign and here’s what he needs to do.
First, he needs to make it clear that this is an election with a clear choice for voters: whether voters want four more years of Bush-McCain policies, or whether they want to go in a different direction that will produce economic growth and prosperity, fiscal prudence and peace and security around the world.
Obama began doing this while campaigning Saturday with runningmate Joe Biden, but he must do more. He must clearly question whether we want four more years of policies that have produced rising energy costs, housing foreclosures, ever-increasing unemployment and a record budget deficit, or a return to the policies of the 1990s that produced balanced budgets, prosperity here at home and peace around the world.
This reference to the 1990s is not an accident. The Democratic Party is still divided, largely because the 18 million people who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries have not yet become convinced that they should support Obama. One way to overcome the divide is to associate himself with the successful policies of the Clinton Administration and the fond memories many working class Democrats have from that era.
Simultaneously, he must link McCain to Bush, who is distancing himself from the President. Obama needs to show that McCain represents a continuation of Bush-Cheney policies by underscoring that McCain has voted with the President 90% of the time, favored the Bush tax cuts he once opposed, supported the President on Iraq, and made it clear he will appoint judges in the same mold of Samuel Alito and John Roberts.
Obama must also look forward and speak directly and unequivocally to working-class voters in swing states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Missouri about the explicit goals he is committed to achieving. These include creating jobs, developing alternative sources of energy to reduce gas prices, assisting homeowners in trouble with their mortgages and promoting economic growth to reduce an unemployment rate that has now reached 5.7 percent.
Obama need not be detailed in his discussion of policy prescriptions. Rather, he has to make it clear what an Obama presidency will tangibly mean to working-class voters and what specific benefits they will accrue if he is elected. Stated simply, he must emphasize his commitment to fiscal conservatism, to a balanced budget, and to tax cuts for working people.
He also must convince the American people that he stands for traditional values. Obama has to commit himself to pro-family policies, faith-based initiatives, and commitment to the traditional values of hard work, respect and honesty to demonstrate that he is on the side of hard-working Americans.
Finally, he must speak with passion, commitment and determination. He must avoid sounding elitist and also stay away from populism. While it’s very attractive and superficially appealing to attack John McCain for being out of touch and not knowing how many houses he has, this won’t win an election. The Gore campaign proved it and the Kerry campaign reinforced it.
Obama will win with specific messages that produce the coalition of working-class whites and blacks, Midwesterners, and east and west-coast voters that John F. Kennedy assembled in 1960 and Bill Clinton put together in the 1990s. A coalition he can build by emphasizing unity, fiscal prudence and economic growth, as well as traditional values.
Tonight, America will be listening to Barack Obama and what he has to say could determine the outcome in November.
Douglas E. Schoen was a Democratic campaign consultant for more than 30 years and is the recent author of “Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.”
