America took to heart the words of a little known new Senator from Illinois when he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and said there was no red America, no blue America and went on to criticize those partisans who would divide the country:
Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America.
Those words sent Obama's political prospects into the stratosphere. Barack Obama later ran for the Presidency with an appeal that was based on unifying us (mostly against George Bush and all Republicans). He was elected - the first black man elected to the highest office of the land. He would serve as a symbol of post-racial America, a symbol of unity for all Americans. He told us that was what he believed - that we were all Americans and he scorned those who would slice and dice us for political purposes.
But he faces plummeting poll numbers so he is trying a new political strategy: to slice and dice us for political purposes.
Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post reports:
President Obama's campaign is developing an aggressive new program to expand support from ethnic minority groups and other traditional Democratic voters as his team studies an increasingly narrow path to victory in next year's reelection effort.
The program, called "Operation Vote," underscores how the tide has turned for Obama, whose 2008 brand was built on calls to unite "red and blue America." Then, he presented himself as a politician who could transcend traditional partisan divisions, and many white centrists were drawn to the coalition that helped elect the country's first black president.
Today, the political realities of a sputtering economy, a more polarized Washington and fast-sinking presidential job approval ratings, particularly among white independents, are forcing the Obama campaign to adjust its tactics.
Operation Vote will function as a large, centralized department in the Chicago campaign office for reaching ethnic, religious and other voter groups. It will coordinate recruitment of an ethnic volunteer base and push out targeted messages online and through the media to groups such as blacks, Hispanics, Jews, women, seniors, young people, gays and Asian Americans.
The campaign has clearly stepped up its efforts to build up its faltering support among Jewish Americans, hiring some higher-profile Jews to promote Obama in that community. He has shifted course, rhetorically at least, on the treatment he has meted out to Israel for the past two and one-half years, which has hurt him with Jewish Americans. The campaign has started a website geared specifically to that community.
The same roll out has begun towards blacks and women. And we have already seen direct appeals being made to the Hispanic community regarding immigration (promised lax enforcement of our immigration laws, for example). Asian-Americans will no doubt be shown the love next.
Barack Obama now has compiled quite a record of hypocrisy. This latest campaign strategy joins a litany of other hypocritical steps and belies the false image he and his handlers seduced so many Americans with back in 2008.
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