I always felt like Obama 2012 campaign was way more impressive to me than his first.
In 2008 Obama had the wind at his back and everything was going in his direction by the time most Americans voted on election day. Im not saying that it was not an amazing victory but I truly believe any Dem could have won that year.
Now 2012 is different and I think that any other Dem besides Obama would have lost that election. in 2012 Americans had at that point spent years dealing with a painfully slow recovery.
obama was now facing Americans who where understandably upset at the pace of the recovery and he was also dealing with a Republican party who was wiling to do whatever it took to get him out of there.
After all Mitch McConnell famously said this 2 years before the election
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gM-1HbK4qU
They even tried to blame him for the overall recession and pretended that it started under him instead of bush yet despite all of that and 1 poor first debate by Obama
He defied all the laws of political gravity by being the first president since FDR to get reelected when unemployment was over 7.7 percent. Biden campaign is so far stronger than Hillary's but I don't think think it tops 2012.
Well I think like FDR, people realized that things had gotten really bad and would take some time to fully recover. And they had at least begun to recover under Obama, so he got credit for that. Not as much as FDR did in 1936, clearly, but between both cases it’s clear that having a bad economy is not a death sentence for an incumbent IF the public does not think he is responsible and if they see at least some improvement. Both Obama and FDR were elected to clean up a huge mess left behind by their Republican predecessor, after all, and the public gave them credit for making some progress and not making things worse at least.
I actually think if Hillary was the incumbent, she might have won for much the same reason, assuming her recovery efforts were at least as effective as Obama’s and assuming her 2008 victory was at least as big as Obama’s. Plus Romney was just not a great candidate. He was easy to portray as an out-of-touch rich stiff, and didn’t do himself any favors there with gaffes like the 10,000 dollar bet and the 47% comment. And his campaign was just boring and ineffective. Nobody here can even remember what his slogan was apparently.
