Clearly, there are no guarantees in the election business. With a flurry of people still unsure who to vote for, the two party conventions have made huge steps in attracting "on the fence" voters. Four years ago, Obama focused part of his campaign on capturing the African American vote. And it worked, with about 95% of African Americans voting for him. But this time around, our President may not be so lucky. Running around preaching about hope and change moves many downtrodden people, but the same tactic will not work twice. This year, many voters are looking forward to what Obama plans to do for his second presidential term, focusing on his nomination acceptance speech today. Some voters want to hear about how he will deal with the nation's 14% unemployment rate. Others want to know if he can work with a Republican Congress to fix problems. The people have questions. And the president will have to give them answers.
Obama's reelection chances are dependent on how his speech goes. If he can energize the crowd like he did four years ago, he may actually do well. But in the event that he doesn't, then there are no guarantees that he will even do well in the election. People may want to try something else to fix America Mitt Romney's way. With some fabulous speeches already given at the Democratic National Convention, Obama's speech needs to be the "home run," so to speak. Or else it will be quite anti-climactic.
Now that we see that Obama has everything to lose in this speech, do you think he will step up to the challenge and successfully entrance voters?
6 comments:
I felt that Obama's speech tonight was largely successful in reestablishing a sense of hope and unity. Although Obama spent quite some time refuting claims made during the Republican convention, his speech seemed very well nuanced and focused mostly on defending his accomplishments during his current term. One of the most interesting portions of his speech was when Obama decided to wipe the convention floor with a series of "my opponent" comments. Poking fun at the Republicans was also interesting to see as generic solutions outlined in the Ryan Plan were humbly ridiculed for their lack of specificity.
In my opinion, President Obama appeared confident when delivering his points about the need to stay optimistic and continue to hope for "change." In his own words, the president stated that, "if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn't possible, well, change will not happen." While his statement is true, I felt that the president should have been more humble and admitted his failure to accomplish the goals set forth at his inauguration as president. Instead, he dealt out the usual: he emphasized on his achievements during the last few years and attacked and mocked the Republican Party. He especially taunted Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney by deriding their plan to reduce government and taxation, declaring that it would weaken the current economy.
However, I admit that his speech would appear convincing to the average viewer. In particular, I was impressed by his statement that "a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense." His presentation would be sure to attract some of his constituents. At other articles , I read some of the viewers' comments and was not surprised to find some positive and negative responses. In the end, Obama should be able to gain back the trust of some of his old voters. However, whether he can convince those still "on the fence" remains to be seen.
Obama's speech was nothing more than the same old speech he gave at the last DNC. Analyst Charles Krauthammer makes some very good points on the Obama speech which you can view Here I feel like these speeches aren't showing much promise as to what is coming. He keeps asking for four more years but I don't know if the American people are going to trust him with another term to finish off the things he promised. Maybe Obama shouldn't have bitten off more than he could chew when running in 2008, otherwise he wouldn't be stuck making up excuses for why he hadn't accomplished much of what he promised earlier.
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