A chief underlying premise of my column “Obama could lose in November too,” is the idea that Obama will continue to campaign the same way he has been campaigning. Obviously, if Obama corrects the flaws I mentioned in my column, this will become a non-issue. However, here’s why I think he won’t:

Right now, Obama has been speaking to his primary audience about transcending partisanship. He hasn’t revealed how partisan his record is to that audience either. Instead, he refuses to talk policy and instead talks inspiration. If he decided to all of a sudden talk about his partisan policy stances in the general election… well if he did that, he would need to get a new campaign manager. This is because it’s backwards to hide partisan policies to a favorable primary audience and reveal them to a more moderate general election audience. Normally, politicians say even less partisan statements in the general election (except where they must) than when they have more appeal to primary voters (Hillary, who is more centrist than Obama is the opposite - she’ll say more in the general election).

Since Obama would be running the strangest campaign ever if he talked more about his partisanship during the general, I think he’ll continue to speak abstractly and avoid specifics. That is, of course, assuming he doesn’t pull a deadly flip-flop.

If he’s planning on doing that, it makes sense why he’s not talking about his record right now. But he can’t imagine his record won’t be dug up in a general election campaign, can he? He’s either running a horrible campaign, or he has a lack of substance.

There. Hopefully I didn’t rile up too many more Obamainiacs with that one.

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