Further, Obama’s heritage included, in his own words, his mother, whose skin was “as white as milk,” and his father, whose skin was “as black as pitch.” Obama hoped to be an embodiment of racial reconciliation and the harbinger of a “post-racial” society.
In the 2008 campaign, Obama used the traditional political phrases of “casting a wide net” and using a “big tent” approach. He was rewarded by obtaining votes from various demographic segments: voters in various income levels, various regions, various ethnic groups, and various racial groups elected him.
By contrast, the 2012 reelection campaign used a different approach.
Instead of a “wide” approach, the 2012 Obama campaign focused on obtaining not merely a majority, but a vast majority, from certain specific and narrowly-defined demographic segments. This approach highlights a peculiarity of electoral politics. A candidate can win by achieving a mere majority of all the voters, or by achieving a vast majority from a subset of the voters.
Both tactics lead to victory, but they do so with different societal dynamics.
A candidate can either find common interests and desires which appeal to all voters, or target specific policies which activate a strong reaction within a particular subset of voters. The latter strategy is sometimes called “identity politics” and dissects the electorate into groups by race, income level, religion, ethnicity, regionality, etc. An sad side effect of this strategy is that these groups will inevitably begin to see themselves in competition.
The campaign of 2008 and the campaign of 2012 were different from each other, projecting two different images of the candidate, and promulgating different political messages.
Some — perhaps many — candidates adjust their messages during campaigns to appeal to a maximum number of voters. Obama is no exception. Neither campaign fully reflected Obama’s beliefs or intentions.
In 1996, Obama stated clearly: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” Finally, in 2012, he said, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
All three quotes are well documented.
It is certainly possible for a political leader to change his views on any given topic. It is, however, more reasonable to hypothesize that Obama merely disguised his views rather than changing them.
Reviewing the 2008 campaign, Sean Hannity wrote, “Democrats often managed to downplay the extent of their radicalism, pretending — at least when it suited their political purposes — to be a party of moderates,” and “Obama tried to conceal his radical ideology.”
Having stated opposition to same-sex marriage during the 2008 campaign, Obama appointed two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 and 2010: Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. These two, in turn, became part of the Supreme Court majority which set a significant precedent with Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 — a precedent which was the precise opposite of Obama’s 2008 statement during the campaign.
Voters who’d voted for Obama based on his words — his clear statement during the 2008 campaign — found that his actions were diametrically opposed to his announcement.
By contrast, Obama’s 2012 campaign featured what is called “identity politics.” Instead of leveraging a broad social and cultural consensus among diverse segments of the American electorate, Obama narrowly focused on specific segments, and spoke directly and only to them, delivering messages and promises designed exclusively for them.
Ben Shapiro notes the differences:
In 2012, President Barack Obama won reelection. He did so despite winning 3.5 million fewer votes than he did in 2008, and 33 fewer electoral votes; he did so despite winning the same percentage of the white vote losing Democrat John Kerry did in 2004; dropping support from 2008 among Americans across all age groups and education groups; and losing voters who made above $50,000 per year.
Obama won in 2008 and he won in 2012. But he won in two different ways. In 2008 he won a broad majority across various demographic segments. In 2012 he won a majority within select demographic segments, as Ben Shapiro writes:
The story of Obama’s 2012 victory is the story of the transformation of American politics. In 2008, Obama had been a different sort of candidate running a quite familiar campaign: a campaign of unification.
The 2008 campaign pointed to unity. Obama said that he would bring together various groups in American society:
Obama ran on the terms “hope” and “change,” pledging to move beyond America as a collection of “red states and blue states” and instead to unite Americans more broadly. In fact, Obama’s personal story was part and parcel of this appeal: he could justifiably claim to unite the most contentious strains of America in his own background, being the child of a white mother and a black father, raised in Hawaii but ensconced in the hard-knock world of Chicago, born to a single mother and raised by grandparents but educated at Columbia and Harvard Law School. Obama was, as he himself stated, a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
By contrast, the 2012 campaign emphasized group identity over a common American identity:
In 2012 he charted a different course than in 2008. Instead of running a campaign directed at a broad base of support, Obama sliced and diced the electorate, focusing in on his new, intersectional coalition, a demographically growing agglomeration of supposedly victimized groups in American life.
The reframing of Obama’s campaign from 2008 to 2012 is more than the story of one candidate’s adjustments. It documents how one group of American candidates moved toward “identity politics” and began to treat demographic segments of the electorate in isolation from each other. This way of doing politics assumes or hopes that individuals view themselves primarily as members of a racial or ethnic group, and not as rational knowing agents.
For candidates who use the tactic of identity politics, the analytically thinking individual who examines questions of policy, diplomacy, and economics is anathema. Such candidates prefer voters who embrace a group identity, and prefer that identity to independent thinking.
The practice of identity politics seeks such voters, assuming and hoping they are plentiful. But it also nudges voters toward that viewpoint, and away from seeing themselves as deliberative rational intellects.
