WASHINGTON — This will be a historic year for Democrats, argues Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is re-releasing his book “Positively American” in paperback later this month with a new forward about this fall’s elections.
But a careful reading of Schumer’s recipe for winning makes clear that his party’s biggest vulnerability is sitting at the top of the ticket.
This year is a once-in-a-generation tipping point, he says, because the middle class has begun to worry about its future, its children’s future and the country’s future.
And these voters are precisely why Barack Obama could turn into yet another disaster for Democrats.
He excites the college set with his style and soaring rhetoric.
His upbeat idealism and seemingly honest character even reaches conservatives fed up with Washington Republicans, who have proved themselves both literally and philosophically corrupt.
The one group left completely unstirred by Barack Obama is the working middle class, who delivered shocking blows to the candidate-in-waiting in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky to name just a few.
Schumer’s playbook for winning also cuts Obama out of the picture by arguing that issues, not style and likability, will rule the day this fall.
This would destroy Obama, who is ranked the most liberal member of the Senate based on his votes on issues.
People like Obama precisely for his style, not because he has supported banning all handguns, allowing partial-birth abortions and promised sit-downs with the world’s worst dictators.
People like Obama in spite of his positions on these issues.
Schumer, of course, does not mention Obama in his new forward and goes to great pains to say that all the Democratic candidates running are outstanding.