It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Why 2008 could be just like 2004.

Near-nominee and Kennedy heir apparent Barack Obama has been riding a wave of popularity. He's come back from double-digit deficits in national polls to winning eight straight primary and caucus states. No longer the underdog in the Democratic race, he looks like a solid bet to win the nomination, although still not untouchable. (InTrade contracts for an Obama nomination are at 70.5, compared to just over 20 a month and a half ago.) The man's on a roll. Just ask any of his supporters.

So why is all this a bad thing? The problem is that all of this shares some uncanny similarities to John Kerry's 2004 run for the White House, which ended in defeat. Kerry was running a distant third in the polls until the Iowa caucuses, where he scored a dramatic come from behind win. That win propelled him to front-runner standing, prompting a landslide victory on Super Tuesday and the party nomination. Obama is following the same path, albeit with a few more twists and turns. Even if he doesn't win Texas or Ohio, if he stays close with Hillary, it will probably be enough to secure him the nomination, something that seemed impossible as recently as two months ago.

So what, you might ask. You'd be right to be skeptical; after all, plenty of candidates have won the presidency despite initial setbacks. (Just ask Harry Truman.) The similarities go quite a bit deeper, though, and the ones likely to come up soon are the most ominous. Kerry spent his whole campaign dogged by criticism about policy. Skeptics said he spent too much time on rhetoric (specifically anti-Iraq rhetoric) and not enough time saying what he intended to do if elected. Countless times in speeches and debates, he dismissed the claim by saying that if voters wanted to know what he stood for, they could visit his website to see specifics, none of which could be shared publicly due to time constraints. It got to the point that the phrase "I have a plan, and that plan can be found on my website" was commonplace among my friends and I in 2004.

Sound familiar? Obama has excelled at silver-tongued rhetoric so far. People from both parties leave his rallies in tears. His now famous music video, "Yes We Can", brings the rhetoric to the YouTube generation. People love it. But it won't be long before he will be asked to deliver specifics for his plan. Supporters are quick to point out that he's already doing this; he described a recent speech in Wisconsin as "a little more detailed, a little longer, with not as many applause lines." Sounds good, but at a forum at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Obama staffer dodged questions about the specifics of the senator's research and science plan by referring attendees to the campaign website, saying readers could see how often they "really get into the weeds on an issue." Sounds like echoes of 2004 to me.

Perhaps even more ominously, Obama's and Kerry's opponents are strikingly similar. Kerry ran against George W. Bush, whose approval ratings had been steadily droppings since 9/11. A theme of "Anybody But Bush" ran through the campaign, and yet Kerry was unable to capitalize on it. Could Obama share the same fate? Anti-Bush sentiments run even higher now than they did in 2004, and yet, curiously, Republicans have decided to nominate John McCain, a candidate who inspires revulsion from the party base. If ever there was a year Democrats were destined to win the White House, it's this one. Yet they couldn't do it in 2004, and they may not be able to in 2008 for the same reasons.

Kerry, like many other Democrats, staked a lot of hope on the youth vote. Efforts to rock the vote attracted a lot of attention in the months before the election, yet paid off little. Obama seems to be energizing youth in America like no other candidate in history. Will they help carry him to the presidency, or will they discard him like an outdated 1GB iPod Nano? It's hard to say at this point, but history certainly gives us pause.

Kerry's image as a "flip-flopper" helped hurry along his political demise. (Doubters need look no further than the recent departure of Mitt Romney from the political scene.) Obama has avoided that characterization so far, but he could be in for a major pitfall. Other than the ethereal concept of "hope," Obama has built his campaign on the fact that he opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, a fact most voters are aware of. You can be sure that McCain will bring up the fact that Obama has voted to continue funding for the war since his election to the Senate. It's a tenuous connection, admittedly, but it's one that is sure to come up if Obama secures the nomination. The label "flip-flopper" has become the new "liberal," a word almost guaranteed to sink any presidential ambitions. Don't be surprised if accusations of "idealism" give way to "flip-floppery" in a few months.

After two consecutive November defeats, the Democrats - and particularly Obama supporters - have high hope for 2008. They may be in for a rude awakening come November 4.