 are Republicans gonna do the same thing? So here's my grand unified field theory of politics, is that basically everything changed in 2012. It wasn't 08 when Obama won the first time, it was when he won the second time, because by all rights he should have lost. He was wildly unpopular with the American public, his politics sucked, everybody hated Obamacare, and then he basically decided to abandon the middle and run directly to his base.