American politics is about coalitions and seizing the
center --especially winning over
Independent voters. Winning Indies is important because the
base of each party
will vote for their party's candidates at 80% rates almost
no matter what. For all
practical purposes the only voters in play, who are
persuadable, are Independents,
roughly 1/3rd of the electorate.
These factors are absolutely crucial for electoral success.
American politics is also about economics, but only in the
sense that focus on
the economy is essential in bad times and only one issue
among others in good times.
In bad times the electorate demands results which correct
economic problems.
In such periods the economy must be issue #1 and the very
highest priority.
All of this is --or should be-- completely obvious,
especially to serious politicians.
Incredibly none of this registered on the Obama White
House. It was from the outset
and has been ever since, personality centered, apparently
with no other plan than
to make the most out of Obama's popularity. Economic issues
were approached
as if with the passage of a mega-billion dollar bailout for
Wall Street everything
would be made whole again, and no need to "ride herd" on
the economy
as long as it took to get the job done. This simply never
seems to have
occurred to Obama.
Such ineptness is breath-taking. As much as I detested the
presidency of Wm Clinton,
the man was a skilled politician who, like JBJ before him,
knew the game of politics
by second nature. Obama has been notable for governing like
an ideologue,
for running away from the center ( while emphasizing
centrism rhetorically , a case of
hypocrisy like nothing else for many years ), and not
having any real comprehension
of what Independents are all about.
Now, finally, he is paying the price.
Billy
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Real Clear Politics
October 10, 2011
Obama Team Split on How to Rally Unruly
Coalition
By Michael
Barone
President Barack Obama obviously is scrambling in his
attempt to win re-election. He has proclaimed himself the
underdog and has given up his pretense of being a
pragmatic centrist compromiser in favor of harsh class
warfare rhetoric.
But it's worth taking note of what he has squandered. In
2008, Obama won 53 percent of the popular vote. That may
not sound like a landslide, but it's more than any other
Democratic presidential nominee in history except Andrew
Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
Higher than Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland, higher
than Harry Truman and John Kennedy, higher than Jimmy Carter
and (but don't bring up the subject with him) Bill Clinton.
Why have so few Democratic nominees won 53 percent or more,
as 10 different Republican nominees have? The historical
reason is that the Democratic Party has been an unruly
coalition of disparate groups -- big-city Catholics and
Southern whites for the century after the Civil War -- which
usually has been hard to hold together.
Obama's 2008 coalition included two-thirds of young voters
and Latinos, majorities of those earning more than $200,000
and those earning less than $50,000, non-college whites in
the upper Midwest, and 95 percent of blacks nationwide. Some
obvious tensions there.
Now his strategists feel obliged to pick which groups he'll
concentrate on to get back up to 50 percent. What's
interesting is that his demographic strategists and his
issue strategists seem to be eyeing different groups.
The demographic targeters, in their quest for 270 electoral
votes, have decided to concentrate on traditionally
Republican states that Obama carried in 2008, according to a
report in The New York Times. They note that some of these
states -- e.g., Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina --
have above-average percentages of college-educated voters,
who trended strongly toward Obama.
They add that those three states have more electoral votes
(37) than Florida (29) and twice as many as Ohio (18), which
were both target states in each of the past three
presidential elections. But Ohio and Florida have lower
percentages of college-educated residents, and the movement
toward Obama compared with past Democrats was relatively
minimal.
This may be smart targeting. For years, Democrats have been
seeking to regain the majorities they won from blue-collar
whites in the days of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.
But they are a declining percentage of the electorate, and
it's been a long time since they have given Democrats any
majority at all for president.
Statewide polling since June has shown Obama with majority
disapproval in Florida (43 percent approves; 53 percent
disapproves) and in Ohio (44-52). That supports the view
that his chances are tenuous in those states.
But unfortunately for these strategists, recent polls don't
show Obama doing much better in Virginia (45-50), North
Carolina (45-51) or Colorado (46-50). The Obamaites point to
Sen. Michael Bennet's 2010 victory in Colorado as a model to
follow. But Bennet won by only 48 to 46 percent, and the
Democratic governor won with just 51 percent against split
opposition. And Republicans carried the state's popular vote
for the House.
There's also an enormous gulf between the so-called
Colorado strategy and Obama's stance on issues. It's not
clear that lambasting Republicans for not raising taxes on
millionaires and corporate jets is going to win votes or
rally the enthusiasm of currently disappointed
college-educated and young voters.
They may actually have looked past the campaign rally cries
of "pass this bill" to notice that it doesn't have 50 votes
in the Democratic-majority Senate and indeed has hardly any
Democratic co-sponsors. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
has been employing parliamentary legerdemain to prevent a
vote on Obama's bill.
It's not so clear, either, that bashing millionaires and
corporate jets is going to rekindle the enthusiasm of young
voters and Latinos discouraged after months of joblessness.
They may remember that spending hundreds of billions of
dollars on the 2009 stimulus package didn't do much good.
At the moment, the only states where polls since June show
Obama with job approval as high as 50 or 51 percent are
those where he got 60-plus percent in 2008, plus New Jersey,
where he got 57 percent.
Those are enough to get him up to 200 electoral votes, 70
short of a majority.
But they're not enough to reassemble the 53 percent
coalition that hoped he would bring change for the better.
That coalition, historically unusual, seems now to be part
of history itself.
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