Everyone is talking about what are the Democrats to do. I have been in meetings with a bunch of big donors this week where primarying Obama was an open topic of discussion. I have in front of me a memo from the Third Way arguing that all the President has to do is move to the center, although they don't choose to define what they mean by that in this particular memo- I guess that definition is to come later. I have been hearing from Democrats all over a rising panic that the President will never stand up to Republicans, and we are doomed, doomed, doomed. Well, sit back and relax, friends and neighbors, because it is way too early to panic. Besides, I have thought up the solution to everything.
Before I get to that moment of illumination, though, let me focus first on this new Third Way memo, because as usual, their message is fun to deconstruct. Third Way's entire mission in life is to argue that "the center" is all in American politics, that turning to "the left" is always a mistake, that moderates and independents rule. Virtually every memo they write and every poll they take starts and ends with that premise, and is carefully constructed to drive that point home. In this latest poll/memo, they look at what they call the droppers (the people who voted for Obama but didn't vote this time) and the switchers (the people who say they voted for Obama last time but voted Republican this time). They argue that the droppers are more than the base, and the switchers didn't just switch because of the economy but because they thought Democrats are too liberal.
I want to make a few specific points about the poll before getting to my underlying premise of this post:
1. There are some quirky things about this poll. Unless I looked in depth at the crosstabs and methodology, I can't account for what explains this, but I do know there are some anomalies here. The first is that people frequently misreport who they voted for in the last election, and generally over-report voting for the winner. That could explain some odd data points. For example, 24% of the switchers say they are Republicans who voted for Obama last time and didn't this time. Given that only 9% of Republicans voted for Obama, and 5% of Republicans voted for Democrats this time- that 4% total swing being one of the smallest in any demographic group in this election- to have that big a number of their switchers be Republicans strikes me as hard to believe. Here's another oddity: they say that most of the switchers weren't personally effected much by the economy, but the exit polls said that of the people hardest hit by the economy, Obama had a 42% margin in 2008, while the Republicans captured that group by 29% in 2010. That 71% swing accounted for an overwhelming majority of the swing vote in the exit polls, but the switchers in the Third Way poll seemed to be pretty economically comfortable. I can't account for anomalies like these, other than to suggest that if your entire mission going into a poll is to say Democrats need to move to the center, maybe the methodology and way you phrase the questions makes the numbers a little funky.
2. Here's a classic example of writing the question in a way to achieve a certain result: Third Way asked droppers whether Obama/Democrats "tried to have government do too much" vs. whether they "should have tried to have government do more". I was actually surprised that a plurality of the droppers, 45-39, opted for the latter statement, because it is written to maximize a negative answer. Government as a generic term has a negative cast in American life, and wanting government to do more will always invoke a negative response. Having government invest in, help, have oversight over, create a level playing field, make sure businesses don't cheat, work to create jobs: all of those phrases are automatically more likely to invoke a more positive response than "having government do more" in general. What a plurality in favor of that idea means the droppers really are pretty liberal.
3. Another thing I would note when you are trying so hard to make a certain point is that you tend to blow by inconvenient statistics. For example, in their paragraph on youth voting, the memo points out that youth vote was 12% of the electorate both in 2006 and 2010- therefore, they say, droppers are not disproportionately young. But in everything else, they were comparing droppers and switchers to 2008. The problem for them is that in 2008, young people were 18% of the electorate, so the droppers- as defined the way Third way originally defined them, as the people who voted for Obama in 2008 but did not vote this time- were actually very disproportionately young. I guess that got in the way of their bigger argument, which was that droppers weren't all that progressive, since young people are in fact more progressive on most issues. They also conveniently ignored the big drop as a percentage of the electorate in union members, which are normally almost a quarter of the electorate in midterm elections and were 20% in 2008, but were just 17% this time.
4. A final point: Third Way makes a lot of the independent numbers, including the fact that independents are 40% of the droppers. But when the independents that are coming out are more senior citizens and less young people, who tend to register to vote as indies, the Independents who do vote will be more conservative independents, and the ones who don't vote- your droppers- will be more progressive. There are lots of progressive indies who tend to align with base Democrats on issues, and they include many young people and union members, precisely the indies who didn't vote in this election.
Here is where I do agree with Third Way: the swing voters in the last two elections, the "switchers", tend to be middle and working class voters. They do instinctively worry about government being too big and about deficit spending in general. But as I noted in a post shortly after the election, these working and middle class swing voters are also strongly populist:
• Swing voters supported a message about challenging China on trade, ending subsidies to corporations that send jobs overseas, and stopping NAFTA-like trade deals over a message about increasing exports, passing more trade agreements, and getting government out of the way by 59-28
• Swing voters supported a message about ending tax cuts for those making over $250,0000 a year, adding a bank tax to curb speculative trading, cutting wasteful military spending and ending subsidies to oil companies over a message about cutting 100 billion dollars from domestic programs, raising the Social Security retirement age, and turning Medicare into a voucher program by 51-37
• Swing voters supported a statement about politicians keeping their hands off Social Security and Medicare over a statement about raising the retirement age by 62-36
• 89% of swing voters supported a statement about full disclosure of campaign donations and limiting the power of lobbyists
• 90% of swing voters supported a statement about cracking down on outsourcing and creating jobs by fixing schools, sewers, and roads in disrepair
• Even when framed in direct opposition to a statement about stopping increasing government spending and tax increases, swing voters said they were more worried that we will fail to make the investments we need to create jobs and strengthen the economy by 54-44
Which brings me to the solution all of you have been waiting: how can Obama and the Democrats regain the mystical center? How can the President accomplish that while avoiding a primary? How can he show strength when so many Democrats are worried about how strong he is? It really is quite easy: the mystical center is also where the disaffected base resides. Obama doesn't have to choose. Both swing voters and the Democratic base want the President to stand up to Wall Street on behalf of main street. They both want him to fight to create new jobs, especially manufacturing jobs. They both want him to say yes to middle class tax cuts and no to tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. They want him to say no raising the retirement age and cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
I don't know what Third Way will say the center is when their next memo comes out, but I can say right now: the center has nothing to do with what Washington elites say it is. The center and progressives want exactly the same thing: for the president to focus on helping the middle class weather this economic storm. The answer to the President's political problems is really pretty simple: he just has to say no to the DC establishment, to the bank lobbyists and pundits yammering at him to just give in to the Republican demands. He has to stand tall for the middle class, and his political problems will resolve themselves.
Republicans have not even popped the corks of their celebratory champagne bottles yet and already there is a anti-Tea Party coup in the works the goal of which is to torpedo the presidential aspirations of Sarah Palin before her campaign even gets underway. A damming article from Politico which broke just yesterday revealed a concerted if uncoordinated effort taking shape among Republican leaders to see that Palin does not secure the 2012 Republican nomination for president. Quoting Politico:"Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year's midterm campaigns...There is rising expectation among GOP elites that Palin will probably run for president in 2012 and could win the Republican nomination, a prospect many of them regard as a disaster in waiting..."There is a determined, focused establishment effort ... to find a candidate we can coalesce around who can beat Sarah Palin," said one prominent and longtime Washington Republican. "We believe she could get the nomination, but Barack Obama would crush her." Thus it would appear that the trains are already on the track for what will be the first train wreck between the G.O.P. esthablishment and the Tea Party Movement.You can add to this developing drama the existing controversy between Ms. Palin and Tea Party star Joe Miller, the current Alaska Senatorial contender whom Palin backed against Lisa Murkowski only to have Miller short change Palin when it came time to endorse her presidential aspirations. This G.O.P. esthablishment - Tea Party friction has been below the surface since the movement gained traction during the 2009 health care reform debates. Appearing on Fox News with Greta Van Sustern in the summer of 2009, Rush Limbaugh was nothing if not emphatic in his denunciation of the Republican leadership and the veiled contempt that they have for the Tea Party Movement generally and Sarah Palin in particular. Tensions only grew more intense as the Tea Party Movement knocked off several Republican veterans and hand picked contenders during primary season. Thereafter the movement went on to put a number of Republicans not currently running for re-election on notice that they too were in the movement's cross hairs.
In an interview with the National Journal, Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell said: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," Is McConnell's rhetoric aimed at placating the Tea Party or does he actually believe that in the depths of the Great Recession, this is the single most important goal for a victorious Republican Party? What happened to the never-ending Republican cry: "Where are the jobs?" What became of all of the talk of reducing the size of government, of tax policy and talk about how to "grow the economy."? Now on the brink of victory the Republican elites have shown their hand and it consists first and foremost of political priorities aimed at winning the 2012 presidential election and making sure that Sarah Palin isn't around to screw things up. What happened to the G.O.P's big effort to "listen to the American people" this past summer? Thus we see just how important the dire state of the economy is to the elites who fashion Republican political strategy. Have McConnell and his lieutenants already misread the election's outcome, taking it to mean that they have a mandate in spite of the fact that they are polling at lower favorability ratings then the Democrats that are about to be turned out of office? Have they misread a vote of protest for an endorsement of the Republican Party line which it can't possibly be given the G.O.P.s historically low standing among voters? That said, how long would it be before the voters come down with that old sinking feeling of buyer's remorse? Surely if the immediate follow on to the midterm elections is the out break of an intra-party civil war within the G.O.P. what else could a weary and disgruntled electorate feel but buyer's remorse, dismay and disgust. The election's outcome will certainly cause the Democrats to circle the wagons and try to regroup for 2012. But it already seems like the G.O.P. and the Tea Party are in the process of circling the rifles into a circular firing squad and that can't be good at a time like this when the country is desperately in need of solutions to deep seated problems of long standing. The final question from all of this is: Has the Republican Party gotten more than it bargained for in its marriage of convenience with the Tea Party and is it too late to unwind the relationship before it tears the G.O.P. to shreds in an intraparty conflict that could end the Republican Party as we presently know it?
Americans to some degree and particularly those on the Right are now beset by a true conundrum. Is Barack Obama a Christian or a Muslim? According to the latest Pew Research polling: "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama's religion is." Well, it's no wonder people are so confused, especially when two of the most prominent talking heads on the far right differ as to what is the actual religion of the President. If Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't on the same page on this, how can we expect the lowliest schlep to know what's the truth?
In a recent anti-Obama rant, Mr. Limbaugh intoned: "Imam Hussein Obama is probably the best anti-American president we've ever had." Limbaugh has been at center stage in railing against the proposed "Ground Zero Mosque' while trying to somehow insinuate that Obama's defense of the constitutional right to religious freedom somehow proves that the President is an Islamic. Meanwhile just this past Sunday, in a follow up to his Lincoln Memorial Rally, Mr. Beck appeared with Chris Wallace of Fox News to proclaim that Obama is in fact not a racist after all, but a practicing Christian who just happens to be enamored with Liberation Theology. This brand of Christian thought is defined: "as a movement in Christian theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions." According to Beck himself: "he misunderstood Obama's philosophy and his theology...which is liberation theology... he didn't understand, really, his theology his viewpoints come from liberation theology. That's what I think as in -- at the gut level I was sensing. And I miscast it as racism. And really, what it is liberation theology." Thus, its now official, according to Glenn Beck, Barak Obama is legitimately some sort of Christian. Well fancy that, one of the most prominent forces in the American right has reaffirmed that the President is in fact a Christian while the other is still working overtime to convince Americans otherwise.
So what is really going on here? Is there a genuine question as to Barack Obama's faith or are we in fact looking at a garden variety witch hunt perpetrated from two different angles in a crass and unvarnished attempt to undermine a legitimately elected president through the propagation of falsehoods? Do Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh really believe what they are publicly saying or are they and their followers just unable to face up to the fact that their idea of what America should be just does not comport with what people voted for in 2008. Is that truth just too much to bear? And where is the leadership that we should be seeing from responsible and respectable Republicans in opposition to this political falderal and farce? Perhaps the leaders of the G.O.P. are just too cowed by the far right to stand up for political decency or perhaps they just don't have the requisite courage. In a recent op-ed on this very topic, Paul Krugman opined: "What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don't consider government by liberals - even very moderate liberals - legitimate. Obama's election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn't, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage. And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage...Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we've just seen, he's doing his best to insinuate Obama is a Muslim. And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found." That said, it's more than evident that the time for the truly patriotic to stand up for political decency and honest debate is now and that's especially true for the leadership of the G.O.P. How can they legitimately ask for our votes when they allow this type of anti-democratic demagoguery to take place right under their noses and in plain view? Perhaps this is what you get from a political party that may be on its way out of business in the long run. Then again, maybe it's what you get when there is just a lack of courage in a party that has for so long prided itself as the repository of "real American values." At any rate every American voter has to ask himself this question: If the leaders of the Republican Party lack the courage to take on Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, where will they find the courage and stamina required to get us out of the Great Recession or face down Al Qaida or any other threat that will surely emerge in the brave new world of this new century? Failing that courage, do they really deserve our votes?
Being back home in the Midwest is always grounding. The most classic moment was a conversation in a restaurant with someone who was expressing anger at all incumbents and both parties who said to me "nobody is on our side."
That was the theme of yesterday's big day of political news. Three more establishment candidates in both parties were either beaten outright or forced into a runoff. More incumbents going down. Insurgents on the rise everywhere.
And speaking of being everywhere, the irony patrol must be utterly exhausted. While incumbents and establishment politicians are being slaughtered in every region and both parties, in conventions and primaries, politicians continue to make fools of themselves. What was Richard Blumenthal thinking? What was Mark Souder thinking? Oh, wait, thinking wasn't involved. Having an affair with a staffer who works with you on promoting abstinence-only videos is like something out of an Elmore Leonard novel, except funnier. But the irony award for the day doesn't even go to Souder, as tempting as that is: it goes to Mitch McConnell. As his hand-picked protégé was going down in flames to anti-establishment, anti-TARP bailout tea partier Rand Paul, McConnell was leading the Republicans in a desperate attempt to keep the financial reform bill from doing anything worse to his poor pathetic friends on Wall Street, all the while crying a river about how Elena Kagan wanted to hurt the free speech rights of big corporations. Politics doesn't get any better than this.
The tea partiers are wreaking their revenge at McConnell because he has deserted them in order to help Wall Street and other big corporations, just as Democratic primary voters are showing their disdain at incumbents at the same time. The bottom line is that voters are asking the age-old question "which side are you on" and finding that to their outrage, none of the politicians seem like they are on the side of angry voters. In order to have a prayer this fall, Democrats have to show the voters- both their base voters in the Rising American Electorate, and the swing voters in the working class who still don't have good jobs- that they are fighting for regular people, not the elite. When the Wall Street bailouts did not produce jobs as promised, voters' attitudes got set at the outrage level, and they still haven't been reset. It is time for Democrats to show which side they are on.
One friend of mine said to me this morning that "it's like most of our Democrats can't seem to read a poll." The New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections. The Massachusetts special election. The Utah Republican party conventions. The Mollohan party upset in West Virginia. Yesterday's results. How many wake-up calls do politicians need?
History has shown us that with very rare exceptions- 2002 being one- the President's party loses seats in the midterms. But what's amazing is how Village pundits go out of their way to point out how not everyone will vote for Democrats this fall. Here's Marc Ambinder:
The Democrats midterm message is easy to understand: we've done things to help you, and Republicans are obstructionists for the sake of politics, want to bring back failed Wall Street friendly ideas, and are increasingly captive to the Tea Party audience. This is a good message for the core of the Obama coalition, but does it work for the midterm electorate -- particularly this midterm electorate?
Obama ran on a fundamental promise to make government work for the better, and Republicans believe they've blocked him from achieving that goal, and that the economy, combined with their own scorched earth strategy, has left voters extremely skeptical of government intervention again. Midterms are about noise, not volume; usually, the most exercised partisans and their lackeys will react against the president in power, creating a referendum of sorts. Voters tend to be older and whiter.
The new Democratic platform does little to recognize this demographic. The party is getting annihilated among whites, even in states like California. Declaring that the Democrats are the party of accomplishments is one thing, but it really does not matter to swing voters in all those House seats straddling the Appalachian Trial, the industrial Midwest and the Rocky Mountain region that the U.S. is once again beloved in the world, that Obama is a man of science, or that he appointed a Latina to the Supreme Court.
The alternative is not to run away from accomplishments, of course. The angle that projects a "mommy state" isn't going to work -- "we made things less worse and protected you." People are hurting and feeling neglected. They've gone from shock to anger about the last few years. And Democrats still lose credibility when they talk about being part of the most honest, open, ethical government ever. Whether right or wrong, the public, after health care, sees Congress AND Obama as part of the politics as usual crowd.
Shorter Ambinder: Lots of midterm voters think you suck and no message will dissuade them of that. And this is new how, exactly? No "message" in the world will reach some of these voters.
Also, if Obama decided to govern entirely with the understanding of the makeup of the midterm electorate and an eye towards November 2010, and the advice Ambinder gives him, he'd probably be bombing Iran with one hand and signing gun rights legislation with the other. Also, who's to say the Village conventional wisdom regarding the midterms is always right? Conventional wisdom said young people don't turn out and don't spend any time on them. It also said black people with the middle name "Hussein" who spent part of their childhood in Indonesia and don't have much national experience don't get elected President. Then the 2008 election happened.
So I, for one, am willing to see if the strategy Tim Kaine outlined as the DNC effort- reach the 15 million voters who registered and turned out for the first time in 2008- works. I think that's a much better idea than trying to find a "message" that will reach voters who are unlikely to support you, or governing from the start to try and make sure they support you.
The other thing I would say is that what all the how-to-win-the-midterms hullabaloo misses is this: to some extent, what happens in the midterms is out of everyone's control. Villagers use the public simply being in, as Mike Lux puts it, a foul mood about the economy, and the strong likelihood that Democrats will lose seats, to point to Obama and say "aha! Proof that the Obama style of governance, with its mommy-states and ethics reform and Latina justices isn't working!" I think that's reaching for a message just a bit too far.
It can be easy to become immersed in Beltway politics, in which names like Tim Pawlenty, John Ensign, and Harry Reid are instantly recognizable - or debates over the Stupak Amendment can rage on for hours.
One wonders how much of this filters down to the average voter. Does he or she really know what the public option constitutes? How important, really, are the 2010 congressional elections to the normal citizen?
Several days ago, some political comments made by a non-politically-obsessed friend provided me some insight into how "normal" people think.
The Washington Post this morning had a story on the front page about how President Obama may be treating some states as a no fly zone during this election year because he is so unpopular in those states. And on page two, they have a big article titled "Anger Doesn't Stop at Health Care Reform," about all the conservatives so very, very angry at Obama over everything. And on page three, they have a big article all about the tea partiers because, well, I guess the Washington Post editors were just feeling like the tea partiers hadn't gotten enough attention.
As one of the first people to start warning my fellow Democrats (back in Feb of last year) about the foul mood voters were in because of a broken economy not improving fast enough and special interests still seeming like they controlled DC, I have to make the observation that the traditional media still is not getting the story right. Yeah, no kidding, there is anger out there, but it's not all anti-Obama, it's not all based in the tea party, and there is a lot more nuance to it than the traditional media understands.
Here are some things to keep in mind about the anger thing:
1. Obama's approval rating has been hanging around 50% for a long time, not great, but given a tough economy that's not bad either. In fact, the latest approval number I saw was 53% - exactly the same percentage of the vote he got winning a big, impressive victory in November of 2008. His numbers are not plummeting, and most voters are in fact not incredibly angry with him. Mixed feelings, some disappointment, some discouragement, and a little cynicism for sure. But outside of the hardcore Republican right, not so much anger.
2. Speaking of the hardcore Republican right, there is nothing new or dramatic about the tea partiers. The same anger, the same demographic (white Christian men, tending more rural and older than the rest of the population) was around in 1993-94 when Clinton was in office, and the same demographic was the heart of the angry backlash against civil rights and peace protesters in the 1960s. The only thing new about this is the fact that the President is a black guy with an immigrant father might gin them up a little more than usual. But these angry white males (as the media called them in the early 1990s) represent about the same sliver of the electorate as they did then, maybe 20%.
3. To be clear, the tea partiers aren't the only angry people in America. There are plenty of working class swing voters who aren't inclined to buy into the tea party stew of racism, nativism, and Ayn Rand style libertarianism, but are deeply troubled that the jobs situation isn't improving and that no one in government seems to be looking out for them. There are plenty of progressive activists angry at the Wall Street bankers, the health insurance companies, and the other corporate interests that are screwing them, and are angry that too many politicians seem to be in their pocket. In both cases, Obama and his fellow Democrats still have the opportunity to reach them, still have the ability to make absolutely clear whose side they are on. If Democrats show those voters that they will reject those special interests, and fight hard for average folks' interests, they can still win this election. If they show voters that they are just as angry about what's been done to regular people as the regular people, they will have a better 2010 than anyone is predicting right now.
The media loves-loves-loves this tea party story, but the tea partiers really aren't anything new, and they don't represent a very big group of voters. There is a lot of anger out there, but most of it is righteous anger that Democrats can and should tap into - anger that Wall Street and other bad actor big companies have been allowed to destroy our economy, and that no one is taking them on for it.
We had another one of those stories this week: economists delighted because we only lost 345,000 jobs last month because that was not as bad as expected. Forecasters think the pace by which we are sinking is slowing, but even in the best-case scenario, they expect unemployment will continue to go up for awhile, and for the economy to not add many jobs for as long as a couple of years.
And that's the optimistic scenario.
Another year and a half of this kind of dreadful economy is going to put people in a real grumpy mood in November of 2010. I lived through this before, although the economy wasn't nearly as bad then as it's likely to be in 2010: the 1994 elections, when the economy was still recovering from another George Bush recession. They had put Democrats in charge because they were mad at Bush for that recession, but hadn't yet felt any improvement in the economy, and folks were in a bad mood.
I think people today understand the depths of the mess the second George Bush left us with, and so perhaps they will be more patient with this charismatic young President than they were with the last one. But the similarities in circumstances are still keeping me up nights.
Here's what needs to happen to avoid another 1994 for the Democrats:
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