1. Obama’s Dime Store Sociology. This recent story from Politico caught my attention.
“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” Obama said Saturday evening in remarks at a small Democratic fundraiser Saturday evening. “And the country’s scared.”
Not the first time we’ve heard comments like this. Remember these comments about the Israeli people?
And who could forget this shot at the bitter clingers of small town Pennsylvania?
This kind of dime store sociological explanation is pretty common for the president, despite the fact that it landed him in hot water back in the spring of 2008. These comments have three traits in common.
(a) He doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. Obama might seem like a sociological expert, but he really just plays one on television. For instance, explaining the cultural conservatism of small town Pennsylvania as an artifact of economic decline sounds extremely ill-informed to anybody with at least passing familiarity of the subject.
(b) Hardships generate a false consciousness that always seems to manifest itself as irrational opposition to…Obama. As far as Obama is concerned, the fact that the country is disappointed with his performance is not a sign that he hasn’t done what he promised, but that the country is not thinking clearly.
(c) He turns fellow citizens into sociological subjects. It is one thing for a professor doing a study to treat other human beings as subjects; it’s another for the president of the United States to do it. There is a condescending, anti-republican quality to these statements. Rather than take opposition at face value – President Obama locates the hidden causes behind it, causes that his fellow citizens do not even understand themselves.
This is a terribly bad habit of President Obama’s. It comes across as arrogant and condescending, and it doesn’t do a thing to help persuade people.
2. Latest Sign of the Dempocalypse. Wow. This ad courtesy of the Hill:
Ruth McClung is challenging Democrat Raul Grijalva, who represents Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District, which stretches across the southwest corner of the state. It gave both Obama and Kerry 57% of the vote, and is majority Hispanic.
And yet the DCCC has dropped a negative ad in the district. That’s the kind of year this is.
3. NPR Poll. This poll has grabbed plenty of attention:
It squares pretty well with the generic ballot numbers we have been seeing. It’s important, however, not to take these numbers at face value. After all, we can’t know what this means for any particular district based on aggregate results. Personally, I think the generic ballot is a much more informative metric. It can’t tell us about specific districts, either, but we can compare it to history and get a sense of what it means for seat switches this year.
4. Obama Voters Bailing? Another poll that has been making waves:
Yet in a reflection of broad dissatisfaction with politics, just as many people who backed Republican presidential nominee John McCain are either supporting Democrats now or still considering how to vote.
I’m not sure why this is such big news. These kinds of numbers are pretty typical when the macro forces are against an incumbent party as much as they are lined up against the Democrats this cycle.
Consider, for instance, this bit of data from the 2008 national exit polls:
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Notice the percentage of people who claimed to back Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008. It’s 17%, just about where the Obama defection rate is right now, according to the AP. Similarly, in 2000 George W. Bush stole about 15% of the Clinton ’96 vote (while Gore stole just 7% of the Dole vote). Bill Clinton took 21% of the 1988 George H.W. Bush electorate in 1992, and Ronald Reagan took 29% of Carter’s 1976 vote in 1980.
There is no doubt that the Obama campaign drew new voters to the polls, but ultimately the election hinged largely on the swing vote. If McCain had kept that 17% of the old Bush vote in his coalition, he would have been elected president. Independents and soft-partisans put Obama into office in 2008, and they are gearing up to vote Republican here in 2010. That’s why we call them swing voters!
5. Quotes for the Day.
“I want to warn you about something…Right now the same special interests who would profit from the other side’s agenda – they’re fighting back. The empire is striking back. To win this election, they are plowing ten’s of millions of dollars into front groups. They are running misleading negative ads all across the country…This isn’t just a threat to Democrats, this is a threat to our democracy!”
–Barack Obama, October 17, 2010
“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we have come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”
