Mark is the resident RBC optimist, and he points with pride to poll results showing President Obama leading “Generic Republican” by six points. That is genuinely good news, since “generic Republican,” like “generic Democrat” is usually its party’s strongest contestant.
I am resident RBC Eeyore, and so my morning started off badly when, for the first time in his Presidency (although later than many others), President Obama’s approval rating came below 40% — 39% to be exact. Moreover, huge majorities see the country on the wrong track. Both Gallup and PPP, however, show the generic Congressional ballot at +7 Democratic, and absolutely horrific general GOP approval numbers, especially since a majority of voters still blame Bush for the bad economy.
These numbers appear contradictory, but actually make sense. They would present the picture of an electorate that is deeply disappointed in President Obama and pessimistic about the future of the country, but understands that it was the Republicans who got us into this mess and realize that the GOP would make a bad situation appalling.
The question is whether such an explanation gives too much credit to the electorate. If economic conditions continue to deteriorate, I don’t expect them to hold. The economy next year no matter what will be far worse than in 1992, when Bill Clinton unseated George H.W. Bush: the economic pessimism that year failed to rub off on Democratic Congressional majorities. But this situation is genuinely different. All who care about the future of the country and the world had better hope that the voters understand this.
Author: Jonathan Zasloff
Jonathan Zasloff teaches Torts, Land Use, Environmental Law, Comparative Urban Planning Law, Legal History, and Public Policy Clinic - Land Use, the Environment and Local Government. He grew up and still lives in the San Fernando Valley, about which he remains immensely proud (to the mystification of his friends and colleagues). After graduating from Yale Law School, and while clerking for a federal appeals court judge in Boston, he decided to return to Los Angeles shortly after the January 1994 Northridge earthquake, reasoning that he would gladly risk tremors in order to avoid the average New England wind chill temperature of negative 55 degrees.
Professor Zasloff has a keen interest in world politics; he holds a PhD in the history of American foreign policy from Harvard and an M.Phil. in International Relations from Cambridge University. Much of his recent work concerns the influence of lawyers and legalism in US external relations, and has published articles on these subjects in the New York University Law Review and the Yale Law Journal. More generally, his recent interests focus on the response of public institutions to social problems, and the role of ideology in framing policy responses.
Professor Zasloff has long been active in state and local politics and policy. He recently co-authored an article discussing the relationship of Proposition 13 (California's landmark tax limitation initiative) and school finance reform, and served for several years as a senior policy advisor to the Speaker of California Assembly. His practice background reflects these interests: for two years, he represented welfare recipients attempting to obtain child care benefits and microbusinesses in low income areas. He then practiced for two more years at one of Los Angeles' leading public interest environmental and land use firms, challenging poorly planned development and working to expand the network of the city's urban park system. He currently serves as a member of the boards of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (a state agency charged with purchasing and protecting open space), the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice (the leading legal service firm for low-income clients in east Los Angeles), and Friends of Israel's Environment. Professor Zasloff's other major activity consists in explaining the Triangle Offense to his very patient wife, Kathy.
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“The economy next year no matter what will be far worse than in 1992, when Bill Clinton unseated George H.W. Bush: the economic pessimism that year failed to rub off on Democratic Congressional majorities.”
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t see a Ross Perot on the horizon. Or at least not one that will grab votes from Obama.
Now if anyone tried to explain this to the voters from the Dem point of view that might make a difference … Silly me. The Prez will get re-elected by patting crazy Republicans on the head, adopting their talking points, and trying to diffuse their anger.
Sebastian, that’s not a whole lot of comfort. Perot had no real impact on the outcome in 1992, drawing roughly equal numbers of voters from both Clinton and Bush, and many of the states with his highest vote totals were not swing states. Bush’s defeat by Clinton was real, not an artifact of Perot’s name being on the ballot.
I predict that by the time October rolls around in 2012, the choice between Obama and the GOP will be abundantly clear to everyone, even to the low information voter. The red meat will get tossed before the hungry. Stirring denunciations will be made before crowds of tens of thousands and more. Even Eoyore will be thrilled and chilled and pump his little hoof in the air. Everything in due time.
J says:
“Sebastian, that’s not a whole lot of comfort. Perot had no real impact on the outcome in 1992, drawing roughly equal numbers of voters from both Clinton and Bush, and many of the states with his highest vote totals were not swing states. ”
However, Perot did force Bush I into a three-way fight. Being the incumbent, he had to deal with both challengers.
“The question is whether such an explanation gives too much credit to the electorate. If economic conditions continue to deteriorate, I don’t expect them to hold.”
I thought the poli sci empirical lit was pretty clear on this, and Obama is in big trouble.
In my own opinion, he might have a chance if the Republicans nominate a nutter like Bachmann or Perry, but probably not Romney.
janinsanfran observed, “Now if anyone tried to explain this to the voters from the Dem point of view that might make a difference … ”
Nah. As Matthew Yglesias, the commenters at Balloon Juice, and others have pointed out, the President is _never_ able to shape the public’s view of anything. /snark
2012 will be the first election, which is completely after the politics of the New Deal. In the political division of the New Deal, the mass of people voted their economic interests (in an increasingly simple-minded way as time went on, but still), so broad indicators of economic conditions around February of the Presidential election year were a pretty good predictor of who would win in November. The Federal Reserve, at least since Arthur Burns, would dutifully help out the Republican, if that was feasible. And, the Party nominations were a fairly orderly process of selecting among the senior, powerful politicians, who could marshal some configuration of the Party’s traditional coalition.
And, the political system, on the whole, was differentially responsive to economic interests represented in the Party coalitions. Democratic Presidents tended to deliver higher growth and broader, more balanced income distribution than Republican Presidents — shocking, I know! Congress and the President were sensitive to popular sentiment on economic issues; a broadly popular program, like Social Security could be termed the third rail of politics.
Now, we’re are living the politics of plutocratic oligarchy, in which economic conditions are dictated by the runaway predation of the oligarchy, and so is pretty awful at all times. It isn’t even feasible to vote for your economic interests, unless, of course, you are so unfathomably wealthy, that the political parties will notice your contributions to the Billion Dollar Campaign™, in which case, voting is superfluous. A number of political scientists have documented how unresponsive American politics has become; it is not just the dyspepsia of random blog commenters. Larry Bartels, author of Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age comes to mind. Jeffrey Winters’s new book, Oligarchy is widely praised. Thomas Ferguson wrote a brief piece on the worst Congress money can buy, appearing in the Financial Times. Kevin Phillips is excellent on how the shift of the Republican caucus from main street business and mainline Protestantism to theocracy and financialization screws up the political dynamic and ability to govern.
The Political Parties are tribalist herds, assembled around simple slogans and themes of fear and resentment. The Republicans trot out glib, good-looking celebrity spokes-model politicians, who know and care nothing of power or policy, and the pundits of the corporate newsmedia pretend to take no notice of their deficiencies as aspiring statesmen, and then Democrats are supposed to rally around the corrupt centrism of Obama’s “reasonable and responsible” approach to building the fascist state and destroying the economy.
The voting public has tried voting for putting the Republicans into power, then sweeping them out in favor of the Democrats, with no discernible results. Obama is celebrated for leadership, when he graciously allows the opinion of a majority approaching 70% to change one policy, which policy has no relation to the economic deterioration of the country.
My expectation for 2012 is a decidedly mixed result, with the Parties exchanging control of both houses of Congress. The Presidential race seems to be shaping up into a desperate attempt by both Parties to lose to the other, saddling the symbolic role of Hoover onto the others’ nominee. I wish I believed I was being facetious with that last characterization.
Nearly all such polls leave out a critical factor. How many of those who disapprove of Obama are liberals who think he has given in too easily, sometimes as a starting negotiating position?