Tag Archives: barack obama

by | February 22, 2012 · 1:55 PM

A Hollow Michigan Victory for Romney?

By Luke Brinker

The latest polls out of Michigan show that Rick Santorum’s once robust lead over native son Mitt Romney has vanished. But while Romney’s chances of eking out a win in the state on February 28 look increasingly good, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to convert a Michigan victory into a win in the swing state this November.

NBC and Marist, whose latest poll  gives Romney a narrow 37 percent to 35 percent edge over Santorum, also polled voters on their preferences in general election match-ups. President Barack Obama trounced Santorum by 26 points, 55 percent to 29 percent, underscoring the right-wing former senator’s significant liabilities as a general election candidate. Most striking, however, was the size of Obama’s lead over Romney, whose father was governor of the state and who is generally considered the most moderate candidate in the GOP field. The president scored 51 percent to Romney’s 33 percent, calling into question Romney’s swing state appeal.

It’s worth noting that Michigan has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984, the year of President Ronald Reagan’s re-election landslide. Still, the long-suffering state is widely seen as a key battleground, given its status as the birthplace for the so-called Reagan Democrats. Until quite late in the general election season, Sen. John McCain made a concerted play for the state in 2008, and the state was heavily contested in 2004, when Democrat John Kerry won the state by a mere three points over President George W. Bush. With an unemployment rate pegged at 9.8 percent — well above the national figure of 8.3 percent — the state had looked ripe for a Republican win in 2012. As recently as November, polling showed Romney leading Obama by five points in the state.

What accounts for the GOP’s reversal of fortune in Michigan? Put simply, it’s the auto bailout, stupid. While he supported the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout in the fall of 2008, Romney infamously penned a New York Times op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” in November 2008. (Santorum, despite his blue-collar image, also opposed the bailout.) A managed bankruptcy — not federal support — was the best way to revive the sagging auto industry, Romney argued. Romney now asserts that because General Motors and Chrysler eventually did enter bankruptcy, he was right all along, but this oft-repeated talking point ignores experts’ assessment that absent the initial infusion of $80 billion in federal funds, the auto companies would never have been able to emerge successfully from the bankruptcy proceedings. With both GM and Chrysler now posting healthy profits — something few could have foreseen in the dark days of 2008 and 2009 — the bailout is generally seen as having worked.

Voters don’t often do counterfactuals, but in Michigan, voters appear to appreciate that the auto bailout headed off a disaster scenario in which the auto companies, their suppliers, and the numerous jobs in local communities dependent on Detroit’s carmakers collapsed in the absence of federal support. The psychological impact of such a catastrophe in the midst of the economy’s gloomiest days would have been devastating, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the NBC-Marist poll finds that 63 percent of Michigan voters consider the bailout to have been a good idea. Without federal action, it’s a certainty that the state’s unemployment rate would be far greater, and even Rick Snyder, the conservative Republican governor and a Romney supporter, has had nice things to say about the bailout. Running against the bailout may not do as much damage in a GOP primary, but a general election candidate will have a hard time explaining to Michigan voters why Goldman Sachs merited a bailout but General Motors didn’t.

Romney’s repeated difficulties in relating to blue-collar voters — difficulties compounded by his image as a Mr. One Percent who enjoys firing people who provide services to him and who accuses critics of his private equity record of being jealous of his wealth – will likely carry over into other Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. Without Ohio (where recent polling shows Obama narrowly leads Romney), there is simply no way for Republicans to wrest the White House from Democratic hands. While Tea Party types will blame a Romney loss on his allegedly insufficient conservatism, Romney’s plutocratic image and the improving economy will likely do far greater damage in the fall.

So while Romney may well win his home state next Tuesday, his victory there will not portend anything for the fall. “Romney wins Michigan” looks like it’s more and more probable to be the headline next week, but it almost certainly won’t be on the morning of November 7, 2012.

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by | February 9, 2012 · 7:42 AM

Obama Plays Hardball

By Luke Brinker

When Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, announced this week that the Obama campaign would encourage donors to support Priorities USA, the pro-Obama super PAC, observers couldn’t help noting what a significant U-turn the move signified.

Super PACs, which emerged from the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, can accept unlimited donations from their contributors. While not permitted to coordinate with the candidates they support, the groups are often staffed by former aides to those very candidates. Former Obama spokesman Bill Burton, for instance, now works for Priorities USA. Shortly after the Court’s decision, Obama pronounced super PACs a “threat to democracy.”

After witnessing Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS lavish millions on defeating Democratic candidates in 2010, and faced with a repeat in 2012, Obama decided against unilateral disarmament on super PACs. The president would still prefer to see Citizens United overturned, but as long as it’s on the books, he won’t be content to serve as a pure martyr.

The decision puts the lie to a criticism often lobbed against Obama, from the earliest days of his time on the national stage – that the president is effete, aloof, and looks upon the nitty-gritty of politics with disdain. (Of course, no president afraid of playing political hardball would have persisted in pushing for passage of health care reform long after polls showed the public had soured on it and many Democratic politicians were running scared.) But some members of the Democratic Self-Flagellation Caucus are outraged at Obama’s decision.

“It is a dumb approach. … It will lead to scandal, and there are going to be a lot of people having corrupt conversations about huge amounts of money,” former Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat defeated in 2010, said.

Feingold’s own experience is instructive. For much of 2010, political observers assumed that the liberal three-term senator was a shoo-in for re-election. But when millionaire businessman Ron Johnson, Feingold’s Republican opponent, contributed millions of his own funds to his campaign, the race tightened. (In total, Johnson gave his campaign $8.2 million.) Panicked, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee offered to help Feingold, but the cosponsor of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law maintained his opposition to accepting outside campaign money and advertising. That decision probably played a significant role in Feingold’s narrow loss in November.

Had Obama gone the Feingold route, newspaper editorial boards and good government groups like Democracy 21 and Common Cause would have lauded him for sticking to principle. But he’d have risked an unnecessary defeat in the face of his adversaries’ onslaught. Obama’s super PAC flip-flop may be inconsistent with his earlier stance on the issue, but it’s pure reformist fantasy that campaign finance will significantly influence voters’ decision in the fall. If unemployment continues its downward trend and the economy grows at a healthy clip, few voters will enter the polling booth and say, “I sure do think I’m better off than I was four years ago, but I can’t abide a president who accepts super PAC support.”

 

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by | February 6, 2012 · 5:44 PM

Is Obama’s Boost in the Polls Only Temporary?

By Luke Brinker

Two new polls give President Obama healthy leads over likely GOP challenger Mitt Romney. A Washington Post-ABC News poll puts the president at 51 percent against Romney’s 45 percent, while Rasmussen Reports gives Obama a seven point lead over Romney, 49 percent to 42 percent. RealClearPolitics’s poll of polls has put Obama ahead of Romney since the fall, what’s notable is the size of Obama’s lead, which is now outside the margin of error. But will Obama’s advantage fade once Romney wraps up the GOP nomination and the media focuses on the general election, rather than the damaging daily squabbles among the GOP candidates?

Romney strategists would have us believe that the president’s polling lead is merely a function of his not being enmeshed in a drawn-out fight for his party’s nomination. Once Republicans rally behind Romney, their narrative goes, he’ll give Obama a real run for his money. Of course, it’s extremely difficult to predict where the polls will be nine days – let alone nine months – from now, but the argument that Obama is only ahead because of the brutal GOP contest isn’t particularly persuasive. (As is wont to happen in presidential campaigns, however, Obama’s numbers are virtually certain to wax and wane throughout the year.) On this point, a bit of not-so-distant political history is instructive.

Four years ago, Obama, for all intents and purposes, wrapped up the Democratic nomination in February. He and Hillary Clinton essentially split the Super Tuesday contest on February 5, but after that, Obama won a string of primaries and caucuses, leaving Clinton badly damaged and without another win in February. Clinton eked out narrow victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, but the delegate math by that point was decidedly stacked against her. Still, Clinton persisted in her campaign, and as the Jeremiah Wright scandal erupted in mid-March, Obama looked newly vulnerable – if not necessarily to Clinton, then certainly in an election against GOP candidate John McCain. Then came Bittergate and renewed questions about Obama’s ability to relate to blue-collar voters, and Clinton scored a substantial win in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Until Obama nearly beat Clinton in Indiana (where she had been favored) and easily won North Carolina on May 6, the Democratic nomination fight remained spirited. After Clinton’s near-loss in Indiana, key supporters like George McGovern urged her to drop out of the race. Although Clinton didn’t leave the race until June 7, after all states had had their say, she refrained from attacking Obama and looked mostly interested in leaving the race on her own terms.

Of 48 polls taken between the immediate aftermath of Obama’s losses in Ohio and Texas and early June, when Clinton exited the race, Obama either tied or led McCain in all but ten of them. A Pew poll taken after Obama’s ten-point loss in Pennsylvania gave the then-Illinois senator a healthy six-point lead over John McCain, despite Clinton’s pointed questions over whether Obama could “seal the deal” in the general election. Obama didn’t continue to poll well against McCain because, as is often asserted, his hard-fought primary campaign made him a stronger candidate. Instead, Obama polled ahead of McCain because the fundamentals – discontent with the war in Iraq, Bush fatigue, and a plummeting economy –  favored the Democratic Party in 2008. It’s still too early to pronounce definitely on whom the fundamentals will benefit in 2012. As Ezra Klein wrote this morning, it’s conceivable that the European debt crisis could spawn another global downturn and dash Obama’s reelection hopes. But if the nation continues to receive monthly jobs reports like the one last Friday, the fundamentals will favor Obama. The fact that Romney won’t have Newt Gingrich on his hands anymore won’t matter.

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by | · 9:42 AM

McDonnell: Obama is Only Responsible for Bad Jobs Numbers

By Luke Brinker

In 2010, recently elected Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, seen as a GOP rising star, gave his party’s response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. He tore into what he depicted as the president’s dismal record on job creation, arguing that the Obama administration was pursuing policies that hindered a robust economic recovery.

“Many of us [in Virginia], and many of you watching, have family or friends who have lost their jobs,” McDonnell said. Later, he said that government’s role was to “spur economic growth, and strengthen the private sector’s ability to create new jobs.” McDonnell went on to offer standard GOP boilerplate on the alleged failure of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

So what does McDonnell say now that the US has experienced 23 consecutive months of private sector job growth (including far-better-than-expected jobs numbers last month) – the very kind of employment he argued it was government’s role to foster?

“I’m glad the economy is starting to recover, but I think it’s because of what Republican governors are doing in their states, not because of the president,”  McDonnell told CNN’s Candy Crowley yesterday.

While this information may not reach the bubble – where Nobama is to blame for everything that goes wrong and has nothing to do with anything that goes right – it’s worth noting that the public sector has lost an estimated 500,000 jobs in the Obama presidency, even as the private sector continues to gain steam. The overwhelming majority of those jobs lost were at the state and local level, the result of budget cuts by statehouses and municipalities. Of course, every state except Vermont is required by its constitution to balance its budget each year, making cost reductions inevitable, but it’s the GOP that has stonewalled the president’s efforts to support states and localities in hiring more public sector workers like teachers and firefighters. It appears, however, that stubborn things like facts won’t get in the way of the GOP’s determined effort to defeat President Obama this November.

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by | February 5, 2012 · 5:49 PM

Study: Obama Most Conservative Democratic President in Recent History

By Luke Brinker

If President Barack Obama truly subscribes to a political philosophy based on “Saul Alinsky radicalism,” as Newt Gingrich alleges, he has a funny way of showing it. Political scientist Keith Poole of the University of Georgia recently plotted the public positions of presidents from Harry Truman to Obama on a liberal-conservative scale. Poole found that, contrary to Tea Party mythology, Obama is far from a hard-core leftist. In fact, he’s to the right of every Democratic president since Truman:

Poole has also examined the phenomenon of party polarization, the topic of endless Beltway punditry. Polarization, Poole has found, is real, but it’s not the result of “both sides” moving toward the extremes. Republicans have moved much further to the right than Democrats have to the left. (Read this post for more, including some nifty charts that illustrate the point.) This is important to bear in mind when considering some of Obama’s purportedly “liberal” policies on issues like health care, the environment, and economic stimulus. Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 – is grounded in the “individual mandate,” a requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty. The intellectual origins of the mandate are on the right; the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney are among its past backers. (It’s easy to see why: by discouraging free riding,  the mandate upholds conservative notions about personal responsibility, as Romney wrote in a Wall Street journal op-ed in 2006. It also preserves the for-profit, private insurance model at the expense of a more efficient single-payer solution, which many on the left favor.) On climate change, Obama’s proposed solution has been a cap-and-trade scheme, which was also the position of the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. George H. W. Bush implemented a cap-and-trade program to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions in the early 1990s; that market-based approach has proven remarkably successful, decreasing sulfur dioxide emissions by 40 percent since 1990. As for Obama’s economic stimulus policies, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 drew on many conservative ideas; in fact, one of economists’ chief critiques of the bill was that it was too reliant on inefficient tax cuts (which Democrats inserted in a futile effort to gain substantial GOP backing) and too light on large-scale infrastructure spending. Even where Obama has supposedly governed as a “liberal,” he’s hardly been a bona fide New Deal type.

The Tea Party may characteristically refuse to acknowledge reality on this score, but it’s clear that Bruce Bartlett is right: Obama is essentially a moderate conservative.  The Tea Party Jacobins have so radically redefined conservatism that it’s hard to remember that Burkeans still exist – they’re just Democrats now.

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