Barack Obama

The Debate on the American Economy

With the general election less than six months away, we are about to be inundated with ads and speeches from Democrats and Republicans trying to convince us to vote for them. As 13 million Americans continue to look for jobs and our public debt expands indefinitely, voters will be looking for a candidate who they think can provide strong economic leadership. Winning the economic debate, therefore, is crucial to winning the election.

Both sides offer very different narratives on how to get the economy back on track  In this series, which will run throughout the summer, I will document how the economic debate plays out in the political sphere. Looking mainly at campaign advertisements and stump speeches, I report on how the Obama and Romney camps frame their economic arguments and what kinds of solutions they are advancing for America’s economic woes. I welcome any feedback from readers who find interesting local ads pertaining to the economy.

To start things off, here’s a video of former president Bill Clinton stumping for President Obama in New York last night. The full transcript of the speech can be found here.

A couple of interesting points:

Clinton highlights the creation of 4.3 million private sector jobs under President Obama. This seems to refute Republican attacks on Obama’s jobs record.

Clinton equates Republican and European austerity policies, effectively establishing a link between the Republican party's economic philosophy and policies that have contributed to Europe's instability 

Be sure to check back regularly for updates on the debate over the American economy. 

 

 

Millennials Still Supporting Obama's Re-election

Millennials (born 1982-2003) were crucial to Barack Obama’s 2008 election.  Other than the state of the economy, the most pivotal factor in determining the outcome of the 2012 general election is likely to be whether or not America’s youngest voters repeat their 2008 electoral performance in 2012.  

In November 2008, Millennials comprised about 17% of the electorate and voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama over John McCain (66% to 32%). With older generations dividing their votes almost evenly between the two candidates, Millennials accounted for about 80% of Obama’s national popular vote margin over McCain, turning what would have been a narrow  win into a decisive seven-point victory.

So far, the data suggests Millennials are poised to support Barack Obama at the same level this year that they did four years ago. In a recent Pew survey, Millennials preferred Obama over Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, by a 62% to 36% margin.   But this year, Millennials make up 24% of those eligible to vote. Coupled with its partisan unity in comparison with older voters, the sheer size of the Millennial Generation, America’s largest ever, could make its impact even more decisive in 2012 than in 2008.

Whether Millennials have that kind of impact depends on what the two parties do to attract their votes.  For Republicans, the best approach is to connect with Millennials before they are solidly in the Democratic camp for the next three or four decades. A few Millennial Republicans such as John McCain’s daughter, Meghan,  and Kristen Soltis, a GOP pollster,  have argued that their party should moderate its stance on social issues and immigration in order to have greater appeal to their highly tolerant and diverse generation. So far, however, the GOP presidential field has attracted relatively little Millennial support; through Super Tuesday the Republican frontrunners (Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul) combined had received less than half the Millennial votes that Barack Obama did in 2008.   Perhaps the lack of Millennial interest in the GOP candidates explains why Republicans in at least half of the states are more focused on limiting Millennial voting turnout than in actively courting the generation’s support 

For Democrats, the concern is not so much the partisanship of Millennials, but their engagement. One way to reinforce Millennials’ Democratic leanings is to remind them of their stake in the election by emphasizing the Millennial-friendly policies the Obama administration has pursued. Help with the cost of attending college, funding more national service opportunities, and permitting young people to remain on their parent’s health insurance until age 26 are all initiatives the Obama team could raise with Millennials.  Already that campaign is gearing up online and offline organizational efforts to bring Millennials to the polls in November that exceed the technological sophistication of its very successful efforts in 2008. 

If Millennials vote in numbers proportionate to their presence among eligible voters, their continued support of the president should allow him to overcome any attrition he suffers among older voters. But if large numbers of Millennials do not vote, the president’s reelection chances will be sharply reduced. Whichever alternative occurs will very likely determine whether Barack Obama or his eventual Republican opponent is inaugurated as president on January 20, 2013. 

Juan Williams on the GOP's Youth Problem

Today The Hill ran an interesting piece from Juan Williams entitled “How the GOP can capture the youth vote next year.”  Williams’ basic logic is that some polling shows a slight decline in Millennials’ Democratic allegiance and a slight increase in their enthusiasm for Republicans, leaving an opening for Republicans to woo this important electorate.  The only challenge seems to be that Williams doesn’t actually know how they’d go about that, save for tackling entitlement reforms.

Bizarrely, rather than making a case for Republicans, Williams makes a very strong case for why Millennials support Obama, and by extension, his party: 

“[Y]ounger Americans are more worried about a tight job market’s long-term impact on their ability to buy a home or save for retirement…That is why polls show the number one priority for young Americans is increased federal spending to get employers to hire more workers. Young people also want more dollars dedicated to education, another point of difference with older voters. That is where President Obama comes into play and so far he stands apart from Republicans and Democrats in appealing to the youth vote. During the first two years of his presidency, Obama has overhauled federal student loan programs, budgeted $30 billion in the stimulus to make college more affordable and, as part of the new healthcare law, has given young people the right to stay on their parents’ insurance plan up to the age of 26."

Williams never gets around to making an equally persuasive case for Millennials' GOP support.  But while the title of Williams’ piece over-promises, it does beg an interesting question:  What would a pro-youth GOP plan look like?  How can Republicans appeal to Millennials if the needs and wants of their generation run completely counter to the anti-government spending ideology that inspires the Republican base? 

At the very end of his piece, Williams alludes to Republicans introducing "a pro-youth agenda."  Given their record on health care, on Dream, on tax breaks for the wealthiest 1%, I'd settle for seeing their version of a not anti-youth agenda.  Where Williams sees opportunity for the GOP, I see a big challenge: an ideological incongruency between their party and the largest generation in American history.  

Anticipating the Coming Debate Over Foreign and Security Policy

When Washington returns in 2010 we will have a new issue to challenge the effective management of an already incredibly crowded agenda - a review of our intelligence, homeland security and counter-terrorism strategies and performance in the aftermath of the Nigerian-who-got-through. 

The coming debate could radically impact Washington's agenda in 2010. Given that these issues touch on a wide range of Congressional committees and areas of the Administration, and that there is a wide-held belief in DC that the reforms made during the Bush era were not completely effective or well done, it is going to be hard to control and contain the debate once it begins.   That there are so many different Congressional committees involved in this debate is itself a sign of the lack of coherence of the new counter-terrorism regime ushered in during the Bush era, from the DNI to DHS itself. 

The truth is that it may be time for the country to have a more systematic, thoughtful discussion about how to best deal with the global threat of terrorism, the nature of terrorism itself and how the two wars we are already fighting fit into our overall global national security strategy.  Over the last few days you could feel the American people saying - Nigeria? Yemen? Is there no end to this? How does all this relate to what is happening in Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan? It has been almost a decade now, with trillions spent, ten of thousands of American causalties, vast new bureaucracies built, a new significant escalation in Afghanistan, extraordinary opportunity costs - and what have we accomplished? Are we safer? What can we do better?  These are reasonable questions for the American people to ask.

If this debate lasts for months - which it could - it may very well knock other important priorities off the legislative calendar this year, a calendar that was already in danger of being incredibly overloaded.  Could we end up spending the coming year finishing health care, and having long and significant debates our economic and security policies, pushing a whole array of other important - but less important issues - off the agenda?

Does all this seem like an overreaction to a lone man who got through Fortress America? Perhaps, but that the vast new intelligence appartus built over the past decade didn't put some now clearly reasonable pieces together to stop a threat, and the attack demonstrated how the global jihadi network has spread beyond the places we are already significantly engaged abroad, has raised some critical issues which now seem inevitably headed towards a big, sustained and perhaps overdue conversation. 

Rather than fighting the consolidation of the 2010 agenda it may be in the interest of the governing party to embrace it, and not look defensive, as if they have other things they would rather be talking about.   Peace and prosperity drive most elections in the US, and 2010 may end up being no different.  The Republicans are already jumping on the Christmas Day attempt, and will no doubt spend the year ahead trying to reorient the national discussion to an area - national security - they feel will advantageous for them.  But given their actual record in the decade just past, and the extraordinary mess they left for others to clean up, the Republicans may rue the day the debate became about national security, for there is no way to have this debate without talking about the epic foreign policy and security failures of the Bush era, something they simply cannot disown.

So rather than wishing this new issue environment away, the President and the Democrats might decide rather to make it their own, and spend their political year making their case for how they hope to bring peace and prosperity to a country desperately seeking it.   They can take on the anarchronistic and disproven arguments of the conservatives head on, defining their vision and plans, and making very clear, where, on the two most important issues facing the nation, it is exactly they want to take us.  Not at all an unreasonable thing for the American people to ask of the governing party in a time of great transition and national challenge.

Happy New Year all. 

And a new year it will be.

Mon PM Update: On his Mother Jones blog David Corn chews over this essay a bit, and provides some thoughts of his own.

The Civility Crisis and How to Cure It

While the nation has been right to focus on the most recent outbreak of incivility, if not downright hostility, directed toward President Obama generally and his health care proposal specifically, the diagnosis of what ails the country and what must be done to end this type of behavior has been way off target.

Republicans, who were quick to compare the actions of their party's fringe elements to harsh, sometimes over the top Democratic criticism of   former President George W. Bush missed the qualitative difference between expressing strong policy disagreement with the opposition, which is fair game in any political season, and taking guns to Presidential appearances.  Ironically, Republicans are guilty of the same "moral equivalency" judgment error that they accused Democrats who minimized Communist war crimes in Vietnam and the actions of urban rioters of in the 1960s of committing.     Speaker Nancy Pelosi was closer to the truth when she likened today's vitriolic rhetoric to the hate speech directed toward gays in San Francisco in the 1970s, but she failed to pursue the historical analogy far enough.

This kind of anger, born out of a sense of fear of a rapidly changing world, and directed at those that seem to be causing the world to move both too fast and in the wrong direction, has erupted regularly whenever America has gone through the type of generational change it's now experiencing.

As generational theorists, William Strauss and Neil Howe pointed out, an idealist generation animated by moral beliefs, such as today's Baby Boomers, have, in their youth, regularly shaken American society by confronting the cultural values of older generations. Such generations have always been followed by an alienated, individualistic generational archetype, which tends to be rude and disrespectful, especially toward its elders.  The most recent historical examples of this archetype are the Lost Generation who came of age in the 1920s and Generation X, born 1965-1981.  As members of these two types of generations mature and assume positions of leadership, society coarsens and rhetoric escalates from being merely confrontational to speech that is deliberately designed to provoke and incite. It's the difference between Boomer rock n' roll and Gen X rap--or between Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

But inevitably, this harsh cultural style engenders a backlash from an emerging civic-oriented generation.   The most recent civic generations are Millennials  (born 1982-2003) and, in the 1930s and 1940s, the GI Generation.    Historically, the type of generational alignment we see now is associated with the most traumatic and significant crises in American history: the American Revolution and adoption of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and World War II.  The way this generational confrontation has been resolved in American history should give pause to those who encourage incivility, either by their silence or their direct involvement.

Popular opinion was sharply divided during the Revolutionary War.  Between a fifth and a third of the population of the Thirteen Colonies supported the British. Estimates are that after the war, between sixty and one hundred thousand Loyalists fled the newly born United States.  Nor did the Constitution's ratification end our divisions. In spite of George Washington's warning against the "partisan spirit" and the intentional failure of the Constitution to mention them, nascent political parties- Republicans and Federalists -formed by the end of his administration to confront one another on the issue of the proper role and size of the federal government.

Roughly eighty years later, seemingly irreconcilable differences between generations and regions led to the Civil War. Once Lincoln assumed the presidency, he faced opposition from all sides. The words, if not the deed, of his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, "Sic semper tyrannus" ("Thus always to tyrants") succinctly expressed the thoughts of most white Southerners about Lincoln. In the North, much of the criticism was intensely personal: Lincoln was called an "ape," a "baboon" or worse. Many opposed what they perceived to be a war sacrificing the blood of white men to free blacks. Riots protesting the military draft broke out in Northern cities. In New York blacks were lynched and the city's Negro orphanage burned. Even within his own Republican party, a faction called him timid for failing to emancipate the slaves sooner than he did or to pursue a more vindictive policy against the secessionist states.

When the generational archetypes were again aligned in a similar way in the early 1930s, the country was confronted by the greatest economic crisis in its history. While a hero to many, a month before his inauguration, Roosevelt was nearly the victim of an assassination. Giuseppe Zangara, an unemployed bricklayer with anarchist leanings, fired at FDR but hit Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago instead and killed him. Once in office, Roosevelt was personally criticized from the right for being a "traitor to his class." In shrill language that is once again being tossed cavalierly around Washington today, FDR's policies and programs were labeled "foreign," "socialist," "communist" and "fascist." His Social Security proposal was derided as a severe invasion of privacy. At the same time, from the other side of the political spectrum, Roosevelt was criticized for not doing enough to dismantle the capitalist system and, in the words of Huey Long, "Share the Wealth."

History demonstrates that the first years of a transition from an ideological era, such as the one Boomers and Xers dominated from 1968 to 2008, to an era dominated by civic generations, like the GI Generation and Millennials, are initially among the most rancorous, contentious, and sometimes violent, of any in American history.  But history also provides valuable lessons for how to deal with these tensions in order to increase civic unity.

The Founding Fathers worked hard to promote an "era of good feelings," admonishing citizens to maintain decorum in their public debates, even as they privately excoriated their opponents. Lincoln confronted his detractors directly, most famously with his principled stance that "A house divided against itself cannot stand."  And FDR condemned "economic royalists" intent on defending their privileged position to the detriment of the "forgotten man."

As the newest civic era begins, both Republican and Democrats must, in President Obama's phrase, "call out," those who engage in lies and demagoguery or threaten physical violence toward governmental institutions and leaders. Both sides need to brand such actions, not just wrong-headed, but a threat to the nation's ability to successfully sail through the troubled waters of our current generational alignment.  History suggests that a true sense of national solidarity will return when the nation successfully confronts the major challenges it will continue to face.   But in the interim the least that must be done is to denounce actions and behavior that will make future unity more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. 

The Grades are in: For the President an A, For Congressional Democrats an Incomplete

After enduring the rancorous dog days of August, last week was a good one for President Obama. It began with his talk to America's young people. Faced with charges from paranoid conservatives and Republicans that he was attempting to indoctrinate school children with a radical and foreign message, the president simply asked kids to study hard, stay in school, get good grades, and be unwilling to accept failure. His words likely inspired many of the students to whom they were addressed while at the same time making his opponents appear silly, if not downright bizarre.

But the capstone of the president's week was his address to a joint session of Congress in which he detailed his plan to reform America's health care system. In his speech, President Obama described his plan's benefits, addressed the legitimate concerns of Americans about the major changes the plan would bring, rebutted the distorted charges of his opponents, and inspired his allies with an emotional appeal to enact the plan as a posthumous memorial to Senator Ted Kennedy.

The end result was a rise in Obama's poll numbers. The first to report were CNN and the Democracy Corps, both of which questioned voters before the president's congressional address and then again immediately afterward. Because, not surprisingly, Democrats were more likely to watch Obama's speech than Republicans, the CNN survey somewhat oversampled Democratic identifiers. Even so, considering that Obama's approval ratings had declined seriously among Democrats over the summer, the results were encouraging for the president. CNN found that three-quarters (77%) of those who watched the speech had a positive reaction to it overall, with 56% being very positive.  Nearly as many (72%) believed that Obama clearly stated the goals for his health care plan in his speech. As a result, the president's numbers improved significantly on a number of key items. After the address, 70% believed that Barack Obama's policies would move the country in the right direction as compared with 60% who felt that way before. Most important, the number favoring the president's health care reform plan rose sharply to 67% from 53%.

The Democracy Corps used electronic dials to gauge the perceptions of 50 "independent and weak partisan" voters in Denver before, during, and immediately after President Obama's speech. Those who participated in the Democracy Corps research were about evenly divided among those who initially supported and opposed the president's health care reform plan and McCain and Obama voters. Among these swing voters, support for Obama's plan rose 20 points (from 46% before the address to 66% after). Moreover, attitudes toward specific aspects of the plan improved sharply following the address.

Health Care Reform Description

Pre-Speech Describes

Pre-Speech Does Not Describe

Post-Speech Describes

Post-Speech Does Not Describe

Change In Describes

Will get health care costs under control

42%

46%

64%

36%

+22

Allows you to keep your current insurance and doctor if you choose

54%

32%

80%

18%

+26

Will increase competition and lower prices for health care

44%

42%

74%

24%

+30

Will give individuals and families more choice and control

36%

58%

60%

36%

+24

Government-run health care

60%

32%

46%

54%

-14

Will increase the deficit and raise taxes

62%

26%

40%

44%

-22

Will hurt seniors by cutting Medicare

40%

32%

20%

66%

-20

So far the afterglow from President Obama's speech has had legs. On the Gallup daily tracking of his job performance, the president's approval versus disapproval margin has gone up from nine percentage points to thirteen since his address. In the public survey with the most consistently Republican tilt, the Rasmussen Reports, the number who strongly approve of Obama's performance is up five points since the speech while those who strongly disapprove is down four. Overall, after spending nearly all of August on the downside, a slight majority is now positive about the job President Obama is doing (52% vs. 48%). These are the president's highest marks in the Rasmussen surveys since mid-July.

CNN-Opinion Research survey conducted with a representative national sample over the weekend after Obama's address provides even greater detail-and more good news. That survey indicates that the president's approval score rose five points since late August (to 58% from 53%). During the same period, Obama's approval rating is up solidly for his handling of specific policy areas: the federal budget deficit (+10 points); taxes (+7); health care policy (+7); the economy (+5); and, foreign affairs (+4). Finally, undoubtedly as a direct result of his address to congress, a majority now favors rather than opposes Obama's plan to reform health care (51% vs. 46%). Most important, strong opposition to the president's plan declined by nine percentage points since CNN last polled on the matter.

But the biggest jump in Barack Obama's poll ratings came in the Daily Kos weekly tracking survey. In just one week, the president's overall favorable to unfavorable margin improved by eight percentage points (favorable up 4 points and unfavorable down 4). Obama's favorable marks week-to-week improved in virtually very demographic and political group except among Republicans. However, the biggest gains came within Democratic core groups including Millennials (young people born 1982-2003), Latinos, residents of the Northeast, and Democratic identifiers. This suggests that, after a period of drift during the summer, what President Obama said last week, especially in his health care reform address, reinforced his base. There is little doubt that Democrats are simply glad that the president is sounding like the man they put in the White House last November.

 

Favorable

 8/31-9/3

Favorable

9/7-9/10

Week-to-Week Change

Total electorate

52%

56%

+4

Sex

 

 

 

Male

44%

50%

+6

Female

60%

62%

+2

Age

 

 

 

18-29

74%

80%

+6

30-44

42%

44%

+2

45-59

58%

64%

+6

60+

40%

42%

+2

Party ID

 

 

 

Democrat

77%

85%

+8

Republican

4%

4%

¾

Independent

57%

60%

+3

Region

 

 

 

Northeast

76%

83%

+7

South

26%

28%

+2

Midwest

59%

63%

+4

West

56%

60%

+4

Unfortunately, President Obama's Democratic colleagues in Congress did not share in the week's polling upswing. The Daily Kos survey indicates that the favorable ratings of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and congressional Democrats overall were essentially unchanged during a week in which the president registered significant gains. Perhaps it is for this reason that GOP consultants are telling Republican candidates to attack congressional Democrats, rather than President Obama, in the 2010-midterm elections. (http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/09/gop_in_2010_focus_on_dems_in_congress_not_on_obama.php)

 It seems clear that the public, even the Democratic base, is taking a wait and see attitude about inside-the-Beltway Democrats other than President Obama. The coming months will determine whether or not the Democratic majority in Congress is prepared to do the job that it was sent to Washington to do and, among other things, at long last enact meaningful health care reform. This week's polling numbers suggest that would not only be good for America, but also for congressional Democrats. Let's hope they're paying attention.

Michael D. Hais is an NDN Fellow and co-author, with Morley Winograd, of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, You Tube, and the Future of American Politics, named one of the ten favorite books of 2008 by the New York Times.

Chairman Steele Confronts His Party's Intolerant Past.....and Present

For the last few years I've written a great deal about how I believed that there was no way to understand the recent conservative ascendancy in American politics without understanding that at its core was an ugly intolerance, a sustained and strategic exploitation of racial fear, a divisive politics which became known as the Southern Strategy.  I discussed this idea at length in a recent video essay called The Politics of Intolerance. 

I have also argued that for the modern GOP to have a fighting chance at appealing to the more racially diverse America of the 21st century, it would have to do more than adapt to the new demographic realities of our country.  The new leaders of the GOP would have to acknowledge and repudiate the ugly intolerance at the core of the Southern Strategy.  It is also something that I have never been terribly optimistic that would happen, certainly not in the next few years.

Which is why I found this passage from a NY Times blog, reviewing an interview with RNC Chairman Michael Steele, so interesting:

During this interview, Wolf Blitzer, the CNN host, confronted Mr. Steele with the composition of the Republican House and Senate — displaying the nearly all-white makeup on the G.O.P. side against the polyglot of the Democrats during the joint session of Congress which Mr. Obama addressed. (The setting where Congressman Wilson uttered his outburst.)

Mr. Steele acknowledged the racial divide between the parties: “I’ll accept the indictment. I’ll accept it, you know. And I — and I know we’ve got to change. And our party has, for over a generation, employed a strategy that right now we wish — many of us wish we never had."

"Many of us wish we never had."  Wow.  All of us need to hear more about this from Michael Steele in the days ahead.  What exactly does this mean, Chairman Steele? That you have regret over Willie Horton, the demonization of Hispanics, the caricatures of the Welfare Queen, of systemic voter suppression and so much more?

There are many reasons we helped launch this new campaign, Drop Dobbs, these past few days.  But chief among them is the desire to continue to liberate America from the destructive racial politics of the Southern Strategy era of American politics, an era which Lou Dobbs seems to be relentlessly unwilling to let go of.   This statement by Michael Steele gives me hope that the once proud party of Lincoln can once again embrace its heritage and help us confront - and then move beyond - the modern GOP's shameful Southern Strategy brand of politics.

On The DOJ's Torture Investigation

NPR's website is running a story by Liz Halloran today about Eric Holder's decision to investigate the CIA, which includes some observations from yours truly:

It didn't help Obama's standing in the liberal community that on the same day Holder appointed John Durham to investigate the CIA's interrogation tactics, the White House said it would continue the Bush administration practice of transferring suspected terrorists to other countries to be held and interrogated.

The administration said that the practice, known as rendition and condemned by human rights advocates, would proceed with more oversight.

"I think the Obama administration is having a hard time calibrating all of this," says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the New Democrat Network. "They were left a bad set of practices and realities by the Bush administration."

"The Obama team is finding that unraveling this is harder than they thought it would be, and they're trying," Rosenberg says. "But we're going to be having this debate a long time, and this [inquiry] is an important step."

That debate, he says, will necessarily involve how the country treated terrorism suspects in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Suggestions that discussion about what happened in the Bush era is either partisan or out-of-bounds is ridiculous," he says. "Laws may have been broken, and our standing in the world was affected."

"We need to have a conversation about this in our country."

That conversation may be one the president wanted to avoid, but it's one his supporters have insisted on. But many remain unsure of what Obama will do when the investigation is complete and when someone will have to decide whether and how to act on the facts.

It order for you to know where you want to go it sure is helpful to understand where exactly you have been.

Eric Holder's decision was clearly the right one.  We need to know more about what happened with these matters in the Bush era.  This is a good first step.  And enough already with the GOP arrogantly defending the CIA now, after spending much of the Bush era blaming it for all the President's mistakes.

Independent Means Nonpartisan: Just Another Washington Myth

In Washington perception is often reality and, based on the reported results of two new surveys, one by the New York Times and CBS and the other by the Wall Street Journal and NBC, the perception du jour in DC is that President Barack Obama has lost ground because of public concern with government spending, the deficit, and, perhaps most of all, the General Motors "bailout." The New York Times story on its survey is even headlined, "In poll, Obama is seen as ineffective on the economy.

But a look beneath the headlines to the survey data itself indicates that New York Times writers, or at least their headline writer, may have misread their own poll results. Instead of condemning of the president's handling of the economy, in the New York Times/CBS survey, the public actually approves of it by a greater than twenty-percentage point margin (57% vs. 35%), statistically unchanged since the first weeks of the administration. In the aftermath of the president's recent trip to the Middle East and Europe, his marks in foreign policy have actually risen since May.  And, even in health care reform, a work in progress and a relative soft spot for Obama, voters approve of his performance by 44-percent to 34-percent.

As a result, Obama's overall job approval rating is unchanged over the past month, down slightly since April, and even up marginally since February and March. To the extent that the president's performance rating has fallen, the drop has been almost totally concentrated among Republicans.

What may contribute to the expectation that Obama is standing on shaky ground, or soon will be, is another incorrect inside-the-beltway perception, this one primarily advanced by Republican commentators since the president's election, that America is "conservative," "center right" or at least "centrist." More often than not these pronouncements stem from narrowly focused interpretations of surveys suggesting that the number of "independents" in the electorate is growing and that self-perceived independents represent some amorphous, undifferentiated group of "centrists" who are decisive in U.S. politics.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The large majority (about 80%) of those who tell pollsters they are independents actually "lean" to one or the other of the two parties. Those who lean to the Democrats differ demographically and, even more importantly, behaviorally and attitudinally from those who lean to the GOP. As a result, the electorate is far more partisan than superficial analyses of survey results might suggest. Currently, the Democrats hold a substantial and growing edge over the Republicans among independents who lean toward a party. About six in ten "leaners" now tilt to the Democrats. Coupled with their large lead among those who do identify with a party, the Democrats are clearly operating as the country's decisive majority party.

John P. Avlon, who served on the policy and speech writing teams of Rudy Giuliani's abbreviated 2008 presidential campaign, is only the most recent of those professing the importance of centrist independents. Citing Pew Research Center data, Avlon claimed in an early June Wall Street Journal article that the number of self-identified independents in the electorate has risen sharply since Obama's win last November while the percentage of both Democrats and Republicans has fallen. Because of these post-election shifts, according to Avlon, "independents hold the balance of power in the Obama era."

On the surface, Avlon's description of the Pew data may be accurate. But his characterization of party identification data is shallow and incomplete. Avlon, like most of those who write about the distribution of party identifiers within the US electorate, refers to only three discrete and presumably undifferentiated categories of voters--Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

However, voting behavior analysts affiliated with the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, who first formulated the concept of party identification in the 1950s, recognized early on that those who identify with a particular political party do so with varying degrees of strength, while those who say they are independents may lean toward one or the other of the parties. As a result, the Michigan researchers developed a seven-point scale to more fully capture the actual complexity of party identification. This scale consists of Strong Democrats on one extreme and Strong Republicans on the other. In between the two extremes are Weak Democrats, Independents who lean to the Democrats, Independents who lean to the Republicans and Weak Republicans. In the very center of the scale are Independents who do not lean to either party.

All of this might only be of academic interest were it not for the crucial importance of party identification. Party identification represents a psychological attachment of voters to a political party. While it certainly is not a contractual obligation to support a party, the large majority of Americans vote for the party with which they identify or to which they lean--and they almost always adhere to its positions on issues as well . Political scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that party identification is the single most important factor shaping the choices of individual voters. In the aggregate, these numbers really do matter.  The distribution of party identifiers and leaners is the clearest indicator of the relative strength of the two parties within the U.S. electorate and has now tilted heavily toward the Democrats.

Utilizing the more complete and useful seven-point scale rather than a three-point division paints a far different picture of American voters than the one that Avlon and most of those who report on trends in party identification paint. Based on April 2009 data that is the most recent cited by Pew, here is the overall distribution of party identifiers in the U.S.:

Strong Democrats

23%

Weak Democrats

13%

Democratic Leaning Independents

18%

Non-Leaning Independents

13%

Republican Leaning Independents

12%

Weak Republicans

10%

Strong Republicans

12%

* Table does not total 100% due to rounding

This table makes several points very clear. First, the Democrats are clearly the majority party holding a decisive twenty-percentage point party ID lead over the Republicans (54% to 34%). Second, barely one in ten voters is a non-leaning independent; rather than being the decisive center, non-committed voters actually comprise a small minority of the electorate.

The following table, also using Pew tracking data, displays the distribution of party identification for all election years from 1990 through 2006 and for every year since then. 

Year

Republican/Lean Republican

Independents

Democrat/Lean Democrat

Overall Democratic Advantage

1990

43%

13%

44%

+1%

1992

40%

11%

49%

+9%

1994

44%

12%

44%

0

1996

42%

10%

48%

+6%

1998

39%

14%

47%

+8%

2000

39%

14%

44%

+5%

2002

43%

14%

43%

0

2004

41%

12%

47%

+6%

2006

38%

15%

47%

+9%

2007

36%

14%

50%

+14%

2008

36%

13%

51%

+15%

2009

36%

12%

52%

+16%

These results lead to a number of clear and important conclusions about the distribution of party identification across the American electorate during the past two decades.

  • The Democrats have generally held the edge throughout the entire period. But, that advantage was relatively small during the 1990s and the first three election years of this century. The Democratic margin widened a bit in the two years when Bill Clinton won the presidency (1992 and 1996) and 1998, when some voters may have turned against the GOP in reaction to a politically motivated impeachment effort. By contrast, the Republicans reached parity with the Democrats in 1994, the year of the Gingrich revolution that saw the GOP gain control of Congress, and 2002, when the nation rallied to a Republican president in the aftermath of 9/11.
  • The Democratic advantage has sharply and consistently widened since the 2006 midterm elections when that party regained control of Congress. A number of factors--the disastrous George W. Bush presidency, an increasingly diverse electorate, the emergence of the Millennial Generation (young Americans born 1982-2003), the election and continued appeal of Barack Obama--have all undoubtedly contributed to the Democrats' increased party identification lead. Regardless of the relative importance of these and other factors, a greater percentage of American voters now identifies as Democrats or leans Democratic than at any time since Lyndon Johnson's landslide 1964 victory over Barry Goldwater. The Democratic margin over the GOP is larger than at any time since the post-Watergate period of the mid-1970s.
  • The number of completely non-affiliated voters has slightly, but consistently, declined each year since 2006. Rather than becoming more crucial, as writers such as Avlon suggest, unattached independents have actually become less important during past several years.

All of this leaves President Obama and congressional Democrats in strong position as they prepare for the major battles ahead on health care reform and energy--if they have the courage to avoid giving in to incorrect Washington perceptions and, instead, take advantage of the rare opportunity that the American electorate has given them.

Immigration Discussion Today Here at NDN

For those wanting to learn more about and discuss the compelling issue of how to best fix our broken immigration system, please join us today at noon either here at NDN or online for an event, "Immigration Reform: Politics, Public Opinion and Legislative Prospects."  For more information or to rsvp go here.

Hope to see you later today.....

Syndicate content