Can Obama reclaim the magic? Probably not.
One of the thorniest challenges for Democrats in the post-Reagan era — following the exodus of many white, working class voters to the GOP — has been the lack of voting zeal within the remaining “progressive coalition” that defines the left.
The vast majority of polls show that if Democratic-leaning groups (minorities, young people, urban liberals, etc.) voted with the same intensity as Republican-leaning groups (white, older, rural conservatives), there would be little contest in American presidential elections.
Democrats would win hands-down.
But the simple truth is that the left-of-center “silent majority” has proved nearly impossible to harness with any consistency.
Barack Obama pulled it off in 2008, stitching a patchwork of groups that were anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-corporate and anti-Washington. In doing so, he defeated a much more seasoned, well-known Republican war hero, John McCain, by nearly 10 million votes.
But by 2010, the left-of-center coalition had fallen back into somnolence and disarray. The tea party shouldered its way into the national consciousness.
It was a stunning, and completely typical triumph: A much smaller group of conservative Americans organized more effectively and more persistently, shifting the national agenda, and swinging control of the House in dramatic fashion.
2012, according to most pundits’ predictions, won’t be a wave year like 2008 or 2010. But it doesn’t need to be either of those things for conservatives to fare well against Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama.
In a “normal” year, Republican-leaning voters will typically outperform their Democratic-leaning counterparts and there are signs that this is happening.
According to a Gallup poll in July, Democratic zeal in 2012 is about on par with Republican enthusiasm in 2008. In other words, down more than twenty points over the last four years. Republican enthusiasm, meanwhile, is 16 points higher than in 2008.
Those trends are reflected in much of the progressive movement’s impatient rhetoric about Obama.
One day last week Huffingtonpost — a zeitgeist journal for left of center voters – was headlined with an article suggesting that the “hope” of Barack Obama’s presidency has been “killed,” with Obama himself described as a “DC establishment man.”
The front page of the popular website included a lengthy opinion article by liberal actor John Cusack suggesting that Obama “gutted” the US Constitution.
I hear this kind of language frequently from my more progressive acquaintances, many of whom view Obama’s first term as a “failure” — though for profoundly different reasons than Mitt Romney or Rush Limbaugh.
Some still plan to vote grudgingly for the Democrat, because they dislike the Republican ticket even more. But I suspect that many progressive voters will sit this election out, particularly students, African American and Hispanics, and far-left liberals.
Team Obama hopes to counter apathy and disarray on the left with a state-of-the-art get out the vote organization, one that merges traditional neighborhood activism with new- and social-media pushes.
But it’s an open question whether Twitter and Facebook can revive enough of the 2008 magic to lift Barack Obama to a second term?
All of which brings us to this week’s Democratic convention in Charlotte.
We already know that many union groups are in a grump, angry that Obama chose to hold the rally in North Carolina, a state that has weak pro-union laws. That doesn’t bode well, but it may be typical in a left-in-a-muddle sort of year.
Against headwinds like that, Obama will try to rally his base, urging the alphabet soup of factions to put aside short-term disappointments and irritations to embrace again some version of the broad, hopeful vision that he offered four years ago.
Republican rhetoric aside, the president has a fair amount of red meat to offer liberals.
Obama ended the war in Iraq, pushed through the closest thing to universal healthcare that America has ever seen, ended segregation against gay people in the military, took a political thrashing for subsidizing alternative energy technologies, and helped to save the US automobile industry that unions rely upon — all while dealing with the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
He also managed to pull off four years as the first black man in the White House in our nation’s history. It’s a feat that modern pundits have largely downplayed or ignored, but one which I suspect historians will spill a lot of ink over.
Still, liberals are a famously stubborn, impatient crowd and I’m not sure that’s enough. I suspect that when the votes are counted in November, a big chunk of America’s silent majority will remain, well, silent.
In these final weeks of the campaign, left-of-center voters will wring their hands over voter suppression by Republicans. But I suspect that far, far more Democratic voters will be lost to liberal apathy than to conservative chicanery.
Tags: election12, politics
Yeah, JDM, you wouldn’t want them funding breakthrough cancer studies, would you? And who needs the Internet or Interstate highways?
“After all, the law as written only applies to the little people.”
Isn’t Bernie Madoff in prison???
Yes, but that’s the exception that proves the rule, Paul. Madoff is in jail because he scammed the one percenters.
“I think we should close the loopholes and radically reduce the corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the developed world.”
I basically agree. We need a fairer tax system. That require the holes to be plugged. We should lower corporate taxes but maybe not “radically”. The difference between now and the mid nineties is that we need more corporate tax revenue. The best way to increase that is by increasing business activity not necessarily cutting the rates too much.
“Watergate?” Thrown out of office.
“Enron?” Jail.
“Jesse James” Killed for a bounty (justice in the day)
“Bonnie and Clyde” Same I think?
“Al Capone” Alcatraz.
“Godfather” Not sure what the state of organized crime is but I think we have made strides.
“I think we should close the loopholes and radically reduce the corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the developed world.”
Mervel, we have the highest corporate tax rate only on paper:
“This is a constant refrain from Republicans, who blame the supposedly high U.S. corporate tax rate for discouraging job creation. But as we’ve noted time and time again, while the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate (meaning the rate on paper), U.S. corporations actually pay incredibly low taxes due to the ever-proliferating loopholes, credits, and deductions in the tax code and the use of overseas tax havens.”
“U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. both taxes its corporations less and raises less in revenue from corporate taxes than its foreign competitors.” (Think Progress: Reality Check)
Point is, though, Paul, we have made heroes of many of these folks. Kathy was talking like illegal immigrants were somehow flying in the face of America’s long proud tradition of celebrating lawful behavior.
You know, Paul “Enron – jail” kinda oversimplifies things: F’rinstance, Lay never went to jail, and his conviction was vacated:
“Lay was found guilty on May 25, 2006, of 10 counts against him; the judge dismissed the 11th. Because each count carried a maximum 5- to 10-year sentence, legal experts said Lay could have faced 20 to 30 years in prison. However, he died while vacationing in Snowmass, Colorado, on July 5, 2006, about three and a half months before his scheduled October 23 sentencing. Preliminary autopsy reports state that he died of a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. As a result of his death, on October 17, 2006, the federal district court judge who presided over the case vacated Lay’s conviction. There have been conspiracy theories surrounding his death.” (Wikipedia)
Jeffrey Skilling is serving nice long jail term, and Andrew Fastow served a six-year prison sentence.
David Duncan, in charge of the Enron account at Arthur Anderson, was charged with obstruction of justice for ordering Andersen staff to shred over a ton of papers related to Enron. To date he has done no time, though he pleaded guilty, but was later allowed to withdraw the plea. His sentencing date has been postponed numerous times.
Paula Rieker, former Enron Vice President, Managing Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Secretary, pleaded guilty to insider trading, and faced a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, but only got two years, and presumably served less time.
At one point in 2004, eleven Enron defendants had been convicted, but who knows how many of those did time, or how much. It seems clear that it required the work of way more than eleven people to pull off this fraud.
For instance, to the best of my knowledge, no bankers were convicted of criminal activity, though it is clear that a number of banks were complicit.
So yeah, sure, “Enron – jail”, but probably no where near what was merited.
JDM, here you go:
“Obama, Barack H. (1990). “Tort Law. Prenatal Injuries. Supreme Court of Illinois Refuses to Recognize Cause of Action Brought by Fetus against Its Mother for Unintentional Infliction of Prenatal Injuries”. Harvard Law Review 103 (3): 823–828. (There is a summary here.)
The president of the Harvard Law Review is elected by the other editors.
Oh, and there’s this, JDM:
“Membership in the Harvard Law Review is offered to select Harvard law students based on first-year grades and performance in a writing competition held at the end of the first year. The writing competition includes two components: an edit of an unpublished article and an analysis of a recent United States Supreme Court or Court of Appeals case. The writing competition submissions are graded blindly to assure anonymity. (Wikipedia)
I think you should look at this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577615392065706990.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
“Even in this best-case scenario by Mr. Obama’s own lights, debt soon exceeds the 112.7% debt-to-GDP high-water mark in 1945, incurred to win a war for civilization across the world. The U.S. would now be taking on a larger liability—well above the 90% ratio that most economists consider the general boundary between safety and crisis—simply because the political class refused to modernize the entitlement state that drives the debt.
Mr. Ryan’s budget, as shown by the third line, would gradually reduce debt by 36% relative to the status quo by the end of the decade, by 59% in 2030 and 80% less by 2040. No question that requires reforms that by conventional political standards are large. But that’s because they’re commensurate with the magnitude of the fiscal problem.”
But nobody is counting on this proposal but:
“Mr. Ryan’s major contribution has been to expose the illusion that Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign rests on: pretending that raising taxes on a few thousand “millionaires and billionaires” can fund an ever-growing government ”
“Every time Mr. Obama warns about Mr. Ryan “gutting” this or that “investment,” what he’s not saying but is unavoidably implying is that taxes must be far higher to finance this spending. Assuming he can read the budget tables, he knows the government has made promises it cannot mathematically keep—but he hopes nobody notices.
Mr. Ryan had an instructive colloquy with Tim Geithner on this point in February. The Budget Chairman noted that the Administration doesn’t “have a plan to make good” on the promises the political class has made to voters. The Treasury Secretary replied that “As I said, we’re not disagreeing in that sense. I made it absolutely clear that what our budget does is get our deficit down to a sustainable path over the budget window.””
Read the entire article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444914904577615392065706990.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
My son is taking a history course at Texas A&M International University and guess what he was taught recently? That Christopher Columbus did not discover the Americas and the Pilgrims did not come here for religious freedom.
That’s what I mean when I say our heritage is in danger.
Oh. And his professor is an older gentlemen – white and liberal.
“So yeah, sure, “Enron – jail”, but probably no where near what was merited.”
Whatever, I think you get my point. They may have been praised by the folks in Hollywood but nobody got off scott-free by a long shot.
Kathy, I think that Columbus landed in Hispaniola, but close enough? I am pretty sure the Pilgrims did come here for religious freedom. What is the new reason?
A&M is a very good school.
Kathy, Columbus did not “discover” the Americas. I don’t believe there is any real dispute about that.
About the Pilgrims, I would have to sit in the class to know what exactly what was said but I could imagine persuasive arguments that the Pilgrims didn’t come here strictly for religious freedom. College is about opening minds. I hope your son is using his time in school to broaden his perspective.
Walker: What?? No links to an article? Hmmm.
It’s possible that US-born Barack, posed as an international student, to scam the Harvard system.
But, we’ll never know, because no links exist to his work.
It won’t matter after November, anyway.
Hey, the Cherokee lady is on TV!
Oh, excuse me. I mean the lady who posed as a Cherokee to scam the system.
Did Columbus discover America? Ever hear of Leif Erikson? What about John Cabot?
http://news.discovery.com/history/columbus-cabot-new-world-discovery-120503.html
Did the Pilgrims come to America for religious freedom? Well, they left Great Britain for the Netherlands first. In the Netherlands they had religious freedom. They left the Netherlands because they were afraid their children were becoming too “Dutch” and they were losing their culture, including their religion.
Good for A&M. They are doing their job.
Of course we shouldn’t discount the Asians that came to America across the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. And, possibly stone age men walked across the North Atlantic ocean to America some 30,000 years ago (Solutrean hypothesis). Of course you have to believe the Earth is more than 6,000 years old to accept those discoveries.
Isn’t it far more interesting to look at the latest scientific evidence than continuing to simply state that Columbus “discovered” America? That’s what good universities do. They make you question and think.
I am open to scientific evidence, questioning, and thinking.
I am not open to rewriting and redefining history.
Of course the Vikings were in North America before Columbus. But Columbus did venture into an unknown sea in his time. So, we credit him with the discovery and claim for Spain. Why is it necessary to delve into this more?
The Pilgrims (Separatists) surely did come to America for religious freedom. Why question it further?
Both are not debatable because of scientific evidence. It is just an example of some free thinking people to bloviate.
Sometimes people just like to hear themselves talk.
Kathy –
Of course you are joking right? Scientific evidence isn’t used to determine the migrations of people? The Solutrean hypothesis isn’t scientific? It’s bloviating?
There is plenty of historical evidence that that the Pilgrims left the Netherlands, where they had religious freedom, for cultural reasons – including religion.
You acknowledge that the Vikings discovered N. America, but you still want to insist that Columbus deserves the credit? Conservatives really do live in another reality don’t they?
Why bother sending your son to a university where those darn liberal professors are trying to convert him?
“Why is it necessary to delve into this more?”
Uh, because we might learn something?
Kathy, what is taken to be “history” is constantly changing. You want your history like the Bible: fixed for all time. It’s not like that.
Look at it this way: suppose a hundred years from now, new research discovered incontrovertible proof that Obama really wasn’t born in the U.S. Wouldn’t you want the history books of that time to be revised to show that?
It would be a sad world indeed that had nothing new to learn.
“Walker: What?? No links to an article? Hmmm.”
JDM, you missed it. Look again. I ended the citation with ” (There is a summary here.)”
Sorry if it was too subtle for you. And it looks like you’ll have to subscribe to JSTOR or go to a college library to read the full article.
“In that model, debt grows two times as large as GDP by 2037 and the economy crashes. Not good.”
2037 Paul? That’s 25 years out. Who the hell knows what’ll be happening in 2037? Twenty five years ago was 1987. Who could have predicted then the prosperity of the Clinton years, when we actually ran a surplus? Or that Bush II, following policies remarkably similar to those that Ryan/Romney are proposing could have turned that surplus into the monstrous deficit that Bush handed off to Obama?
And your editorial treats the Ryan/Romney plan as if their numbers were actually achievable, even though they have resolutely refused to specify how they plan to actually achieve the savings they project: smoke and mirrors.
“Mr. Ryan’s House budget details a long-range plan to equalize spending and tax revenues…” Well no, it does no such thing. What it really does is propose new tax cuts for the rich as the route to prosperity for all, even though we’ve been down this road repeatedly in the last forty years and we’ve never yet found the pot of gold there.
Well, strike that: the top tenth of a percent have found a mountain of gold there, while the rest of us work harder and harder to stay afloat. Sorry, but I ain’t buying it.
Kathy, here’s an even better example of the mutability of history:
“President Reagan once compared the Mujaheddin to the Founding Fathers of the United States. He also sold weapons to Iran. The only explanation for this troubling behavior is that Ronald Reagan was a secret Muslim, hellbent on destroying America.” (Ronnie Ayatollah)
What if irrefutable evidence comes to light fifty years from now showing that the young Ronald Regan was schooled in a madrassas, and that he actually secretly founded the freedom-loving Mujaheddin of Afghanistan? Wouldn’t you want history books revised to tell that story?
Just kidding, of course. But you see what I mean?
I am open to scientific evidence, questioning, and thinking.
Except where such evidence, questioning, and thinking leads to change., such as “re-writing history”. I see this as an example of a major problem faced by the Republican party today.
Another example: Arab Americans shouting down the vote for God and Israel to be put back in the DNC platform.
PNElba, I am aware the Pilgrims left Holland and why they left.
Additionally, my son is fully aware of the liberal ideology and won’t be converted. By the way, he works for the Federal Government and is taking this class on his own.
Lastly, the downside (as there is a downside to everything) of questioning and thinking is one can question and think too much and write books and text books that are misleading.
But then again, the secularists, progressives, and liberals like moving targets.
Walker, I get your point.
It’s not a big deal to me for Columbus to get the credit. He was determined to secure the money and supplies needed to venture to the Indies and he claimed the continent for Spain. Isn’t it like a liberal to want to make it “fair” – to equal the playing field – and give the Vikings the credit, too.
You don’t think it’s pretty extreme to not credit the Pilgrims for coming to America for religious freedom?
These days, it seems if someone has a new thought it becomes truth.
“…one can question and think too much and write books and text books that are misleading.”
OK, Kathy, but how do you know what is misleading and what isn’t? What if it’s the old history books that are misleading (as they often are)?
Do you want little George chopping down the cherry tree in your “history” books, even if it never happened?
You conservatives are supposed to believe in markets, including the marketplace of ideas. The good stuff is supposed to survive, and the bad stuff disappears. That’s the theory anyway.
Besides, the only alternative to letting folks “think too much” is censorship. Is that what you’d advocate?
Our posts crossed.
“These days, it seems if someone has a new thought it becomes truth.”
No, a new thought becomes something like truth via a very long, slow process. None of us, if we’re honest, should claim to know for a certainty what truth is. There is always something we don’t know.
OK, Kathy, but how do you know what is misleading and what isn’t? What if it’s the old history books that are misleading (as they often are)?
Because I know how to think.
We deem ourselves smarter these days (granted, technology and science has made this true in many cases). But because something may seem outdated or old fashioned to our liking, it doesn’t automatically disqualify it.
We also have to figure in our personal view and that works both ways.
Some time ago I said that every state constitution is full of references to God and faith and some liberals side-stepped this fact and/or the reason why the Federal government deferred this to the states. This is what I mean by re-writing history.
I actually prefer older (pre 1970) resources in many cases since it seems that the more time that goes on the more diluted it can become.
“…nobody got off scott-free by a long shot.”
Paul, you apparently missed my point: lots of people got off Scott free who had a hand in the Enron debacle. Only eleven people out of, what, I would have to guess a hundred or more– it was a huge scam, after all.
If conservative economic economic ideas were such a good idea, why was George W. Bush not invited to speak at the 2012 RNC Convention?
Oops, wrong thread.
“….one can question and think too much…. “.
Amazing.
I’m sure glad those scientists that just mapped the “junk” portion of our DNA didn’t think they were questioning and thinking too much.
Come on, PNElba. Questioning and thinking “too much” about the advancement of science is different than history.
It is?????
Kathy –
Maybe you are right. Too much questioning and thinking about history results in “re-writing” history. That’s bad. Questioning and thinking about science is good because you can question the theory of evolution and climate change. That’s good. It all makes sense to me now.
Kathy, I honestly think you’re missing out when you fail to explore the richness of the full historical record. Set aside your desire to see history in a certain light and just go along for the sheer joy of the ride. There is more to know about the Pilgrims than that the came here for religious freedom.
Isn’t the story of Vikings coming here and a European child born in Newfoundland interesting Or that French fishermen were probably here fishing for cod and drying it to ship back to Europe long before Columbus? And there is no doubt that the story of Columbus is interesting too. And what about Henry Hudson sailing up the river and writing in his journals about the quality of the farmland and the villages of the natives? The Dutch founded what became Albany in 1609, well before the Pilgrims landed. And even back in prehistoric times there were people in far northern latitudes who probably travelled back and forth between Europe, Asia and North America; people who used ocher and left cairns. Who were they and what were they doing here.
I dont think any of those people were Democrats or Republicans. Isnt it fun sometime to just know their stories as best we can?
Ok now you have gone toooo far Knuckle: the FRENCH! I can live with the Vikings, being the first Europeans here; but no; Columbus beat a bunch of French fishermen.
Also who kicked ass? Was it these Vikings and French? NOOO Columbus started taking over and kicked that off, that is why he is more important than these other posers. I mean where are the Knights of Vikings? They don’t exist, but we can still point to the Knights of Columbus today!
I know, it hurts! But at least the French didn’t make cheese while they were here. Unless they found a way to make fish cheese.
Sorry to further disappoint and upset you Mervel. But the Solutreans were a stone age people that likely walked across the N. Atlantic to N. America from Southwest France some 20-30,000 years ago. I don’t think they made any cheese however unless they could milk a mastadon.
I love history and have spent 25 years teaching it to my children – mostly using books rich in stories and not just facts and figures.
Putting a personal spin on history is easier to do than science. Much liberty has been taken – even to the point of being sensationalism – to discredit factual information.
Seems the only credit Columbus gets these days is his “horrid” agenda and mistreatment of Native Americans. (but wait, the TAMIU history prof said the Native Americans are not really native to America).
KHL, I could give you a whole list of books that are rich in the stories you mentioned.
Maybe Native Americans are not really native to America because evidence shows they came from Asia or Europe. But I guess in many cases facts are just pesky technicalities.
Well, then let’s go way back to the Tower of Babel!