PLANK NOVEMBER 7, 2012
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Back in the spring, the Obama campaign essentially telegraphed its re-election strategy: First it would soften up Mitt Romney as the sort of heartless over-dog who could watch Seabiscuit and somehow root for his big scary rival. Then it would add a policy dimension to the argument, accusing Romney of wanting to cut taxes for the rich while defunding the programs the rest of us rely on. The personal argument would explain why Romney wanted to screw the middle class (because he’s an economic overlord who looks down on them with disdain). The policy argument would explain the how.
What’s surprising isn’t that this strategy worked in the end, with Obama eking out a narrow popular vote win (even as he routed Romney in the Electoral College). The Obama folks had clearly scouted out their opponent and sized him up well. What’s surprising is that, having watched Chicago telegraph its plan, the Romney campaign chose not to adjust its own strategy in response.
As I noted yesterday, there were any number of policies Romney could have adopted to defuse his ruthless rich-guy image. He could have come out for raising the miniscule tax on capital gains, which nets him millions of dollars each year. He could have proposed scaling back the tax subsidies that make it so profitable for buyout firms like Bain to take over struggling companies. With Obama likely to win Florida, Ohio, and Virginia by a combined total of under five percentage points, Romney didn’t need to reinvent himself in order to tilt the race his way. He just had to take the edge of a bit, albeit in credible fashion.
Instead—improbably—Romney ran in the opposite direction. Having allowed the Obama campaign to define him in unflattering personal terms, he didn’t even wait for their policy follow-up. He made the policy argument for them. Emphatically. Romney’s tax plan would have frozen the absurdly low capital gains rate in place, then cut income taxes another 20 percent, leaving him with no way to make up the red ink other than raising the tax burden on the middle class. Then, more brazenly, he filled the number two spot on his ticket with Paul Ryan, the author of a proposal to scale the budget for everything from science research to food stamps back to Eisenhower-era levels, while eviscerating Medicaid and dismantling Medicare.
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The exit polls from last night are pretty much teeming with evidence that this was disastrous for Romney—that he essentially did the Obama campaign’s work for it. For example, Obama roughly equaled his 2008 margins among voters without a college degree in both Ohio and Florida even though he won those states last night by less than half his 2008 margin. The percentage of voters in the two states who said “caring about people” was the most important quality in a president rose dramatically from 2008, and Obama won these voters by a considerably larger margin this time around.
Perhaps the most damning data point was the percentage of voters who believed each candidate’s polices favored the rich. For Obama, only 10 percent of voters nationally concluded he was out to coddle the high-net-worth set, versus 44 percent who believed he wanted to work for average-income earners. For Romney, by contrast, more than half of voters said he was intent on easing the lot of the rich, against roughly a third who thought his heart was with the middle class. You simply don’t get elected president when you inspire that kind of suspicion, whatever the unemployment rate.
In the end, the Romney campaign clearly misread the landscape. They believed that frustration with the economy would suffice to dislodge the president—that the race would ultimately be about the incumbent and not the challenger. And they weren’t crazy to think so. Some 75 percent of voters rated the economy as either “not good” or “poor.” In Ohio and Florida, voters had more confidence in Romney’s ability to fix it.
What Romneyland missed was that the race was never entirely a referendum on the struggling economy (which, as it happened, far more people still blame on George W. Bush rather than Obama). It was also a referendum on fairness—how else to explain that 60 percent of voters nationally believe the rich should pay more taxes? In that sort of environment, Romney was never going to be an ideal candidate. But the refusal to make the slightest accommodation to Americans’ growing sense of grievance will go down as a historical blunder.
28 comments
Speculation. "He could have proposed scaling back the tax subsidies that make it so profitable for buyout firms like Bain to take over struggling companies. It was previously stated that getting rid of the interest deduction is the way to do this. I believe that getting rid of the capital gains preference is enough. It would change the advantage of buying and selling businesses at a 20% lower tax rate as being better than owning a company that throws off profits. And the cap gains preference is an expensive inefficient stimulus for the stock market that would be better improved by other means, particularly by focusing on a stable economy.
- Nusholtz
November 7, 2012 at 7:53am
Romney and his campaign: out of touch in every way, shape, and form possible. Thanks goodness!
- Claris
November 7, 2012 at 8:13am
You continue to ignore that it took Obama 6 months to stop the free-fall and begin the recovery. It's then taken 3.5 years for unemployment to fall to the point it was at when Obama took office. That's 6 months of free fall, followed by 3.5 YEARS of growth. There's nothing to "reverse" here, we need to stay the course Obama has set. Romney's trying to characterize everything Obama did as a failure was stupid, inaccurate, and ultimately self-defeating. It's not that Obama made Romney look "out of touch". It's Romney's own words that did that.
- AllanL5
November 7, 2012 at 9:18am
This entire argument, and the story of our current political stalemate, lies in the state of the Republican party. I know its been beaten to death, but it remains the primary reason for what happened last night. The contortions that Romney had to engage in to secure the nomination and his subsequent obeisance to the teabillies either did not allow him to pursue the outlined strategy, or his own disbelief (and that of his handlers) of its effectiveness prevented him from doing so. Maybe we will never know which. It is the religious dogmatism of the Republicans that disallows the flexibility to alter strategy, or adopt a slightly different one based on the circumstances on the ground. It is their way, or the highway. In the corporate world, this works like a charm. Not in so much in the public one. This is why in the long run the methods of the Republicans will fail. Our system is not designed for what I would term something close to a totalitarian approach to governing.
- sbmacdon@cox.net-old
November 7, 2012 at 9:42am
we can be glad that the GOP's gatekeepers were only in touch with each other, and that they thus sealed their own fate. that they "misread" the political landscape is an understatement. next time around, the Fourth Estate will have to vet GOP candidates ever more carefully because said GOP gatekeepers fail to learn.
- cdmcl3
November 7, 2012 at 10:10am
you mean that Romney really is the clueless, entitled, arrogant asshole who thinks he knows better than everyone else I always thought he was? What is it about Obama that makes his political opponents self destruct in such spectacular fashion? If he could defeat the Clinton machine 4 years ago how could Romney have thought he knew better?
- blackton
November 7, 2012 at 10:21am
oh, and allan, amen to that. whenever Republicans say why has it taken him so long to fix the economy I always say why did he need to fix it in the first place?
- blackton
November 7, 2012 at 10:23am
Romney did nothing in the wake of the "47 percent" revelation to really dispel the depiction (and there is nothing to indicate that depiction is incorrect) of himself as an out-of-touch plutocrat. Doing so would have probably done more harm than good with his angry, entitled base. While it wasn't overt, I believe the whole idea of the Republican campaign was to energize disaffected middle-class white voters to vote against "that colored guy in the White House." The Republicans are fighting a losing war with the changing demography of the country and it will be interesting to see how they deal with that moving forward. They simply cannot continue to sing the same tune they sang in this election and hope to gain influence.
- Lundell
November 7, 2012 at 11:01am
AllanL5 writes: "That's 6 months of free fall, followed by 3.5 YEARS of growth. " 3.5 years of ANEMIC growth. That is the problem. The growth is worse than any other recovery.
- seattleeng
November 7, 2012 at 11:41am
Blackton writes: "oh, and allan, amen to that. whenever Republicans say why has it taken him so long to fix the economy I always say why did he need to fix it in the first place?" Because of a housing bubble fueled by a scheme in which risks were offloaded to taxpayers and profits were scooped up by wall street. You know, the normal moral hazard stuff.
- seattleeng
November 7, 2012 at 11:42am
hey, exactly right seattle, and who was President then? You don't remove restrictions on banks without getting rid of the FDIC, so yeah, maybe Clinton should not have gotten rid of Glass Steagal but Bush had both the House and Senate and could easily have put restrictions in place again to prevent the bubble. But don't tell me you can get rid of the FDIC, the banking system would collapse, I would never leave money in a bank if I thought it could be wiped out tomorrow. Moral hazard, absolutely, but the banking system is different, they should never be allowed to get into a position wherein they can collapse. It didn't happen in Canada.
- blackton
November 7, 2012 at 12:18pm
3.5 years of anemic growth is more than Bush-II was able to do with all his tax-cutting, deficit spending, and starting two wars. It's certainly more than Romney would do with all his tax-cutting, deregulation, and even greater deficit spending on the military. To characterize "anemic growth" as "total failure" is to ignore the situation when Obama was elected. It would also help, if the Republican House hadn't held the recovery hostage on three separate occasions, one of which removed 100 billion in stimulus spending. Anyway, that seems to be what the electorate said yesterday. "Total failure" rejected. "More growth, even if anemic" supported.
- AllanL5
November 7, 2012 at 12:36pm
blackton writes: hey, exactly right seattle, and who was President then? You don't remove restrictions on banks without getting rid of the FDIC, so yeah, maybe Clinton should not have gotten rid of Glass Steagal but Bush had both the House and Senate and could easily have put restrictions in place again to prevent the bubble. Banks could only unload risk if the government was willing to buy it via GSEs. Take away the GSE's, and banks have nobody to unload the risk to. The treasury secretary in 2003 proposed legislation to regulate and supervise of GSE. This would have set rules for how much risk fannie and freddie could have taken on. At this point, the GSE (and taxpayers) had guaranteed $1.5T in debt, growing at 20% per year. The overisight was opposed by congressional dems. At the time, Barney Frank said "These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing . . . I think it is clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sufficiently secure so they are in no great danger. . . I don't think we face a crisis; I don't think that we have an impending disaster. . . . Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do very good work, and they are not endangering the fiscal health of this country.
- seattleeng
November 7, 2012 at 12:52pm
and who controlled both houses of Congress and the White House in 2003? Good lord, to blame it on a minority member of the House is just ridiculous. So let me get this right, Bush and Republicans could pass a capital gains tax cut in 2003 but couldn't do this because....Barney Frank.
- blackton
November 7, 2012 at 1:01pm
A good article, but I think Noam ignores how much Romney needed to keep tacking to his right even coming out on top in the primaries. It wasn't until he picked Ryan that he finally stopped the right-wing attacks on his running a mealy-mouthed campaign. Any shift to the middle at that stage would have stirred fears about his backing off. Now, that being said, shape-shifting Mitt did move toward the middle in the final month. The timing was most definitely a deliberate and understandable decision on his part, as moving earlier would have alienated the base, or at least many pundits who in turn would have influenced the base. Bottom line: Romney was caught between a rock and a hard place. What a shame (not).
- Thunderroad
November 7, 2012 at 1:10pm
AllanL5 writes: "3.5 years of anemic growth is more than Bush-II was able to do with all his tax-cutting, deficit spending, and starting two wars" Bush averaged 66.2M people working over his 8 years, Obama has average 64.5M people working over his first 4 years. Today, there are 63.8M people working. Quite a difference. Obama will need to average 68or 69M people working over his next 4 years to match the environment Bush provided. That will not happen. The fact is, more had jobs under Bush than Obama. Middle class gains under Bush will have FAR outpaced what Obama will be able to do. He's already in a hole there. AllanL5 writs: "To characterize "anemic growth" as "total failure" is to ignore the situation when Obama was elected. It would also help, if the Republican House hadn't held the recovery hostage on three separate occasions, one of which removed 100 billion in stimulus spending." Obama picked the stimulus amount. Dems passed the stimulus amount. If they wanted more, they should have picked a higher number. Nobody would have stopped them. The fact is, they picked the number, they promised 5.5% unemployment based on that number. They aren't even close. The recovery is anemic because people aren't confident. People aren't confident because debt is so high. Debt is a PROMISE that future taxes will be increased. With certainty. Debt is what is holding the country hostage, not the republicans. For every $1T in debt, it is a PROMISE that taxes on a $60K earner will need to pay $3000 at some point in the future. We've had 4 years af 1.3T in debt. Bush's 2007 was under $200B. See the difference? The last 4 years of spending have GUARANTEED the taxes on a $60K earner will go up by $16K. And without a big change, that number keeps going up every year. And that is what is tanking things. That is why the stock market lost 2% today on Obama's re-election. AllanL5 writes: "Anyway, that seems to be what the electorate said yesterday. "Total failure" rejected. "More growth, even if anemic" supported." Yesterday the electorate rejected a vision in which hard work means rewards. They opted for a EU path, where the middle class looses ground over 20 years and in return they get free cell phones and aroma therapy, and live with their parents until the age of 31. No matter how bad you think it is the US right now, it's even worse in Europe. Much worse. That is our future. Learn it and love it. You voted for it. Sad.
- seattleeng
November 7, 2012 at 1:14pm
blackton writes: "and who controlled both houses of Congress and the White House in 2003? Good lord, to blame it on a minority member of the House is just ridiculous." It was not permitted to be brought for a vote. The republicans that tried were told they'd be hit hard for trying to close down minority mortgages, in spite of the fact that few, if any, minorities benefited from this feeding frenzy. The comments at the time: Melvin Watts : ...I have to go to another hearing, I will try to be just real quick... I am just pissed off at [the regulator] because if it wasn't for you I don't think that we would be here in the first place. ...we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you have given them an excuse to try to have this forum [to change the] mission of what the GSEs had, which they have done a tremendous job... There has been nothing that was indicated is wrong, you know, with Fannie Mae... The question that then presents is the competence that your agency has with reference to deciding and regulating these GSEs.. Artur Davis: I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing. Maxine Waters: These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing . . . I think it is clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sufficiently secure so they are in no great danger. . . I don't think we face a crisis; I don't think that we have an impending disaster. . . . Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do very good work, and they are not endangering the fiscal health of this country. Barney Frank: This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines [black CEO of Fannie] And thus, if you are a republican, certain that the GSEs are taking us down this horrid path, and the folks above are lining up to accuse you of racism if you try to reign in the GSEs...what do you do? Think about this: This most certainly wasn't an issue of race. Minorities got very little benefit from the GSEs. Most of the benefits went to to the wealthier segments of society. And yet, in spite of the data being crystal clear, this is turned into an issue that regulating the GSEs wil hurt minorities. Now, Artur Davis did say in 2008: Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong. But you can see why republicans dropped this like a hot potato.
- seattleeng
November 7, 2012 at 1:26pm
Did you actually type this?: "Yesterday the electorate rejected a vision in which hard work means rewards. They opted for a EU path, where the middle class looses ground over 20 years and in return they get free cell phones and aroma therapy, and live with their parents until the age of 31." Yeah, you did. You're a goddamn clown.
- bunthorne
November 7, 2012 at 1:28pm
The most prosperous countries in the world are very socialist nations: Norway, Denmark, Sweden. Many are EU. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/worlds-most-prosperous-county-2012_n_2049725.html Memo to G.C. (short for Goddam Clown) - guess what. These countries don't leave people to die from lack of health care. They also have more social mobility than the US, which isn't even in the top 10 due to Voodoo Economics and top down class warfare.
- Sophia
November 7, 2012 at 2:05pm
As for this bs about not being rewarded for hard work. How many of us older workers have been slammed repeatedly by bad bosses, recessions, insufficiently regulated industries, voodoo economics, in short, no matter how hard we work or how excellent we are at what we do, we are cyclically on our tuchas. We can't win for losing. We get up, we get knocked down. We get back up, we get knocked down. We have zero control over the Mitts of this world, let alone the Koch Brothers, let alone stupid managers who were born into the Boss Class. BUT we keep on truckin' nonetheless.
- Sophia
November 7, 2012 at 2:11pm
Sophia writes: "Memo to G.C. (short for Goddam Clown) - guess what. These countries don't leave people to die from lack of health care. They also have more social mobility than the US, which isn't even in the top 10 due to Voodoo Economics and top down class warfare." The US doesn't leave people to die, either. Our spending on the last 6 months of life outpaces the EU by 5X. That is a problem, but it underscores just how little you understand about the EU system. We spend WAAY too much trying to keep a dead person alive. That is what health care reform is all about. Mobility is great in the EU for native born, but it's horrid for immigrants. the US is very close to EU for native born, and much better for immigrants. There's a reason educated Chinese migrate to the US far more than the EU. Sophia writes: "As for this bs about not being rewarded for hard work. How many of us older workers have been slammed repeatedly by bad bosses, recessions, insufficiently regulated industries, voodoo economics, in short, no matter how hard we work or how excellent we are at what we do, we are cyclically on our tuchas." Welcome to working. It happens at every level. The concept of work being fun and fulfilling is new, dreamed up by 30-something west coast millionaires. If you ever looked at your dad or mom when he came home from work, chances are they were beat to shit and tired as hell. That is called a job. They are not fun. They are are usually tedious and boring, and your boss is a dick. But we do them so we can buy food and shelter. A huge portion of our younger population has never had a crappy job. Nor will they work at one. To them, in spite of accomplishing nothing to speak of, it is beneath them to work at a grocery store or restaurant. When I was a kid, we all couldn't wait to get a job, no matter how crappy. A boss that worked you hard was expected. A day of pulling weeds was just the way it was. Moving landscaping boulders was routine. Digging a trench for a sprinkler system wasn't even blinked at. We were young, we had no real skills, and thus we had to work hard to earn money. As I got older, a 12 hour shift cooking was great, because it meant I might get OT that week and it was inside where it wasn't as hot or cold. At the end of the day, I was tired as hell. I only knew my feet hurt when I finally sat down. I was covered in grease from grill splatter, and my wife had to wash my clothes twice with 2X detergent every night to remove the grease. My next job was a government job working for PhDs, sweeping out radiation logging trucks and whatever else the PhD's wanted me to do. Working on a truck and having a radiation alarm suddenly go off wasn't uncommon, and we'd run and wait for a PhD to show up and tell us it was safe. Pay was a bit worse than cooking, but it was slightly more technical. Slightly. When I got my degree and went to work at the big west coast engineering jobs, I couldn't believe how much I earned. Buckets of money. Like it was squirting from a firehose. For a job that was less physically demanding than anything I'd ever done before. Behold the power of earning a hard degree that few can earn. Today's kids? They all want a nice job straight away, or nothing. And those nice jobs cannot require any hard skills, like advanced maths. The local safeway manager told me kids work about 2 months on average before quitting. Some have asked at orientation how long they'd have to work until they could collect unemployment. Some have left a mop in the aisle and quite, claiming this wasn't what they thought it would be. Different times. Different times. But no matter how you want to slice it, I think the % of the population that is willing to work hard is lower than ever. And more than ever are looking to government to make their "off" time nicer. Washington state is paying fruit pickers about $17/hour for work in eastern washington. They are importing workers from Jamaica because they cannot find enough workers that will do it locally. In this economy. Imagine that. And yet the streets of downtown seattle are filled with homeless kids skateboarding and smoking legal pot. Each wondering "where is my stuff" while talking on free government cell phones. Different times indeed.
- seattleeng
November 7, 2012 at 2:50pm
seattleeng, as usual you make a few good points interspersed with poppycock. I'll just point out a couple: "Obama picked the stimulus amount. Dems passed the stimulus amount. If they wanted more, they should have picked a higher number. Nobody would have stopped them." "The recovery is anemic because people aren't confident. People aren't confident because debt is so high. Debt is a PROMISE that future taxes will be increased. With certainty. Debt is what is holding the country hostage, not the republicans." In fact, the original 750+ billion stimulus barely passed. To say "nobody would have stopped them" is preposterous. One side of the aisle would have none of it. How many times do you need the concept of aggregate demand explained? Others posting on this site have elaborated on it repeatedly. The stimulus was NOT anywhere near large enough for the catastrophe we faced. If you have not studied economics, then this will not register. By the way, the same concept nullifies your debt argument as well. You do make good points about the failure of either party (for political reasons) to deal with FMac and FMae, and the repealing of Glass-Steagall under Clinton. However, no matter how big a mistake that was, both parties signed off on it. Why is it that it historically has been the job of Progressives to clean up the fiscal messes brought upon by long periods of conservatism? I will leave it to the deep thinkers to answer that...
- sbmacdon@cox.net-old
November 7, 2012 at 4:35pm
Noam should read "Hםw Obama Won Ohio" Alec MacGillis printed in this issue. It will show him that the only chance Romney had for beating Obama would be to have adopted Obama's economic policies which is to say to have become a Democrat.
- arnon1
November 7, 2012 at 9:21pm
Axelrod is the champion of dirty campaigning. There are only losers. The reputation of our noble nation has been buried. Self-Goal! Thank you, Axelrod!
- sf4200
November 7, 2012 at 9:53pm
@sf4200, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Dirty campaigners... This from a Republican... Give me a second to wipe my eyes; I'm laughing so much it brought tears to my eyes. I just love it, how we Democrats can take the closest thing this country has seen in 140 years to a stolen election (2000, I'm talking about) with a shrug, and you Repugs react to an unambiguous rejection by the majority as if your loss is a logical impossibility explainable only the actions of a malevolent cabal.
- AaronW
November 8, 2012 at 12:00am
Come on sf4200. Your side lost. The side that invented "dirty campaigning" lost. The nation won. Live with it.
- arnon1
November 8, 2012 at 12:01am
Not sure the nation won, but the Dems certainly did. No sour grapes sf4200. You won't see a better example of a well run campaign. Both sides engaged in a bit of truth-stretching, always do. But the people spoke, and it worked as it should. Perhaps you should do some introspection to figure out how your side can convince the public the next time around.
- ds111
November 8, 2012 at 9:43am
After the 2008 election, I noted it was fair and the people had spoken. I also noted it was an awesome opportunity to ideology go to work. The balance here on TNR were excited about how awesome thing would be in 2 years thanks to their smart leadership. Fast foward 4 years, and the ideology had actually FURTHER damaged the economy. And yet, the blind were saying it wasn't their fault. It was worse than they thought. And by the grace of god they stopped it from getting worse. The silver lining in this election is that progressive politics will be finally laid bare for all to see. We have so many big ticket items coming due. There is growing certainty that taxes on the middle class will increase sharply. These items pushed til after the next election cannot be pushed any further. So, for new taxes: I say bring 'em on. I'm ready. Let's push through the tax increases needed to pay for the government we've asked for. When the $60K earner sees his taxes go up $4K, we'll see how he likes all the new services he's NOT getting.
- seattleeng
November 8, 2012 at 1:01pm