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Go Home 'Scourge Of Privileged Class' Rises In Polls

THE STUMP NOVEMBER 2, 2011

'Scourge Of Privileged Class' Rises In Polls

BY ALEC MACGILLIS

Remember this? A wise man wrote it not so long ago at all:

So Obama faced a choice. Double down on conciliator mode or become a fighter. Think of the latter as the Bibi Netanyahu strategy: since I have no negotiating partner I’m going to come out swinging in a way that pleases my base.

If Obama were a Republican, he could win with this sort of strategy: Repeat your party’s most orthodox positions and then rip your opponent to shreds. Republicans can win a contest between an orthodox Republican and an orthodox Democrat because they have the trust in government issue on their side.

Democrats do not have that luxury. The party of government cannot win an orthodox vs. orthodox campaign when 15 percent of Americans trust government. It certainly can’t do it presiding over 9 percent unemployment. It’s suicide.

Yet this is the course the Obama campaign has chosen. He’s campaigning these days as the populist fighter, the scourge of the privileged class.

Obama, who sounded so fresh in 2008, now sometimes sounds a bit like Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. Obama, who inspired the country, now threatens to run a campaign that is viciously negative. Obama, who is still widely admired because he is reasonable and calm, is in danger of squandering his best asset by pretending to be someone he is not. Obama, a natural unifier and conciliator, seems on the verge of running as a divisive populist while accusing Mitt Romney, his possible opponent, of being inauthentic.

It’s misguided. It raises the ideological temperature and arouses the Big Government/Small Government debate. It repels independents, who don’t like the finance majors who went to Wall Street but trust the history majors who went to Washington even less.

Nine days later, we get this, from the folks at Quinnipiac. Apparently independents are not so easily repelled after all:

President Barack Obama's job approval rating is up, from a negative 41 - 55 percent October 5, to a split today with 47 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving in a Quinnipiac University poll released today. The president has leads of 5 to 16 percentage points over likely Republican challengers. Voters also are divided 47 - 49 percent on whether Obama deserves reelection, compared to last month, when voters said 54 - 42 percent he did not deserve reelection.

.........

"President Barack Obama seems to be improving in voters' eyes almost across-the-board," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "He scores big gains among the groups with whom he has had the most problems - whites and men. Women also shift from a five-point negative to a four-point positive."
 

This should not necessarily be that big a surprise. In fact, several writers on this site predicted this very movement in recent weeks: independent voters, they said, will probably prefer an Obama who is appearing resolute, even if the program he is pushing borders on "divisive populism." As Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann put it just a few days ago, in a rebuttal to the above wise man:

...True Independents and swing voters aren’t best captured through clever centrist political positioning. They have almost no ideological frameworks with which to judge the candidates and parties; they are quintessentially referendum voters, with low levels of information and focusing almost exclusively on performance...Maneuvering tirelessly to stake out some elusive political center, in other words, won’t help Obama win over swing voters. It’ll just set him up for another year of looking weak and ineffectual.

It's not often that rebukes to misguided punditry come as quickly as this one has.

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18 comments

Oh, this is David Brooks, holding forth on what Obama should do. And in the process, "blaming the victim". "Viciously negative"? He's been rolled by the Republican minority repeatedly -- is it "viciously negative" to say this is what's been happening? I'm reminded of another statement that the Democrats in the Super Committee are being vicious by offering compromises. Seems to me all Obama is doing is offering better policies for America than the Republicans -- how vicious, how negative, how awful -- while the Republicans stand in lock-step opposition to anything that would raise taxes in any way. Frankly, I'm glad that Obama is standing firm -- which is NOT "viciously negative" -- and that this is having a positive effect on the polls. It's about time.

- AllanL5

November 2, 2011 at 11:34am

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The President could have been out there from the get go informing the public about the need to raise tax rates and that it wouldn't damage the economy and talking about the need for more stimulus spending and and he would still have gotten the treasured independent vote? I guess there's no crying over spilt milk. Wahhhhhhh!!!

- Nusholtz

November 2, 2011 at 12:34pm

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Brooks is absolutely dead on. You just have to remember that every bit of "advice" he gives to the Democrats is the exact opposite of what they should do, as he is an enemy. He wears classier rhetorical attire than the foaming at the mouth right, but he is one of them none the less. Now, if he started to give genuinely helpful advice to Democrats and Obama on the theory that everyone would understand the opposite -- the old reverse psychology -- that might flummox us.

- roidubouloi

November 2, 2011 at 12:41pm

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This is heartening, although the poll could be a blip as there was a larger sample of Democrats in it than in previous Quinnipiac polls. Still, this demostrates that at least part of Obama's recent drop in polls was dissatisfaction by Democrats with his attempts to compromise with Republicans, and it looks like the more combative tone is starting to address that deficiency. I would assume that further gridlock and further flogging of Congressional Republicans (plus the additional media attention lavished at the Republican Presidential primaries) will get just about all Democrats back on Obama's side in the next 6 months. http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/obama-gets-a-bump-in-new-quinnipiac-poll-20111102

- wildboy

November 2, 2011 at 12:43pm

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I wonder how much these numbers are influenced by the idiot parade that is the Republican presidential field? It's like Star Wars bar scene without the charm.

- WandreyCer

November 2, 2011 at 12:44pm

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Clever centrist political positioning is almost always doomed to failure among independents. I've seen this while canvassing for a couple of Dem centrists in conservative Illinois districts. In 2004 the idea that John Kerry had earned the right to oppose the war in Vietnam by serving there really pissed a lot of people off - "he went to kill people for something he didn't believe in?" was a pretty common reaction. The people who were saying things like this were exactly the people who were supposed to be impressed by his military record. It failed miserably. I saw the same thing while canvassing for a congressional candidate who served in Iraq and returned to oppose our policies there.

- Attrill

November 2, 2011 at 12:50pm

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Here's my take on pundits like Brooks, most everybody who writes for the WP, and, to an increasing extent, Friedman. In America, unlike, say, Russia, one can choose sides without having to sell one's soul to the devil. Defending plutocrats in Russia, for example, is morally indefensible, whereas defending plutocrats in America (the job creators) is not only moral but American. If one is to choose sides, clearly the right side makes more economic sense; I mean, does the left have an organization that pays anything comparable to what AEI pays Brooks to speak at their little get togethers. The problem arises when the plutocrats become morally indefensible in their conduct, which spills over to their defenders in the punditry, who then must perform gymnastics to defend not just the plutocrats but themselves for defending the plutocrats. At that point, reason has to be abandoned. And we get essays like this one from Brooks, which isn't so much advice for Obama, but a defense for Brooks for defending the plutocrats who have become morally indefensible.

- rayward

November 2, 2011 at 1:18pm

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Coincidence is not causality. Obama's rising not so much because of the phraseology in his recent speeches, which aren't so different from previous, as from the increasing awareness in the public of the vacuity of Republican tactics and policy prescriptions. The Repub debates have probably done more to boost O's ratings than anything he's said or done, with the possible exception of his comment about them on Leno. Let's keep our eyes on the prize. O wins not by exciting leftists, but by presenting himself as the most pragmatic option. Given he's already POTUS, this is do-able if he can plug his ears to the Siren calls of the Vanguard of the Proletariat.

- Robert Powell

November 2, 2011 at 1:57pm

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RP calls it.

- WandreyCer

November 2, 2011 at 2:00pm

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"Scourge Of Privileged Class"? Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

- amidut

November 2, 2011 at 2:09pm

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I don't quite understand your point about John Kerry, Atrill -- or maybe it's the response you describe that confuses me. If I recall, the narrative was that Kerry's experience -- mirroring that of many other Americans -- was one of believing in a cause initially, when he went to Vietnam, but of having his eyes opened there to the flawed strategy and vanishing moral justification of the war. To that extent, either you're mischaracterizing the response in some way, or I'm being dense as I don't see the statement about Kerry earning the right to be opposed as the logical precedent of an assumption that he went out to kill people for something he didn't believe in.

- ironyroad

November 2, 2011 at 2:12pm

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What an idiot --- skewed distribution, skewed results. Earth to moonbats --- there are not 60% more Dems voters than Republican voters as the survey suggests. They selected a skewed population sample -- they can't be this incompetent can they? Generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or what? PARTY IDENTIFICATION Tot Republican 22% Democrat 35 Independent 36 Other 6 DK/NA 2 (If Independent) Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican party or the Democratic party? COMBINES PARTY ID & INDEPENDENTS LEANING TOWARD A PARTY Tot Republican/Republican leaner 35% Democrat/Democrat leaner 48 Independent/Not leaning 9 Other 6 DK/NA 2

- mr_rationale

November 2, 2011 at 2:13pm

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rationale - I gave up reading your knee-jerk nonsense long ago, but if you hope to be taken seriously, respected or are actually posting in good faith (dubious), your attitude needs to change. Hint: earth to moonbats doesn't say a single thing about the people you're speaking to and everything about you.

- WandreyCer

November 2, 2011 at 2:18pm

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I would amend RP's phrase to say that O wins by crafting a message that appeals to "leftists" and mainstream Dems and independents. All of those people, and a majority of Repub voters (who won't vote for O under any circumstances) think we need to raise taxes on the rich and preserve the safety net. OWS, a bunch of dirty hippies and people too cool to like Zooey Deschanel or Death Cab, which one would think would be too far left for America, has showed surprising staying power and hasn't scared off Nixon's "silent majority." In fact, it is a majority. And everyone likes a winner, or, while the game is still on, a fighter. "I'm a warrior for the middle class." Give 'em hell, Barry.

- GeoffG

November 2, 2011 at 2:21pm

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Irony - Sorry if I was unclear. My understanding of Kerry's narrative was the same as yours, but I saw many people reacting to it differently while canvasing. The narrative we were given while canvassing depicted Kerry as having seen both sides of Vietnam, and could be summed up as "he ultimately opposed it - but he sure as hell wasn't a hippy". It left many independents I talked with confused and unsure of what he stood for. All the people I spoke with were Independents (at least according to Aristotle). I saw much of the same response to Tammy Duckworth in 2006. I think the same thing frequently happens when candidates try to walk a middle line on a divisive issue (i.e. Iraq in 2004 and the economy in 2012). When an issue is divisive people want to know where a candidate stands, and any sort of nuanced understanding either makes them distrust the candidate or creates a cognitive dissonance in them that pisses them off. I certainly don't think that's the way people should respond, but unfortunately I think many people do react that way.

- Attrill

November 2, 2011 at 3:57pm

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You're the idiot, Rat. Your fuss about distribution has no bearing on this article, which is about the trend of independents favoring Obama more. It's a valid point regarding the distribution, except if the sampling of over 2000 respondents was truly random. In that case it actually means the country is trending Democrat and Democrat-leaning, and bolsters the notion that Obama's populist rhetoric is working quite well to spin the dialogue his way.

- GSpinks

November 2, 2011 at 4:17pm

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Brooks' generalization that independents prefer bipartisanship to bellicosity is being mugged by the reality that the Republicans are running on the most unpopular platform imaginable: That taxes on the rich should not be raised when they are doing better than everyone else and they are being taxed at historically low rates. That the government should do essentially nothing to try to create jobs during the worst recession since the Great Depression. And that banks and brokerages should face no serious scrutiny in the wake of the worst financial crisis since 1929. Even the most bipartisan independents (and quite a few rational Republicans) are willing to put aside their generic preference for the Democrats to compromise when the Republicans are offering such a raw deal to the American people.

- NateG

November 2, 2011 at 6:51pm

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Atrill -- thanks, yes, that makes it clearer. I have also seen the kind of response you mention, and it's definitely frustrating to think that people can't -- or won't -- grasp a relatively simple narrative of experience leading to a change of mind. In fact, I tend to believe it's often a case of "won't." People had an inner bias against Kerry so projected a non-existent indecisiveness onto him rather than admit they understood.

- ironyroad

November 3, 2011 at 2:03pm

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