Obama's First Real GOP Opponent

Why has the Obama campaign been less than sure-footed in parrying GOP attacks on economic performance and other issues?  Byron York writes:

Here's a theory: Barack Obama has never in his life run against a sharp, determined and aggressive Republican opponent. Facing Mitt Romney, who is all three, is a new experience for the president.

Look at Obama's political career. He won his first election to the Illinois Senate in 1996 mainly by challenging signatures on his Democratic primary opponent's candidacy petitions and getting her kicked off the ballot.

Re-election was no problem in Obama's heavily Democratic district. The only race he would ever lose came in 2000, when he mounted a primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush for a seat in Congress. Republicans were not a factor.

When Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, both his Democratic primary opponent and Republican general election opponent imploded when their (ugly) divorce records were made public. Obama ran for a while with no opponent at all until GOP gadfly Alan Keyes moved to Illinois to offer weak opposition. Obama won in a landslide.

In 2008, Obama faced the race of his life against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries. He ran a good campaign but was also aided by some inexplicable Clinton mistakes in which she failed to exploit the system by which Democratic delegates were awarded.

When the general election came around, Obama faced a Republican opponent, John McCain, who had lost a step from his GOP primary run eight years earlier, whose campaign was riven by internal turmoil, and who simply was not determined to do what it took to win.

The Politics of Goebbels

The Nazi motif is back. Two years ago, Jerry Brown compared Meg Whitman to Joseph Goebbels.  His state's Democratic chair just the same with Republicans in general. The Los Angeles Times reports on his non-apology apology:

John Burton, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, has apologized for comparing Republicans to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, a comment that quickly sparked outcry from the GOP.

“If Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, or the Republicans are insulted by my describing their campaign tactic as the big lie -- I most humbly apologize to them or anyone who might have been offended by that comment,” John Burton said in a statement.

Burton, who let loose against Republicans in an interview with KCBS and the San Francisco Chronicle, expressed his contempt for the party’s recent rhetoric Monday morning.

“They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie. As long as you lie, Joseph Goebbels, the big lie, you keep repeating it, you know,” he said.

Burton made a point of noting that he never used the word “Nazi”; however, he did invoke the Nazi minister of propaganda twice.

“That was Goebbels, a big lie, they said they don’t care about facts,” he said. “They’re going to lie so, I mean, that’s not pejorative to them. They probably wear it as a compliment.”

Better Off?

The Hill reports:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Monday said the country was “clearly” better off than four years ago, walking back remarks he made this weekend.

“We are clearly better off as a country, because we are now creating jobs rather than losing jobs,” said O’Malley on CNN’s “Starting Point.” “We have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession,” he added.

O’Malley’s comments came after Republicans seized on a remark he made on Sunday saying that voters were not better off.

O’Malley was asked by CBS host Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” if he could “honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago.”
“No,” replied O’Malley, a prominent Obama surrogate, “but that’s not the question of this election.

“Without a doubt, we are not as well-off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses," O'Malley had added.

At The New Republic, Timothy Noah writes that most people are worse off:

Median household income losses between June 2009 and June 2012 occurred for nearly every conceivable demographic group. Family households lost 4.7 percent. Nonfamily households (i.e., people who live alone) lost 7.5 percent. Men who live alone did very badly; they lost 9.4 percent. Households headed by African-Americans did even worse; they lost 11.1 percent. Married-couple households weathered the, um, recovery better than others, but still lost 3.6 percent. Weirdly, two-earner households lost more income (5.9 percent) than one-earner households (4 percent), perhaps because they started out with more income to lose. Households headed by full-time workers lost 5.1 percent. Households headed by private-sector workers lost 4.5 percent, while households headed by government workers lost 3.5 percent.

Bounceless

Gallup reports:

Last week's Republican National Convention had a minimal impact on Americans' self-reported voting intentions, with just about as many saying the convention made them less likely to vote for Mitt Romney as say it made them more likely to vote for him.

These results, based on Gallup Daily tracking conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 1, showed predictable partisan differences. Republicans overwhelmingly said the convention made them more likely to vote for Romney, although most would likely be voting for their nominee anyway. Democrats as predictably said the convention made them less likely to vote for Romney. Independents, a key group in any presidential election, were essentially split, with 36% saying the convention made them more likely to vote for Romney and 33% less likely -- although 30% said they don't know or that the convention made no difference.

...

Romney's acceptance speech this year scored low by comparison to previous convention speeches going back to 1996. Thirty-eight percent of Americans rated the speech as excellent or good, while 16% rated it as poor or terrible. The 38% who rated the speech as excellent or good is the lowest rating of any of the eight speeches Gallup has tested since Bob Dole's GOP acceptance speech in 1996.

The Week reports:

The 2012 Republican convention, which wrapped up with Mitt Romney's acceptance speech on Thursday, had millions fewer TV viewers than the last one. Viewership was down by a whopping 41 percenton night two of the Tampa convention compared to the same night in 2008, though opening night this year did better, narrowly topping the audience of the corresponding night four years ago. But all of the networks got hammered in the ratings on Thursday — the convention's third and final night — with roughly one-third fewer viewers than they had four years ago.

Obama and Romney: Voter Contact

Previous posts have discussed the president's potential advantage in the ground game. (Karl Rove, however, notes that the Democratic edge failed to materialize in Wisconsin.) At The Washington Post, Aaron Blake writes:

Democrats are winning at least one key aspect of the 2012 campaign: voter contact.

Some Republicans are starting to fret a little bit about their ground game and a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that fear is at least somewhat justified.

According to the poll, 20 percent of registered voters say they have been contacted by the Obama campaign, compared to 13 percent who say they have been contacted by Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Obama Stiff-Arms Congressional Democrats

James Madison still rules and the separation of powers still shapes elections. In 1984, Reagan won a lonely landslide, stiffing the congressional GOP in a quest for a 50-state victory. In 1992, congressional Republicans ran away from Bush.  In 1996, Clinton made deals with Republicans that took away key issues from his party on Capitol Hill.

In 2010, Democratic House candidates won just less than 45% of the popular vote, so President Obama is not eager to hitch his prospects to them. Democrats think he is ignoring them. A June post highlighted a quotation from a Democratic congressional aide: “He’s done nothing for us so we don’t have to do anything for him.”  Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Allen write at Politico:

These days, Obama’s messaging is strikingly in tune with that of down-ballot Democrats. Yet there’s a nagging sense among some headed to Charlotte that Obama is an enthusiastic Democrat who remains oddly unenthusiastic about other Democrats.

“I’ve been on Air Force One twice — with George W. Bush,” said one Democratic lawmaker, representing the sentiment of a half-dozen prominent Democrats interviewed by POLITICO.

Few core Democratic constituencies have been spared the occasional collision with an Obama team many outside Democrats view as insular: congressional liberals and Blue Dogs alike, black candidates for statewide office, organized labor, environmentalists, gays and lesbians, state party organizers and even his handpicked chief of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has clashed behind the scenes with Obama’s team.

Chris Kofinis, a onetime adviser to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — one of the red-purple state Democrats shunning Charlotte — compares the party under Obama to “my big Greek family … sometimes you’re close, sometimes you’re not. You’re still a family. … But as my mom often reminds me, ‘You know, it would be nice if you visited and called more.’”

Laura Meckler writes at The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama campaign is primarily focused on winning the 270 electoral votes needed to gain a second term. The president does almost no fundraising for Senate or House candidates and hasn't transferred money to other party election committees. His numerous campaign offices rarely coordinate with local candidates or display signs for anyone but Mr. Obama.

At rallies, Mr. Obama seldom urges supporters to volunteer—or even vote—for other Democrats running for office. Sometimes, he mentions other politicians in the room without noting that they are seeking re-election. He rarely shares the stage with other candidates.
...

Mr. Obama has good reason to distance himself from Congress. Only 12% of voters said they approved of its job performance in an August Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, with 82% disapproving. Both those marks tied records for the poll, which has asked voter opinions of Congress since 1994.

The president's stance appears to suit some Democratic candidates just fine, particularly those in conservative states. Heidi Heitkamp, running for the Senate from North Dakota, has been openly critical of Mr. Obama and his policies. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana is among those skipping the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Roger Hickey, co-director of the liberal advocacy group Campaign for America's Future, sees risks in the president's approach. He says it will be all but impossible for Mr. Obama to accomplish his goals in a second term if he doesn't have a Democratic Congress.

"He has a rap he uses all the time on the campaign trail about this being the election that will break the stalemate in Washington. But when you look at it, it sounds like he's just talking about getting him re-elected," Mr. Hickey said. The better course, he said, would be for Mr. Obama to tell voters: "Send me a Congress that can do the big things that need to be done."

The Partisan Shoreline

At The New Republic, William Galston looks at Gallup and Pew data.  Although he has noted differences between the current election and the one that gave Bush a second term, he does see a "partisan shoreline" that looks more like 2004 than 2008.

Not that much has changed for Republicans since then. Today, their favorable rating stands at 44 percent, and unfavorable at 50. The big shift has come for Democrats, whose edge over Republicans has completely disappeared. Only 43 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of the Democratic Party (down 13 points), while 52 percent have an unfavorable view (up 13 points). The erosion has been especially severe among men (15 points), whites (17 points), voters 35 to 54 years old (17 points), and Independents (12 points). Only nonwhite voters are more favorably inclined toward the Democratic Party than they were four years ago. And while a successful convention can provide a boost, history suggests that any such improvement in public perceptions of a political party is likely to disappear by Election Day.

On August 23, the Pew Research Center released a report entitled “A Closer Look at the Parties in 2012”, backed by more than 20 pages of detailed tables. Pew’s findings are consistent with Gallup’s. In 2008, Democrats plus Independents who lean Democratic constituted fully 51 percent of registered voters, versus only 39 percent for Republicans plus Independents who lean their way. But now, the 12-point Democratic edge of four years ago has shrunk to only 5 points, 48 to 43, statistically indistinguishable from the split in 2004. Among whites, the Republican edge has expanded from 2 points to 12; among white men, from 11 points to 22. While Democrats have lost ground in every age cohort, they still maintain an edge of 19 points among Millennials, down from 32 points in 2008.

Drilling down more deeply, Pew finds finer-grained trends. Republicans have made only modest gains among college-educated men, and none at all among college-educated women. But among men with less than a BA, Republicans have turned a 6-point deficit into a 3-point edge; among less educated women, the Democratic advantage has been pared from 20 points to 8. Relative to 2008, Republicans have made no gains among registered voters with household incomes of $75,000 or more, but they are doing much better among those making less than that. And all of these changes are more pronounced among white voters.

As Galston pointed out in November, the Republicans might have thrown away a potential victory by nominating an incompetent candidate.  But in spite of his many faults as a candidate, Romney easily clears the competence threshold.