In a popularity contest, the most popular person tends to win, and to the extent that politics is a popularity contest, the Obama administration should be worried.
There is a growing popular backlash in this country, one that is neither expressly centrist nor liberal and composed of a diverse set of people. Though they differ on the best ways to fix our problems, all of them are angry at, and alienated by, a government that seems to lack ideas, ambition, and drive to reform a broken system.
The people who really hate Obama aren’t populists, because populists are currently in the majority and populists didn’t hate Obama to begin with. No one voted for Obama only to, post-election, deem him a dangerous, radical Nazi-communist who would take away his guns and freedoms. Such people voted against Obama to begin with, and they lost—badly. The people you saw at summer town hall rallies, and still see teabagging, are a fairly marginalized minority. They may claim to be “average Americans,” but they are not. The are a radical fringe that harbors an overly narrow, dangerously simplistic definition of what it means to be “American.”
Most Americans voted for Obama largely because they disapproved of the Bush Administration. The real intransigents on the right, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white, mostly rural, and mostly southern. They are, literally, a dying breed. The average age of a Bill O’Reilly viewer is 71, and the average FOX viewer 65. It’s worth asking if FOX News is so highly rated because many, if not most, of its viewers are retired. The “teabaggers” can afford to go out and rally because they are also largely retired. Though this demographic must be factored into the political equation in the short run, with every passing election cycle more of it, callous though this may sound, dies off. It is a scared group, one that doesn’t know who to blame for its frantic anger. But these teabaggers are dying, and they are bound to diminish in political importance. On the other side of the demographic picture, 66% of people under the age of 29 voted for Obama. It would be suicide to run a national ticket on “traditional small town, small government values” today, let alone in fifteen years.
According to a variety of the most popular polls, populists—real populists—are independents and party members who vote across party lines. Independents, at this point in time, constitute approximately thirty percent of the American electorate. Most are religious and believe in fairness, hard work, and giving to the needy. They favor gun rights, although not fanatically, and are not inhospitable to current tax rates. Independents also support most government institutions—including Medicare, Social Security, the military, and public education. Most wanted a government-run health insurance option, and similarly favor a government that helps to create jobs.
But most don’t have any particular die-hard values—they’re susceptible to appeals to their self-interest, and they vote for candidates who they believe will improve their quality of life. Independents voted for Obama en masse because they thought he was smart, reasonable, calm, and would end the Republican-instigated economic nosedive. Now, however, Independents are turning against Obama. Why?
There are arguably three reasons for this shift. First, Obama isn’t doing a great job. Second, he seems a bit like the last guy. And third, he seems more loyal to “Wall Street” than to “Main Street.”
That’s right! Main Street. Obama goes to Akron, Ohio and Terre Haute, Indiana, and he talks to “regular folk.” They tell him: “Mr. President, we’re hurting, unemployment is over 10% and Wall Street got a big chunk of our money. Why is Wall Street being bailed out and why are we getting nothing?”
And Obama has unconvincing answers, especially given that he’s kept Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner on as top economic advisors. Independents are beginning to think that Obama is either sleazy or incompetent, while Progressives are angry because he hasn’t done anything progressive—in short, Obama hasn’t made any systematic changes. The Republicans have already turned their backs on their former laissez-faire economic policies through TARP, and the only thing Obama has done that they might not have is the “stimulus thing.” Many people can’t see how deficit spending might be necessary. Not enough of the money spent by the Obama administration has gone to train people or build schools, roads, dams, etc. The irony may be that Obama chose not to launch “direct” government projects out of the fear that the people would consider his agenda “socialist.”
And this has electoral significance. How did Scott Brown win in my home state, the progressive state of Massachusetts? A bunch of independents voted for him. Why?
Well, mostly because Martha Coakley is a jerk. She didn’t run a campaign until the last week of the election, imagining that it would cost too much money that she could have used after she won. Coakley demonstrated utter disdain for her electorate, at one point saying she didn’t need to shake peoples’ hands outside of Fenway because it was cold and she knew the Deputy Director of Education. As District Attorney, she voted not to parole the most likely wrongly convicted individuals caught up in the “satanic daycare abuse” witch hunt in the 80’s—they’re still languishing in jail thanks to her. She’s morally suspect, and “regular folks” identified that in the election.
Scott Brown, on the other hand, ran essentially as a pro-choice, moderate Republican—an Independent, for all intents and purposes—to people who already have a state government-run healthcare system they like, one previously supported by Brown. People don’t like Obama’s current healthcare plan because it is seems tainted by sleazy backroom deals, and appears convoluted, creepy, and incoherent. Simply put, Massachusetts voted for Scott Brown because he was “the other guy.”
Obama should know the following: he is not invincible, and must use government in a way that convinces the people of its utility. People still like Obama, and he would still crush most Republicans in a televised debate. After all, an angry electorate would yet recognize a cookie cutter, socially regressive, pro-Wall Street Republican as a Bush clone. People want results. But a smart, reasonable-seeming moderate Republican could easily defeat Obama unless the unemployment rate seriously drops and Wall Street is seriously regulated. Someone like Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Illinois, might be able to pull off such a defeat.
Washington Democrats need to identify the degree to which they’re misstepping by ignoring independent and progressive populism. After Scott Brown’s success, Republicans will find a way to get a moderate on their ticket. Unless things change, they may defeat Obama. And if he loses, he will go down in history as one of the most pathetic incompetents in American history: a fake “conciliator” with no agenda other than to maintain the status quo. In twenty, thirty years, when all the teabaggers are dead, and this country is primarily liberal and independent, we will look back at the Obama Administration as the last heyday of the American
conservative movement.
