Brooks v. Lind: Is Obama's approval-ratings problem that he's too far left, or not left enough?

[BrainGlutton]

David Brooks:

Obama’s challenge was to push his agenda through a Democratic-controlled government while retaining the affection of the 39 percent of Americans in the middle.

The administration hasn’t been able to pull it off. From the stimulus to health care, it has joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress. The White House has failed to veto measures, like the pork-laden omnibus spending bill, that would have demonstrated independence and fiscal restraint. By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington.

<snip>

The public has soured on Obama’s policy proposals. Voters often have only a fuzzy sense of what each individual proposal actually does, but more and more have a growing conviction that if the president is proposing it, it must involve big spending, big government and a fundamental departure from the traditional American approach.

Driven by this general anxiety, and by specific concerns, public opposition to health care reform is now steady and stable. Independents once solidly supported reform. Now they have swung against it. As the veteran pollster Bill McInturff has pointed out, public attitudes toward Obamacare exactly match public attitudes toward Clintoncare when that reform effort collapsed in 1994.

<snip>

This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn’t proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him.

The president’s challenge now is to halt the slide. That doesn’t mean giving up his goals. It means he has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.

Events have pushed Barack Obama off to the left. Time to rebalance.

Michael Lind:

The most dangerous deficit that the United States faces is not the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It is the Democrats’ demagogy deficit. Franklin Roosevelt, looking down from that Hyde Park in the sky, would not be surprised that conservatives are seeking to channel populist anger and anxiety, not against the Wall Street elites who wrecked the economy, but against reformers promoting healthcare reform and economic security for ordinary people. As he told his audience in 1936, “It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.” But FDR would be shocked by the inability of his party to mobilize the public on behalf of reform.

<snip>

The two arguments on which the administration has rested the case for healthcare are calculated to appeal to elites, not the general public. One argument holds that it is immoral to allow a substantial minority of Americans, who are disproportionately poor, to lack health insurance. This argument appeals to progressive Democrats in the academic and nonprofit communities for whom politics is a form of charity. The other argument is that healthcare cost inflation will wreck the economy in the future, unless it is brought under control. This argument appeals to the Wall Street donor wing of the party, symbolized by Robert Rubin, whose protégés, including Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag, surround Obama in the White House.

But if you are trying to mobilize public support for a sweeping healthcare overhaul, appealing to charity or the concerns of bondholders is not the way to go about it. “Vote your interests!” Harry Truman told Americans in 1948. Most Americans have employer-provided healthcare. They are worried about keeping it if they lose their jobs and about the rising cost of deductibles. Democrats should have sold healthcare reform as establishing a permanent, universal right to affordable healthcare.

You also can’t fight and win a war without naming your enemies. In the case of healthcare, the enemies of the American people – if I may be demagogic as well as accurate – include rent-seeking insurance companies, rent-seeking pharma companies, and overcompensated doctors and hospitals.

Last but not least, you need a narrative in which today’s campaign is not an isolated technocratic attempt to solve a particular public policy problem, but part of the ongoing story of progressive reform in America. In his 1964 Democratic convention speech, Lyndon Johnson invoked American history in laying out the vision of the Great Society: “The Founding Fathers dreamed America before it was. The pioneers dreamed of great cities on the wilderness that they crossed.” It’s hard to make that appeal if you agree with elements of the academic left that the Founders were self-seeking crooks, that the pioneers were genocidal monsters and that great cities on the wilderness are ecological disasters. The consensus liberals of the mid-20th century and the multicultural liberals of the late 20th century have been too busy exaggerating the anti-Semitism of 19th-century populists or emphasizing the racist attitudes of the 19th-century labor movement to invoke the ideals those precursors share with post-racist 21st-century liberals. But we can be inspired by the universal ideals that we share with our predecessors without endorsing or excusing their parochial prejudices.

<snip>

If Barack Obama can speak in accents like these, then he will be able to declare, like Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, “I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”

For my part, I think Lind has the right of it. It’s amazing how many conservatives, and even self-ID’d “moderates,” are still so oblivious to (or in denial of) how far leftward the political center-of-gravity in America has moved and is moving – not because of any swing of a metaphorical pendulum, but because of enduring cultural, demographic and generational changes. I don’t think even Lind fully appreciates it. At this point, Obama is probably rather to the right of the center. This is the moment in American history, the first such moment in a long time, when a progressive **left-**populism could really fly.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

This is the moment in American history, the first such moment in a long time, when a progressive **left-**populism could really fly.

I’m here defining “progressive” as a position well to the left of “liberal” and well to the right of “socialist.” See this thread.

[Richard_Parker]

This isn’t a philosophical question to be settled by analytical debate. It is an empirical question to be answered by quantitative analysis. Doesn’t the polling basically indicate that Obama has lost a lot of conservative crossovers and that’s about it? I
believe that simultaneously conservatives continue to flee the republican party to become independents, making the independent numbers trend conservative a bit as well.

I’ll try to link the numbers when I get to a pc.

[flickster]

@Richard_Parker

Doesn’t the polling basically indicate that Obama has lost a lot of conservative crossovers and that’s about it?

I would wager it ranks more of a concern than “that’s about it” - this is the very group that’s responsible for him sitting in the WH.

[Richard_Parker]

@flickster

I would wager it ranks more of a concern than “that’s about it” - this is the very group that’s responsible for him sitting in the WH.

In an electoral college system, it’s pretty much impossible to game out results if the national numbers were different. That said, I see no evidence of your claim being true. Obama won by a healthy margin and did not especially rely on conservatives (not much more than Kerry or gore, actually, and in many state less).

[BrainGlutton]

@Richard_Parker

I believe that simultaneously conservatives continue to flee the republican party to become independents . . .

Why would they? The Frum/Limbaugh flap this year made clear that the movement-conservatives’ hold on the GOP is in no danger of being broken.

[Triskadecamus]

The President is coming down from a high, when just not being quite as obvious a douche bag as our previous president was such a welcome relief, to the mundane hard facts of actually trying to lead a nation of disparate, self centered, stingy, greedy, credulous, skeptical, ill informed, and self seeking, and politically entrenched people as America is.

Nothing but the usual.

Tris

[Richard_Parker]

@BrainGlutton

Why would they? The Frum/Limbaugh flap this year made clear that the movement-conservatives’ hold on the GOP is in no danger of being broken.

Job approval among Dems is basically constant: Pollster

Job approval among Reps and Independents has basically steadily deteriorated since his election, with no acceleration at any particular juncture: Pollster, Pollster

To me, this suggests pretty clearly that it ain’t the Left that is disapproving, it is the Right. But interestingly, during the summer months, the GOP experienced a loss of a few percentage points in Party ID - not insignificant for a party with only 25% national ID. So while Obama’s popularity was dropping most steadily, GOP ID was also temporarily dropping.

How do you explain that? It seems to me the most plausible explanation is that negative attacks generally have that effect. If you lie about health care, you’ll drive down Obama’s numbers and you’ll also drive some people away from your party.

[BrainGlutton]

@Richard_Parker

To me, this suggests pretty clearly that it ain’t the Left that is disapproving, it is the Right. But interestingly, during the summer months, the GOP experienced a loss of a few percentage points in Party ID - not insignificant for a party with only 25% national ID. So while Obama’s popularity was dropping most steadily, GOP ID was also temporarily dropping.

How do you explain that? It seems to me the most plausible explanation is that negative attacks generally have that effect. If you lie about health care, you’ll drive down Obama’s numbers and you’ll also drive some people away from your party.

But it does not suggest conservatives are the ones leaving. Perhaps it’s the GOP’s remaining liberals and moderates who have been jumping ship.

[elucidator]

Both of them? Oh, my!

[Alessan]

Tell me - how many victories can the Obama Administration take credit for?

Becaseu that’s what it’s all about. The American center doesn’t care about right or left, it cares about winners or losers, and rightly or wrongly, the Obama administration is perceived as falling in column B.

What idealists never realize is that moderates don’t really care about ideology, they care about competance. If the President is seen as someone who sets an agenda and follows it through, they’ll back him; otherwise, they’ll bail.

Obama needs to pass healthcare reform. Not because people want the reform, but becasue he said he’ll pass it, and if he can’t do what he says, what is he good for?

[SentientMeat]

It’s worth noting that, as industrialised democracies go, Obama is still a right wing conservative. I’m not sure any industrialised democracy other than the US woudl label him ‘centrist’, let alone ‘leftist’.

[Quartz]

Obama needs to quit worrying so much about public opinion and lead. Start doing things and let the public see their choice vindicated. Equally, he’s only been in office 7 months, during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, so it’s too early to expect results. I don’t expect actual results from his policies for another 2 years.

[gonzomax]

@Richard_Parker

Job approval among Dems is basically constant: Pollster

Job approval among Reps and Independents has basically steadily deteriorated since his election, with no acceleration at any particular juncture: Pollster, Pollster

To me, this suggests pretty clearly that it ain’t the Left that is disapproving, it is the Right. But interestingly, during the summer months, the GOP experienced a loss of a few percentage points in Party ID - not insignificant for a party with only 25% national ID. So while Obama’s popularity was dropping most steadily, GOP ID was also temporarily dropping.

How do you explain that? It seems to me the most plausible explanation is that negative attacks generally have that effect. If you lie about health care, you’ll drive down Obama’s numbers and you’ll also drive some people away from your party.

It is the framing of the questions asked. One poll asked if you thought it was OK for people to confront the pols at political events. They determined that a yes answer meant you were against health care reform.
They ask a question in a way to get the answer they want. The majority of Americans want a public option.

[Captain_Amazing]

@gonzomax

The majority of Americans want a public option.

And you know that from polling data?

[MovieMogul]

@Captain_Amazing

And you know that from polling data?

Cite (pdf):

Now thinking specifically about the health insurance plans available to most Americans, would you favor or oppose creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies?

Favor - 55%
Oppose - 41%
No opinion - 4%

Dated the last 3 days in August 2009.

This cite (pdf) from just a few days earlier has the number even higher.

[Captain_Amazing]

You miss my point. If polls are inherently inaccurate because pollsters “ask a question in a way to get the answer they want.”, then you can’t use polling data to say what people want.

[BrainGlutton]

@Captain_Amazing

You miss my point. If polls are inherently inaccurate because pollsters “ask a question in a way to get the answer they want.”, then you can’t use polling data to say what people want.

Some pollsters “ask a question in a way to get the answer they want,” and some are more professional than that. The poll cited above by ArchiveGuy appears to fall in the latter category; the question is not in any way loaded or leading.

[Richard_Parker]

The “poll” I cited is actually an aggregate of polls, and they all ask basically the same question: Do you approve or disapprove of the President?

[BrainGlutton]

Well, in his health-care speech to Congress tonight, Obama made clear that the essentials of his plan will pass with or without Pub support, but, OTOH, completely avoided any demagogic demonizing of “the forces of selfishness and of lust for power.” So . . . which way is he leaning?