[update below]
For those who don’t see the New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew has a piece (dated July 19) in the latest issue entitled “What were they thinking?,” on the political strategy of the Obama White House since the 2010 midterm elections, and particularly in its dealings with the congressional GOP. Personally, I would really like to know WTF Obama is thinking. Deep down. Drew’s article is so dismaying. E.g., on Obama’s negotiating strategy during the congressional debate in April to avoid a government shutdown, she writes
Boehner hadn’t realized at first that he’d have so many Republican defectors—fifty-four—who voted against the continuing resolution he’d negotiated with Obama in early April, on the ground that it didn’t cut spending enough, though Boehner had, in effect, taken Obama to the cleaners. This established in both Democrats’ and Republicans’ minds the thought that Obama was a weak negotiator—a “pushover.” He was more widely seen among Democrats and other close observers as having a strategy of starting near where he thinks the Republicans are—at the fifty-yard line—and then moving closer to their position.
I posted an item the other day by Bruce Bartlett (via Paul Krugman) on Obama’s weak negotiating style. There seems to be a consensus forming on this. But that’s not the worst of it. Drew continues
The question arises, aside from Obama’s chronically allowing the Republicans to define the agenda and even the terminology (the pejorative word “Obamacare” is now even used by news broadcasters), why did he so definitively place himself on the side of the deficit reducers at a time when growth and job creation were by far the country’s most urgent needs?
It all goes back to the “shellacking” Obama took in the 2010 elections. The President’s political advisers studied the numbers and concluded that the voters wanted the government to spend less. This was an arguable interpretation. Nevertheless, the political advisers believed that elections are decided by middle-of-the-road independent voters, and this group became the target for determining the policies of the next two years.
That explains a lot about the course the President has been taking this year. The political team’s reading of these voters was that to them, a dollar spent by government to create a job is a dollar wasted. The only thing that carries weight with such swing voters, they decided—in another arguable proposition—is cutting spending. Moreover, like Democrats—and very unlike Republicans—these voters do not consider “compromise” a dirty word.
This is just such bullcrap. In regard to the 2010 midterms and the supposed “shellacking,” there are only two sets of numbers that are of real interest. The first is the total number of votes the candidates received in the 2008 presidential election. Obama got 69.5 million, McCain a shade under 60 million. No one would have ever predicted such a number for a Democratic candidate (which was 10 million more than John Kerry in ’04). Obama’s margin of victory was due, of course, to an exceptional mobilization of the Democratic base—actual and potential—, and particularly black voters, who, for the first time in American history, voted in proportionally equal numbers to white voters.
The second set of numbers is the vote totals in the 2010 midterms: 44.5 million for Republican candidates, 38.9 million for Democrats. The “shellacking” the GOP administered to Obama occurred with it receiving 15 million fewer votes than its presidential candidate two years earlier. What was noteworthy in 2010 was the exceptional demobilization of a demoralized Democratic base. Of course we know that there is always a falloff in midterm elections, but it was significant for the Dems in 2010, who received 3 million fewer votes than in the 2006 midterms (whereas the fired up Republicans improved on their ’06 figure by 9 million). So how Obama and his political advisers could possibly think that the way to go politically was not only not to remobilize the Democratic base but to ignore it altogether is beyond me.
Obama hasn’t lost me (yet). He could still save the day by vetoing an inevitably awful bill that Congress may vote on the debt ceiling, letting the default happen, invoke the 14th amendment, and then dare the House and/or Supreme Court to do something about it. In other words, show some cojones. I’m not getting my hopes up but you never know…
UPDATE: The deal is a disaster, of course. A catastrophe, calamity, capitulation to the Tea Party, etc, etc. Instead of linking to a whole slew of commentaries (Krugman, TNR, et al) that everyone has read by now, I offer just this one, by Robert Kuttner, “A Disgraceful Deal.” The money quote
Obama turns his back on his own party’s principles and then expects a docile party to do his bidding. House Democrats are now expected to provide something like a hundred votes to get this appalling deal approved. It would be far better for them to vote down the deal and force the president to turn to the 14th Amendment to honor the debt of the United States, which he should have done all along.
Will the congressional Dems follow this wise advice? Dream on.
The numbers you highlight might perfectly prove the thesis you are fighting… as the people who didn’t show in the midterm elections might be not the ‘basic democrats’, who would vote democrat anyhow, but those swinging voters that are not very sure ‘what they want’ or, better put, who don’t know what is the better way (the better set of policies) to get what they want… and, of course, they have plenty of reasons to distrust the President’s ability to deliver