Unemployment is over 8 percent. Nearly 60 percent of Americans, according to
a new poll, believe the country is on the wrong track. The number of people on
food stamps is at a historic high and the median net worth of American families
is at a 20-year low.
If it was true that winning elections is mostly a matter of numbers — as some
political scientists and campaign operatives like to argue —
Barack Obama’s
reelection as president should be close to a mathematical impossibility. For
much of this presidential election cycle, Republicans were counting on precisely
this.
But
2012 is
proving that politics isn’t just about numbers, and some traditional leading
indicators look as if they are losing their predictive power.
With Obama holding a narrow but so far sturdy lead over
Mitt Romney in
polls, many incredulous Republicans sound like the Michael
Dukakis character in a 1988 Saturday Night Live skit: “I can’t believe I’m
losing to this guy.”
The phenomenon is the result of three powerful factors, according to
interviews with some two dozen political veterans from both parties.
The first is a rapidly changing, deeply polarized electorate — one in which
external circumstances don’t necessarily swing large numbers of voters whose
minds are deeply made up — and also one that, on balance, is becoming more
Democratic due to demographic trends. In an environment like this, Obama has not
seen his political bottom fall out, as happened to George H.W. Bush in 1992,
when Al Gore cited a barrage of statistics and taunted, “Everything that should
be down is up, and everything that should be up is down.”
But a more hardened political landscape also means that — at the margins —
candidate skills and attributes matter more than ever.
Obama’s durability, according to polling and interviews, is the result of a
unique connection with voters as someone who broke racial barriers in 2008, his
ability to evade much the blame for the recession and a brutally effective
campaign.
Romney’s inability to capitalize on trends with the economy and national mood
that would normally create a wide opening for a challenger is in large measure a
reflection of his own defects as candidate and failure to sell himself to
voters, according to these same sources, many of whom are Republicans hoping to
beat Obama.
“He came into the general election with a very negative [image] rating and he
has not effectively addressed that,” said longtime GOP pollster Jan van
Lohuizen, who worked for Romney in 2008. “What they’ve been doing for five
months hasn’t worked. At some point, they need to come to the conclusion that
it’s not worked.”
“We’re running a good campaign so far but we’re not running a great
campaign,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “We’re going to have to run a great
campaign to beat this guy.”
Below are the three political engines that are helping Obama defy the
traditional laws of political gravity:
A Democratic landscape
The state-by-state polls this fall make it clear: The 2008 presidential
election was no anomaly. The Upper South and interior West are now competitive
terrain and will be in future White House races. That means Democrats have more
margin for error than Republicans when it comes to cobbling together 270
electoral votes.
“The map has changed to give any Democrat the better grip on the electorate,”
said van Lohuizen.
As more voters, both transients from other states and immigrants, have poured
into states like Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina, political
demographics in these places have been transformed. It’s the new Democratic
coalition there and in traditional swing states that is bolstering Obama.
“Despite a high unemployment rate, anemic economy, and upside-down right
track/wrong track, Obama is being kept afloat by a solid base of support among
African-Americans, Hispanics, liberals, single and college-educated women, and
union households,” said longtime Christian conservative strategist Ralph Reed.
“Those groups alone add up to about 46 percent of the electorate.”
Plus, Republicans have their own firm conservative base that doesn’t move
based on exterior conditions. So in this polarized era, there are just more
entrenched voters — individuals who don’t split their tickets and move from
their party loyalties as they did in the past.
“The number of people we’re trying to win over is very small,” said longtime
Republican Don Fierce. “That’s what’s different from 1980 or other campaigns in
the past — there’s such a small number that are there to move.”
What helps Democrats is that the country’s changing face has let them play
offense on traditionally Republican turf without having to worry about liberal
bulwarks. The population-heavy coastal states Democrats have had a lock on for
two decades remain out of reach for Republicans.
Former Democratic Florida governor and Sen. Bob Graham, who held statewide
office for 26 years, recalled that in 1980, the number of electoral votes that
were considered solidly Democratic and Republican were about equal.
“Now, that number is noticeably tilted toward Democrats,” Graham said.
The problem for the right is that what Democrats have steadily lost with
lower middle-class whites over the years, they’ve made up for with middle-class
and wealthy women — creating a yawning gender gap that puts Republicans at a
disadvantage in the very states that now make up the presidential
battlegrounds.
“We lost Bubba a long time ago; he’s done,” said Democrat James Carville of
working-class white males. “But what we didn’t realize at the time is that we
picked up all the post-college white women by the same amount. You walk into any
grad school class today, the women are all our voters.”
And, Carville added, it’s both racial minorities and such working women who
are uneasy about some of the nostalgic language Republicans use when it comes to
taking back the White House.
“They keep saying they want to restore America — but to a vast number of
Americans, they weren’t part of that America,” he said.
What frustrates Republicans the most, and will surely be Topic A for many in
the party if Romney loses, is the party’s apparent structural problem with
Hispanics — something that is hampering the nominee in Florida and the West.
“Republicans, including Romney, hurt themselves among Hispanic votes in the
primary this year,” said former Mississippi governor and Republican National
Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, alluding to the hard line GOP candidates took
on immigration. “And you add to that Obama has totally politicized the issue of
immigration to the point that he preferred having the issue to having a
bill.”
Looking past November, Barbour added: “In the future, and not distant future,
Republicans have to come to grips with the right policy on immigration.”
The incumbent’s staying power
In 2008, Obama marketed himself as a global phenomenon, and his political
skills were widely described as something almost unworldly in origin. Hardly
anyone — not even hard-core Obama loyalists — believes this any longer, after a
first term of repeated setbacks and dwindling popularity.
But the fact that Obama has lost some luster shouldn’t diminish the fact that
he remains in the minds of many voters a historic figure — not just another
embattled incumbent.
As the first black president, his most durable strength is with minorities,
whose loyalty is largely impervious to external factors like the economy.
Minorities have been harder hit by the recession than whites, yet surveys show
that they feel better off now than before Obama and are more optimistic about
the future than whites.
“This is a huge thing in American history,” said Cole, a historian with a
doctorate and Native American, about the pride in Obama felt by minorities.
But Obama’s sustained support isn’t just from loyal African-Americans and
Hispanics, it’s also from white voters who are themselves proud of what the
country did in 2008, retain warm feelings toward the president and his family,
and don’t want to see them fail. This is not mere white guilt. Swaths of
centrist voters believe the president inherited a mess and that George W. Bush
and the Republicans are more to blame for the dismal economy than Obama and the
Democrats. A CNN poll earlier this month had 62 percent of “moderates” faulting
Bush and the GOP and just 30 percent of the centrists blaming Obama and the
Democrats. It’s clear Obama possesses a measure of goodwill with many voters
that doesn’t fluctuate with the monthly jobless statistics.
“People like his personality, like his family, like his story and what he
says about the country just by having been elected,” said longtime Democratic
strategist and presidential campaign veteran Bill Carrick. “And I think the
other piece is that people really do believe he got dealt a really bad hand of
cards. They’re willing to give him more of a chance.”
Further, Obama benefits from longstanding skepticism about just how much he
or any leader is able to turn the country around.
“Expectations are lowered,” said one of George W. Bush’s most senior
advisers. “With the exception of the short period after Obama was elected,
there’s been a net wrong track since at least 2003 — that’s unprecedented and
resets expectations.”
In the view of seasoned hands in both parties, Obama has also run the better
campaign. Since the Dartmouth GOP primary debate in October, when they
determined Romney was likely on his way to the Republican nomination, the
president’s high command has been almost exclusively focused on trying
disqualify the former Massachusetts governor. In an effort to pre-empt a pure
referendum on the state of the economy, Chicago has spent the past year
highlighting Romney’s business record, exotic investments and personal lifestyle
to cloud what until recently had been Boston’s all-jobs-all-the-time
message.
“I thought everybody assumed they’d run a very good campaign in 2012 and they
have run a very good campaign,” said Barbour. “I don’t underestimate David
Axelrod and the Obama campaign. “They’ve been very adroit at changing the
subject.”
At the GOP convention, Barbour summed up the Obama message on Romney in
perhaps the most memorable sound bite of the 2012 election: “He’s a wealthy
plutocrat married to a known equestrian.”
Cole, a political strategist before he entered elected office, also offered
praise for Chicago.
“They’re running a great race, well-conceived and well put together,” said
the Oklahoman. “You contrast this to George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign.
This is really comparable in quality to Karl Rove’s campaign for Bush in
2004.”
Veterans in both parties cite the summer, when Romney had secured the
nomination and was attempting to introduce himself to voters, as the pivotal
period in which Obama’s taunting of the Republican was most effective.
“They’d say ‘Bain,’ or ‘tax returns’ or ‘felon’ and Romney would scream fire
and we’d be talking about it for a week,” noted longtime Democratic consultant
Joe Trippi.
Cole pointed to Romney’s deficit in Ohio as the most vivid example of the
damage done to the GOP standard-bearer during the summer.
“If Mitt Romney doesn’t win, we’ll be reminded that negative ads work and the
sooner the better,” he said, noting that Romney was financially unable to strike
back with full force before the August convention. “They picked a good moment
when Romney couldn’t respond as effectively as they would have liked. Super PACs
are fine but they don’t let you establish the case for the candidate like the
candidate’s own campaign.”
The challenger’s flaws
Romney’s advisers have started coming in for the predictable criticism that’s
inevitable in a campaign that’s losing. But as big an issue is the candidate’s
own profound weaknesses — he has a résumé that’s uniquely vulnerable to attack
during difficult economic times and has little in the way of political
self-awareness.
“Put any three consultants of either party in a room six years ago and you
can’t tell me they wouldn’t have told him: Get rid of the Swiss bank account,”
Trippi said. “He just seems impervious to what things sound like or look like
and that they make people who otherwise might vote for him very wary.”
Beyond his background, Romney also is often his own worst enemy on the stump.
Look no further than
the
video that came out Monday in which Romney is captured at a fundraiser
earlier this year telling donors that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay income
taxes and are essentially wards of the state. “I’ll never convince them they
should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” he said. It’s
hard to imagine George W. Bush using such language in any setting, public or
private.
What frustrates Republicans about Romney and his campaign is that they knew
they had an image problem coming out of the GOP primary and he’s been unable to
turn it around. An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll last week in Ohio showed
the Republican is still 10 percent “under water” in his favorable and
unfavorable rating. And the national CBS/New York Times poll revealed more
likely voters indicating “no” than “yes” when asked if they felt Romney
understood their needs and problems.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who served as Bush’s point man on Capitol Hill in
2000 and does the same for Romney now, said the GOP nominee has a challenge
that’s “the mirror image” of what Ronald Reagan encountered in 1980.
“People need to become convinced a person can do the job but also be
comfortable about having them around for the next four years,” Blunt said.
“People in ’80 were comfortable with Reagan as a person because they knew him
but weren’t sure about him being president. People think Romney can do the job
but are not ready to check that second box yet about whether this is somebody we
want to have around in good times and bad for the next four years.”
Blunt, who thought Ann Romney’s speech was the most important of the
convention because it put a warm face on the candidate, said Boston’s ability
“to round [Romney] out as a person is important. We’ll see if they do some more
of that.”
Asked if he thought they needed to, Blunt didn’t hesitate: “Yes, I do.”
What Republicans hope is that Romney’s difficulties relating to voters will
ultimately pale in comparison to the job ahead of the next president. Yet even
in making the case that policy matters more than persona, seasoned GOP officials
concede Romney is a tough sell.
“He’s never had a beer, he’s never had a Coca-Cola, he doesn’t look natural
out there — but I really don’t think this is an election cycle [in which] voters
will decide based upon whether they can invite Mitt into the living room for a
beer,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), an 18-year congressional veteran. “But
he is somebody who you would call if you had a business that was in trouble.”
(Romney, a Mormon, doesn’t drink alcohol but actually will enjoy a Diet Coke,
something not barred by his church.)
Asked if his party had nominated somebody with difficulty relating to average
Americans, Barbour artfully evaded the question, saying: “That’s what he’s got
to do.”
Another former GOP governor, however, was blunter, arguing that Romney’s
current deficit is explained in part by his personal style.
“He’s a rich guy who’s also awkward,” said the former governor. “That may
matter at the margins, but in a tight race, 2 [percent] to 3 percent
matters.”
This is not to say Romney’s strategy has been totally sound.
Florida’s Graham called Romney’s campaign “inexplicable.”
“He seems to have made an effort to run away from his record as governor in
Massachusetts when in my judgment, that should have been one of his major
strengths,” Graham said. “You ask Americans their biggest concerns and after
jobs and the economy, they’ll start to talk about gridlock and partisanship.
And, coming from a Democratic state, he’s got an ideal record to talk about
that.”
