To listen to some Democrats lately, President Obama’s re-election is in the bag. Most are convinced that Mitt Romney has too many problems connecting with ordinary Americans to be considered a serious threat to the president. Their confidence in their “cool kid” candidate and contempt for their opponents is such that many refuse to accept the possibility that the president is in for the fight of his life in an electoral environment that is radically different from the situation in the fall of 2008. And yet the evidence that the race is a virtual dead heat continues to be right there under their noses. The release today of tracking polls from the two leading firms confirms that the Democrats need to sober up about the competitive race that is about to unfold.
Gallup, whose results tend to skew slightly toward the Democrats, reports that Romney has a 47-46 edge for the period of April 24-29. Rasmussen, which tends to tilt slightly toward the Republicans, also shows Romney ahead for their last reporting period of April 27-29 by a similarly slim 47-45 margin. Both polls illustrate that the presumption that Romney has no chance is simply a Democratic fantasy that fails to take into account the general dissatisfaction with a failing economy. It also may show that the administration’s decision to spend the last week trying to politicize the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy Seals might have been a bad mistake.
As Alana noted earlier, the fact that some influential liberal pundits are backing away from the Obama campaign’s claim that a President Romney would have let bin Laden live, illustrates the contempt that this shameless slur has generated. If Arianna Huffington thinks it’s a bad idea, imagine how the rest of the country thinks?
But, of course, perhaps the negative results in the tracking polls for Obama in the last several days, which contrast with the slight edge he held a week earlier might confirm that tactic has backfired.
The lead in the tracking polls has changed hands several times in the last few weeks, and we can expect it will continue to fluctuate in the coming months. As Gallup confirms, the matchup in the swing states that will decide the contest are as close as can be. If the Democrats think all Obama has to do is call the Republicans names and play the “cool kid” on late night television, they may be in for the shock of their lives when they discover that the competition for posts in his second administration is a waste of time.
Why do you assume that the Obama (or Romney) campaign uses all of its ads for all of its target constiuencies? They target the ads for each group. Democrat "hawks" hear the Bin Laden angle; gays and educated white women hear about the repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Lilly Leadbetter Act; Union workders in oil or industrial states hear lies about how Obama increased oil drilling, and so on. Now adays you can target your message exactly. n nBut the underlying premise of this and all of your critiques of Obama's strategies seems to be that by targetting one group, he turns off another. Not necessarily so. Targetting is effective, and with the MSM unwilling to point out the inconsistencies of two messages, there is little risk in speaking out of both sides of your mouth, especially when you are The One.
Yes, but you are displaying a fundamental ignorance of the new reality – we are now all in the same group now because of the internet. In the olde days of the glorious 3 liberal networks, the populace was much more fragmented. You actually could just target particular audiences. You could go to, say, a wealthy San Francisco fundraiser and tell your donors what you really thought about "those bitter clingers"… and no one would ever find out what you really thought outside that room. But with the magic of cellphones and internet – suddenly EVERYONE hears what you're saying. n nNow, this doesn't mean that you can't try to target a single group – say by targeting women by making up a phony war on them – but it also means you're a fool if you think it will stay contained to that group or that there won't be collateral damage elsewhere. Like, when the people you claim are at "war with women" actually aren't. They tend to get upset. And the result, is your propaganda hardens your opposition instead and alienates people who know better. n nSo, keep that up… it's been working great.
BDZ – What you say is true, to an extent, but here's the problem for Team O as I see it. Pitching refined messages to specific constituencies works if you are also offering something for the "moderate" voters to grab onto. In 2004 President Bush could give a nod to the Christian right by mentioning a gay marriage amendment once in a while. That reminded those voters that he was thinking of them, but it didn't turn off huge numbers of voters in the middle because they knew the election wasn't about that – it was about national security. nFast forward to 2012. Obama is firing up his base, as you point out, but since there is absolutely nothing about his presidency for him to actually campaign on, by doing so he will simply alienate the moderates who put him in the White House to begin with. Whether or not those people are for or against DADT, for example, is immaterial. They know that this election isn't about that (or the Leadbetter Act, or killing bin Laden, etc.). It is about much larger issues, and a President reduced to playing small ball while Rome is burning is not in good shape. n
Mike_ste–what you say makes 100% sense to me and you and people who think us. But I'm afraid we are now in the minority. I may sound like a broke record, but I still don't have an answer to this one basic question: Given how absolutely awful Obama has been, how in the world can he still be neck and neck (or ahead) in the polls? The only answer I have is that there is a majority or virtual majority that is fundamentally different from me. Either they believe Obama is a sort of God, they are highly susceptible to Democrat rhetoric or they are vested interests and dependent constituencies that Obama has skillfully grown and who essentially must vote for him. Who knows. But there seems to be a helluva lot of them and a lot fewer of us these days. Otherwise, the country would have and should have coughed Obama up like a bone in the throat rather than swallowing harder.
I guess I'm skeptical about the polls. (I agree with you – this guy is such a fool I can't believe he has ANY support.) And I don't mean that I think they are, overall, inaccurate. I suspect his approval rating (whatever that means) is somewhere in the mid- to upper-40s, but I suspect that that support is very soft. My analysis and a nickel won't get you a donut hole, but based on other polls (like those dealing with particular issues – the economy, for example) which consistently show approval of Obama much lower than his overall approval rating, I wonder how many people are desperately trying to "approve" of him while slowly coming to terms with not voting for him…(I say this as a former liberal who underwent this process during the Clinton presidency.) nI would also point out that in almost every significant election since 2008 the Republicans have done well. 2009 – VA and NJ. Jan. 2010 – MA. Nov 2010, everywhere. Last year – two sets of elections in WI, special elections in NYC and NV. The only loss was the Kasich bill in OH, but even there a referendum on Obamacare went down in flames. I guess I conclude that polls are one thing, but it appears as though, when given a chance to really act (vote), people are moving away from Obama. n
What's being overlooked here is the utter pathology of the black vote. There is — almost literally — nothing Obama might do that would soften his support there. 95% approval/voting rates are the mark of either communist/fascist dictatorships everywhere or black Americans here. The phenomenon is pathological because it is largely unconnected to any rational reason for voting for a candidate or approving of him. Nor is it an entirely race-based phenomenon, having as much to do with robotic support for Democrats as it does for a candidate of the same race. Combining the two, however, makes for abdolutely brain-dead politics. n nThe relevance here is that even though blacks make up about 13% of the population, they are about 23% of registered Democrats, so that if a poll skews toward over-counting Democrats (as nearly all of them do), it should be kept in mind that Obama's GENERAL popularity can seem to be significantly, namely, probably at least 10%, higher than it is. n nThus, whenever I read a poll, I automatically subtract 10%, namely, about half the black Democratic participation, from the Democrat-preference totals — not, mind you, to predict what's going to happen in any election — blacks vote — but to understand where the President stands in the the country as whole. There, I put his support at about 35%. I also subtract 2 or 3% from Republican totals to account for white racism. As an analogy, if you knew that, say, 10% of a group of so-called voters were actually robots programmed to always vote a certain way, it would not be merely prudent, it would be obligatory, to discount 10% of the vote as without meaning or relevance. Of course, if the vote went ahead anyway, those programmed and "pathological" votes would still be counted.