Why the Democrats Are Losing Ground As Obama Is Gaining It
While the President is off being the leader of the free world and trying to restore prosperity at home, someone needs to manage the blind trust of the Democratic Party before its assets dwindle like shares of Citigroup. President Obama's approval ratings have continued to break records, and with good reason. In less than 3 months, he has already proven himself remarkably capable as a leader, in getting a stimulus package passed (while learning some hard lessons about splitting the difference in policy with the people who created the mess); steadfastly refusing to jettison health care, energy, and education reform from his budget in tough economic times; beginning to heal the deep wounds left by his predecessor in the U.S.'s relationship with the rest of the world through both his mastery of foreign affairs and his emotional intelligence as diplomat-in-chief; and even signaling his intention to take on comprehensive immigration reform. All of this has happened as Republicans have seemed increasingly impotent, ideologically inflexible, and oppositional, none of which endears them to anyone but the 30% who still think Bush was a great president (and apparently remain off their medication).
Yet at the same time, something else is happening under the radar: the fortunes of Democrats more generally are starting to wane. March was a good month for Barack Obama but a bad month for the Democratic Party. As the latest Rasmussen polls show, in March the percent of voters who consider themselves Democrats dropped by 2 percent--four times the rate of decline among Republicans (even as the Republicans were publicly flailing, producing numberless budgets, and unwittingly branding themselves as the party of old ideas and the party of "no"). More ominous, the margin of voters supporting a Democrat over a Republican in a generic ballot for Congress dropped to its lowest point since both the Iraq War and the economy had clearly gone south by 2006: one percent (40 vs. 39%).
So how could it be that President Obama's standing in the polls is holding steady or improving while Democrats' standing in the polls is falling? And does it matter, so long as he is able to get his agenda passed through a heavily Democratic House and Senate?
Let's start with the second question first. It does matter. The President's ability to stay on the path he has charted requires not only Democrats holding or increasing their majorities in 2010 but on their holding onto public support for sweeping change. It also requires moderate Democrats and those from conservative states and districts to feel comfortable voting for new spending, and likely a second stimulus package, knowing that they will be attacked in the next election with the familiar refrains of big-government tax-and-spend liberals (if not socialists).
And as for the first question, the paradoxical popularity of the new President while the fortunes of his party are waning, not only makes sense but is predictable from an understanding of the psychology of public opinion and "branding." Any marketing executive will tell you that a good product is certainly a big help for sales, particularly if the competition is producing lemons. That's the situation we have now in American politics, where the Democrats are producing solutions where Republicans manufactured problems, and where the Republicans are now trying to re-sell "pre-owned" ideological vehicles that have a bad habit of running into ditches.
But the best products fail without good branding. In politics, you don't win on ideas alone. Comprehensive energy reform was a no-brainer after OPEC began embargoing oil 35 years ago, but the percent of our energy we are importing from overseas has only skyrocketed since then, and Americans were buying Hummers until gas hit $4.00 a gallon. Health care reform made good sense in 1993, but last I looked, it hasn't happened. Successful branding requires two things: creating positive associations to your own brand, and differentiating it from competing brands. In politics, that means offering voters a clear, memorable, emotionally compelling narrative about your party's core principles, while presenting them with an equally clear, memorable, and evocative story about the other party that would not make anyone want to be associated with it. If there were ever a time Democrats could offer both stories, this is it.
But the failure of Democrats to brand themselves has been a perennial problem since the breakdown of the New Deal coalition in the 1970s, and it remains a major problem today, leaving Republicans the opportunity, once they get their ideological chops back, to start branding both parties again, as they have for the better part of thirty years. Democrats stand for spending our way out of a looming Depression--a sound policy when no one else has the money or chutzpa to spend or invest--but how does that differ from the fiscal irresponsibility with which Ronald Reagan branded the party of "tax and spend" 30 years ago? Democrats stand for shifting to clean, safe 21st century sources of energy rather than relying on the fossil fuels of the last two centuries, but then why is the Secretary of the Interior waxing poetic about expanded offshore drilling?
It's hard for people to hear your message when you aren't speaking. I suspect few Americans even know that Governor Tim Kaine is the new DNC chair, while his RNC counterpart, Michael Steele, is at least busy publicly humiliating himself. And the President has inadvertently chosen to keep his popularity to himself. Whereas Bill Clinton rebranded himself--and by extension, his party--as a "different kind of Democrat" than the voters had repeatedly rejected in national elections, President Obama has branded himself as above partisanship--as the Un-Democrat. That may be a laudable goal--the same laudable goal, in fact, that the Founders had in mind for the Presidency--until President Washington, who won the office by universal acclamation, chose to step down, at which point partisan politics erupted, and we have been largely a two-party nation ever since.
Perhaps President Obama will succeed where Adams and Jefferson could not, and America will become not only a post-racial society but a post-partisan one. But if he does not succeed in turning a broken economy around substantially by the summer of 2010 and reminding the American people on a regular basis (repetition is essential psychologically, neurologically, and empirically to branding) that he and his fellow Democrats are trying to pull the nation out of the ditch the Republicans left us in by the side of the road, his administration will gradually become associated in voters' minds with the economic crisis he inherited, and he will find himself working with a Congress far less friendly to progressive reforms in two years.
Under similar circumstances, FDR trumpeted the failures of the Republican leadership and ideology that created the Great Depression while still managing to unite a terrified nation around not only his own charismatic presence but around New Deal reforms--reforms he could never have enacted if he had not contrasted the failed ideology that had led the nation over the economic cliff with the radically different solutions he and his party were offering. Roosevelt's consistent branding of the Republicans as inflexible ideologues at the same time as he showed what progressive, pragmatic action and Democratic leadership could offer led to a political realignment that lasted 40 years.
That is not President Obama's style. He prefers to say that mistakes "were made" (but not by whom). He is comfortable attacking "greed" as long as he doesn't have to attribute it to anyone in particular. (He did fire one man in Detroit for the failings of the American auto industry, but he retained all the corrupt, greedy, and incompetent executives on Wall Street who made it impossible for anyone to get a loan to buy a car.)
The hope, of course, is that voters will see improvements in their lives and connect them to the party in power even if it doesn't make terribly strenuous efforts to take credit for those improvements. And perhaps that will translate to a shift in partisan affiliation that will sustain the President's agenda long enough for it to work or even beyond. But it is a risky strategy to refuse to brand the other side for the problems they created and to refuse to brand your own side for the solutions you offer and the principles that underlie those solutions. The President often speaks of principles, and in so doing has taken Democratic rhetoric to precisely where it needs to be, in the realm of values (as in his stirring lines about parents turning off the television set and reading to their kids when talking about education reform). But the average American associates those principles with Obama, not with the Democratic Party, because Democrats outside the Oval Office remain long on policies and short on clearly, colloquially stated principles.
It may well be that this President is temperamentally unwilling, unable, or uninterested in speaking unpleasant truths about people who did unpleasant things to a lot of people. And it may be that that's a good thing. Our politics have certainly been unpleasant for a long time, and he's trying to change that.
But the reality is that millions of Americans are out of work, and most hard working Americans have lost nearly half of their wealth, and many their homes, because of the way George W. Bush and the radical Republican ideologues who enabled him ran the government--and ran it into the ground. The reality is that we had a surplus when Bill Clinton left office, and the only reason President Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit that now constrains him is that George W. Bush and the radical Republicans believed in handing out suitcases full of cash to their wealthy friends with no strings attached and no transparency. Personally, I think that bears saying, and I think it particularly bears saying every time those same Republicans preach fiscal discipline, heap scorn on government "bailouts" they both necessitated and engineered, or offer their quasi-religious answer of "the free market" to every problem the market has created or failed to solve, from the crisis in the housing industry and the lack of regulations on Wall Street that took down our economy (and the world economy along with it) to the fact that most working Americans are now afraid of changing jobs for fear of losing their health insurance. Republican politicians would certainly be a little less quick to step up to the microphone if they knew that every time they talked about fiscal discipline, a Democrat would be there to remind them that they were the ones who went on a 6-year spending spree with our children's money and then handed the better part of a trillion dollars out to Wall Street bankers and speculators, sacrificing the American taxpayer at the altar of their free-market extremism.
It may be that the President is not the right messenger for this message (although FDR had no trouble being both an inspirational and transformational leader while also leading his party, and the Republicans became the "Party of Lincoln" after the gangly leader from Illinois not only said a few choice things about those who wanted to hang onto their slaves but actually sent an army after them). And it could be that he is right to stand above the fray. It could also be that House and Senate Democrats need to be more forceful with the media about covering their statements, since their leadership has been less reluctant to talk in partisan tones.
But someone needs to be in the fray other than the GOP. The worst thing to be in politics is silent, because it allows the other side to shape public sentiment uncontested. It wouldn't hurt to have a Southern voice like Tim Kaine's behind a megaphone with a "D" written on it. But whether it's Kaine or someone else with credibility and charisma, somebody needs to start saying what Democrats and Republicans stand for other than Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, and Richard Shelby. That's a lesson we should have learned a long time ago.
In politics, there is nothing so deadly as silence.
Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."
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Perhaps with great effort they can regain their 10% approval rating.
I'm among the ranks of those who've disincluded themselves from the ranks of the Democrats. Why? Congressional incompetence and abandonment of campaign ideology by the Obama administration. My allegiance is no longer justified. I will be an independent strongly opposed to Wall Street and other corporate monopoly, and to environmental and constitutional degradation. In favor of hard work, human rights, public dissent, and campaign finance reform. Anyone else?
Hard work for what? To make somebody rich?
Hard work on behalf of real change.
Well, that would be fine if there was a real alternative, but there isn't. It may work if we had real elections that weren't jury rigged by either side, but we don't.
I'm still getting request to donate to Obama for whatever he wants to do, are you? Wish I the $$ back I gave him in the first place!
Count me in, all in favor of voting out all democrats and replace them with new ones unless we
get a viable 3rd party.
If you google "blue dogs, Senate, Bayh and April 2009" you get a good bit of information about who the blue dogs are. They are the people set out to ruin the President's agenda. They deny this but they go on FOX news to deny it. They are liars and losers and if you don't think so... tell me... if you were going to signal America that you were serious about reform would the first person you pick for your side be Joe "jump" Lieberman. He can't be loyal to his dog. On the other hand, if you wanted to signal that you were a democrat that was willing to be a republican lap dog who would you choose? You would first pick Joe "jump" Lieberman. There are lists of who the blue dogs are, the most critical to neutralize now are the ones in the Senate. Keep going to Google until you find them and then write them and tell them you will help get someone else elected if they don't support the President. Mainly you need to contact your own Senators and maybe Evan Bayh. I plan to call people in his state next election to tell them the truth.
The two dominant parties are corporate entities that support the large banks, investments houses, and large corporations at the expense of the people. Why then should we be surprised that the approval rating of both parties is floundering?
There was a Gallup poll released this morning showing that 71% of Americans trusted President Obama to handle the economy. Congress got 51%. The problem is Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman and their friends in the Senate called the Blue Dogs. Who in the world would not want to reform healthcare except insurance companies? The Blue Dogs. They are not Democratic. They are wishy washy losers that have no power except to whine on FOX news. Evan Bayh is doing it regularly now. He opposes the Presidents healthcare plan and every other plan. If we can get all of the Blue Dogs out of Congress in 2010 we can change this country for better for a long time. The Blue Dogs, are, I think, people the Republicans got elected as democrats just in case they needed them to screw things up and that is what they are doing. WE NEED TO POINT TO THEM EVERY DAY AND TELL AMERICA THAT IF THEY WANT REFORM THEY HAVE TO PRESSURE THEIR OWN BLUE DOG SENATORS.
While I think the author hits some really great points... and in general I agree... I've noticed another trend that I think is more "relevant" than branding. Ever since Jimmy Carter took on Gerald Ford it seems as if we elect our national leaders on personality rather than policy. Jimmy Carter was more personable than Ford; Reagan more personable than Carter; Reagan more personable than Mondale; Clinton more personable than Bush I; Clinton more personable than Bob Dole; Bush II more personable than Gore or Kerry. The only exception is Bush I v. Dukakis... but it can be easily argued that Bush I rode into the White House on Reagan's coattails.
In other words... we may already be post-partisanship in the sense that the voters aren't voting based on a party's philosophy or political agenda... rather on which party can put up the most personable candidate or the candidate they feel the most comfortable with regardless of where that politician actually stands on the issues..
We are the party of equality, education and environment. Sometimes here in Iowa, environment gets left out.. I would say that for our Iowa party, running another organic farmer for Secretary of Agriculture would give a good sense of identity and be great for our state. Our last organic farmer candidate almost won but was hit by smear tactics (surprise, surprise). I think that people are more aware of the GOPs ability to make a mountain out of a mole hill now and we should go for it again.
What have the democrats ever done to provide a quality education for the poor so that they can transcend poverty and become contributing members of society?
Ask the Republican Party that, they continually vote themselves a tax cut along with the rich of this country! Democrats are more for social responsibility and hopefully more on the way to socialism!
I'd talk about 3 things.
1 - financial debauchery propagated by the people Obama hired to replace the Bush versions... all the same. No change there and just hurting the public, therefore public changing tune on Obama and banks.
2 - Repubs Set up dems to fail with last budget being shelved last year and instead being signed by Obama who declared Earmark reform during campaign to be elected.
Earmarks were mostly for Republicans -even in minority, however that was lost on most americans as they wont give a pass for that one.
3 - Dems both not defending themselves properly when they can (always been that way) and Doing stupid things contrary to the "Change" we thought we'd get from GOP crime, and being Unable to defend themselves by doing the same things as the GOP.
Those problems are the 100% issue with the public at large.
I dont count the myriad of GOP Fox accusations and emails being pushed around the net because 99% of that is just plain false and shows the world the GOP will never change and only serves & worships the top 1% and no other.
1- banks getting out of trouble, market on rise, continued economic growth in next 12 months will make this null and void.
2- anyone who sees President responisble for earmarks in a bill written before he signed it, while he working on important things is an idiot and already votes Republican. A lot fo Americans still don't see earmarks as bad in general, it's all hype by the now whiny conservatives.
3- There has been more positive change in 75 days under Obama than there was in 8 years of Bush. That the rich are somehow able to convince ignorant old white people that they should support them is the tyranny of the ages.
regardless of reality, these are the perceptions being pushed onto the public and Obama is losing support fast. Although one should give that hes done 100x more in his first few months than any other president in the past and that provides both exessive good and bad critics.
As well, its not just ignorant old white people that are convinced to support the GOP.
They got 55million of 118million or so voters thats waaaaay too many.
Bush got elected twice.
And at the moment, you should agree that the GOP and its mentals are putting on one heck of a propaganda push, albeit with failures but also victories right now.
Well, the first brand we need to get out there is that we, The democrats, are not going to manipulate you with fear and emotion. We do not have hate mongers as back ups.
The Democrats' problems can be summed up in precisely four words: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid.
These two are just absolutely horrible leaders. They don't inspire any trust and they provide zero motivation to their delegations. The public sees both of them as useless buffoons.
The Republicans in Congress could make great strides against this line-up except for one glaring fact - their leadership is even worse.
You could pick four people at random off a street corner and come up with better leaders.
"OMINOUS" is the word.
While Obama & his team make noise about POPULIST programs.... he is becoming a NeoCon lite, others have even said "the Black George W. Bush" !!
Obama tells us "Yes, WE CAN have a STIMULUS program" - jobs creation & funding for education etc....
....but ONLY if we working-stiff taxpayer peons fork over HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars to prop up his (& Geithner's/Summer's/Rubin's & Emaunuels) banking buddies.
IN SHORT, Mr. Obama is trying the TRIED & FAILED Democrat "BAIT & SWITCH" strategy - the one that has led to DISASTER over the past 2 decades.
"Democrats" in the House & Senate think that they won their majorities because of their own excellent campaigning, but in fact Dems ONLY won the House in 2006... because of voter revulsion at abject Republican SCANDALS, including (hello?) CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS for Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Dusty Foggo, Scooter Libby, etc. (some convictions came after 2006, but the prosecutions were ongoing.)
But the economic impact of those (Republican corruption) crimes, are only a DROP-in-bucket, compared to the VAST FINANCIAL DESTRUCTION wrought by Obama's banking friends!!
Just like JOE LIEBERMAN 2006, looks like Obama can ONLY give us his REAL, NeoCon lite agenda, by PRETENDING to be a grassroots populists.
But the cost is, that the Democrats in Congress are LOSING their POPULIST message, as all 'news' & commentary goes back towards the NeoCon "bail out Hedge Funds & MORE WARS" nightmare that is the true agenda of
Perhaps you should study history instead of inventing it. Bait and switch?
The distance between our president and Neo-con political philosophy is inter-galactic. The distance between real Republicans and Neo-cons is inter-stellar. The distance between President Obama and real Republicans is...well, maybe from San Francisco to New York. His political positioning is perfect. We need to re-empower real Republicans because they represent the proper ideological counterweight to Obama-Democratic visions. We need Democrats to set our grand visions (Kennedy and the Moonshot) and Republicans (real ones) to keep those visions on-time and within budget.
Anyone who believes their particular formula is 100% correct is just plain silly.
My instincts are with you on this....what happened to the rest of the post?
Republicans = no heart
Democrats = no spine
If the Democrats want to grow stay in power, they're going to need to empower a few attack dogs to keep reminding Americans that Obama is not responsible for the economy and things like the bailout and massive deficits were caused by Bush. Many Republicans have already 'forgotten' this and it's only been 3 months. Their revisionism knows no bounds and the Dems need to stay on point, stay on message and stay on the attack. Far too often they fall back on the defensive and let the Republicans tell everyone what they're all about instead of controlling the message themselves. Great article, for the most part.
Unfortunately, Dems are to blame for our current lack of credibility in large part due to party behavior around the banking crisis. Obama and McCain both blindly supported the initial bailout during the campaign so that the issue was a political "push". But it was Congressional Dems that rammed the thing through without forethought or oversight. Dems set those particular wheels in motion when they'd have had the ability to stop it. Now the momentum is too big; the whole fiasco will have to run its course. We have to remove the mote from our own eye first, I believe, before we rely too heavily on attack dogs and positive branding.
And why do you think the Democrats are hesitant to attack the Republicans? The reason happens to be that there is truly little difference between them, so in that sense, Democrats are reluctant to attack Republicans because they know they are guilty of doing what the Republicans have already done. For example, how many democrats stood up in 2003 and said the war against Iraq is wrong? How many of them made a case against the Patriot Act, which has destroyed many of our civil liberties and significantly enhanced executive power? How many of them would like to repeal the Patriot Act that has led to the imprisonment of Americans without trial because Bush deemed them enemy combatants? What happened to our habeas corpus rights under Bush and what's Obama going to do about the loss of those rights? And what about Posse Comitatus or the prohibition of deploying American troops on American soil? Yes, all these civil rights and liberties and regulations designed to protect the people were torn asunder by Democrats (not just Blue Dogs) and Republicans alike over the last eight years. So, again, how can a sane Democrat attack a Republican when they both have voted to gut American civil liberties and to wage a fraudulent war. Notice Obama's silence on the issue of these lost civil liberties and the impossibility of restoring them to the American people. We must determine what Obama's silence with respect to the aforesaid issues means.
I know, that's why I accused them of being spineless. But that was then and this is now. They have leadership now, an ideology will form and with power will come confidence. This past election made EVERYONE more politically aware and active, the economy has given everyone a reason to care and people aren't going to let a President get away with what Bush got away with, ever again. Spain has just indicted Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantanamo. That's just the beginning. The Dems have grown a spine at the top, but we need ALL Democrats, citizens, to stand pat and not take the crap from Republicans any more.
We are witnessing the shift to essentially a one party system. The GOP is a non-factor in every possible way. Already, many capable and qualified pols have run as "Blue Dogs" and won. All arguments in the future will take place between the left and right wings of the Democratic Party. The job of Speaker and Whip will become much harder, but their power will increase.
I dunno. Let's force the Blue Dogs to run as the Republicans that they are instead.
Rasmussen is typically five to ten points lower in Obama's presidential approval ratings than other polls. It is essentially an outlier poll that has consistently been tilted toward conservatives. Remember when McCain was supposedly neck and neck with Obama? Remember when Clinton was supposedly nipping at his heels? Rasmussen was a factor in those false assessments.
That said, there IS some concern that the Dems are squandering a golden opportunity. But really, is it any surprise? I'm a solid Dem, but I have little faith in our congressional leadership. Pelosi is too abrasive (No, I am not being sexist, she IS a partisan poltician, best suited as an opposition leader, not a majority party leader). Reid is a friggin' wet noodle--about as inspiring as John Kerry on Valium. He just doesn't put any zip on the face of Senate Democrats.
Still, I'm not fretting at this point. Obama is THE leader of the party, and as long as the country feels that his policies are working, then most Dems can ride his coattails come mid-term. And let's not forget that the party of no has very little in substantive alternatives, beyond the same policies that got us into this mess. It is my belief and hope that the American people will not forget that association in 19 months. But it would be nice if the congressional Dems did a better job of making distinctions between their forward-looking policies and the ass backward failed policies of the Repubs.
I am a republican and i support the president as alot of americans do, dems an repubs alike. Him failing is a failure for all of us. I do believe though that Pelosi and Reid are his worst enemies though.
Forceing through these massive agendas and spending what we just dont have. I was just as mad at Bush for letting my party spend like mad men. We are on the same road again, but with healthcare, Tarp, cap and trade and bailouts. Guitner is not helping either by saying 183 billion for bailouts then saying oops! its really double the amount. If the party could get rid of those three main dems they would be in alot better shape. I do think though that the president is a decent man with the hopes of doing great things for the country, some i agree with some i dont, but i still support him. Just not those three who i think would throw him under the bus to get what they want.
Wrong, wrong.
I think that the democratic party can use some fresh ideas and new faces. If we can all remember the fight about the the Michigan and Florida votes between Clinton supporters and Obama supporters, we remember how ugly it got. The old gaurd in politics, on both sides of the isle, are refusing to allow fresh ideas to get a chance to uproot them and their connections. That is a shame. Thankfully more young people are paying more attention as we have usually been the targets of some of the most ridiculous legislation in the history of the world. Young people fill up the prisons all around this nation, but every time you look at the news and see some guy ripping people off for billions, it is usually some guy over 60. When you see a crooked politician selling out his constituants, it is rarely some guy under 45 years old. We have exeptions like the Detroit Mayor Killpatrick, but not all that many.
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