I haven’t yet said anything about the mid-term national elections two weeks ago, but I will now break my silence. I wanted to \u201clet the dust settle\u201d, see what the pundits had to say about it. Well, as usual, the pundits have said a whole lot of different things. Most everyone agreed that the results were not good for the Democratic Party as a whole, and for President Obama’s chances of accomplishing anything over the next two years that would enhance his legacy. There was, however, a lot of disagreement as to just how bad it all was and what the implications are for the upcoming 2016 Presidential election. I’m now going to throw in my two cents on all of this.<\/p>\n
First off, I don’t see the election results as the sign of a \u201cnew Republican wave\u201d, the start of an era of GOP domination of national politics akin to what occurred between 1968 (end of LBJ, start of Richard Nixon) and 1992 (end of George HW Bush and start of Bill Clinton). I think that we are still in a ping-pong era where neither party has a decisive edge (although it does seem clear that the Democrats do better in Presidential elections and the GOP has an edge in mid-terms). The voting public right now is kind-of fickle and up-for-grabs. The Democrat’s supposed \u201cdemographic destiny<\/a>\u201d propounded by Ruy Teixeira and others still seems rather tenuous and theoretical. When voter turnout hardly every breaks 60%<\/a>, it still matters a lot just who possesses the most inspiration to actually take the hour or less that is required for most people to cast a vote in November (hardly 15 minutes for me, door-to-door). Most elections are determined \u201cat the margin\u201d, i.e. a swing of perhaps 5% of voters or less usually determines who the victor will be. <\/p>\n So, what were the inspirations that swung the critical 5% or so of voters on the 4th against the Democratic senatorial candidates in the key states (i.e., North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, Iowa and arguably Kansas with an independent-candidate footnote<\/a>)? The best analysis I read<\/a> was from Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner. Mr. Barone feels that the die was cast against the Democrats about one year ago, in the \u201cbotched\u201d roll-out of the HealthCare.gov web site (which took place in October 2013). I put brackets around the word botched, as I myself didn’t consider what transpired to be all that disastrous. Computer systems are complex, Obamacare is complex, and the organizational set-up that processes buyers on the national health care exchange is extremely complex. NASA didn’t get to the moon in the 1960’s without some mishaps, including one that took the lives of three astronauts. No one died because of the initial glitches on HealthCare.gov, and I believe that everyone that needed coverage was able to buy it within six weeks. <\/p>\n However, the American public did not seem as generous as me. Barone points out that in October 2013, Obama’s approval ratings were rising as public opinion turned against the GOP for the October government shut-down caused by the unwillingness of Republican members of the House to pass a budget (they were holding out to defund Obamacare, of course). Poll results regarding which party\u2019s candidate was favored in the next House elections reached a 6 percent Democratic advantage. The tide seemed to be turning in the Democrat’s favor.<\/p>\n HealthCare.gov was getting on its feet just as the shutdown occurred in early October, but once the GOP capitulated and passed an interim funding bill to keep the lights on in federal offices, more and more stories about frustrated attempts to use the site hit the press. The temporary revival of Obama’s numbers soon reversed itself, and began a descent from 45% approval in late October to around 40% by early December (using the poll average from the Real Clear Politics site). The President made a slight comeback in early 2014, reaching 44% briefly in May; but that number declined once again and has languished around 41% since late June. These three or four point swings don’t seem like much; but once again, elections are often decided by marginal voting blocks of less than 5% of the electorate. <\/p>\n Most of the Democratic Senatorial and House candidates tried to firewall themselves from Obama, but it didn’t work. The \u201cmarginal voters\u201d were obviously angry about Obamacare and weren’t going to let Democratic legislators off the hook, given the prominent role they played in making the Affordable Health Care Act a fact. The marginal “purple state” voters seemed wary early on of a new and unfamiliar federal intrusion into their lives, despite the many problems with private health care availability and cost (the things that inspired the AHCA). Their suspicions were then flamed into hostility by the perceived incompetence of an arrogant, disrespectful federal government. <\/p>\n Yes, the truth is that many more people have been helped by Obamacare than were inconvenienced by the temporarily unreliable web site (or by the required changes to coverage that increased some insurance bills, restricted which doctors could be used, etc.). Perhaps many of those who were helped are part of Teixeira’s pro-Democratic \u201cnew demographic\u201d. But people who become satisfied just don’t have the same inspiration to turn out and vote in an off-year as those who are aggrieved. And once again, you only need perhaps 3 or 4 percent of the voting population to turn the tide. I would not be surprised if most of this aggrieved 3 or 4 percent did not themselves experience problems with their health care coverage because of Obamacare. But the popularity of talk radio seems to fan passions and triggers imagined grievances vicariously. <\/p>\n The take-away from this appears to be that 2016 is NOT a shoe-in for the next Democratic Presidential candidate (Hillary Clinton, presumably; the Democratic bench is mostly empty these days, and fielding an Elizabeth Warren after the 2014 losses would appear to be a Kamikaze mission, a replay of George McGovern 1972). The Republicans of course are at a disadvantage for having the polar opposite situation from the Democrats regarding potential players. The 2016 GOP primary season looks like it will be a replay of the 2012 circus, which weighed heavily on (if not crippled) Mitt Romney’s bid to unseat Obama. <\/p>\n The nightmare scenario for Hillary and the Democrats is, of course, Jeb Bush<\/a>. Hillary will no doubt try to distance herself from Obama, but the 2014 mid-term results indicate that the \u201cmarginal swing\u201d faction will not let her do so. Of course, Mr. Bush also has his ties to a disgraced Presidency, that of his brother. But George W. Bush has become something of a quaint memory now, and I think that a lot of swing voters will be willing to listen to the “new Bush”. Jeb has the advantage of not looking much like W, and not talking or acting much like him either. The Dems would obviously try to hang W’s legacy on him, but I don’t feel that it will stick. <\/p>\n On the flip side of that, the Dems will also try to equate Hillary with Bill Clinton. But I’m not sure that rationale will stick either. Since 2009, Hillary has been \u201cObama-cized\u201d. Even before that, as a \u201cmodern woman\u201d seeking her own way in politics, she was never very \u201cBill-icized\u201d. It may be a stretch now for her to try to access the good vibes that still ripple across the heartland about Bill Clinton. Bill never lost the Arkansas in him; but Hilary clearly comes across as mostly New York and Washington. <\/p>\n Still, I don’t think that it’s too late for the Democrats to get their groove back for 2016. The biggest thing that Obama can do for the Democrats in 2016 is to make Obamacare work. And yes, that won’t be easy with a hostile legislative branch and a possibly hostile judicial branch. But if he gets another break from the Supreme Court and fends off the various attacks coming from Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell, he can push his administration to do a full-court press on health care. (And while fixing Obamacare, also fix Veterans Administration care). <\/p>\n As far as using his administrative resources to promote immigration reform (and I’m doubtful that the GOP Congress will come up with anything reasonable in that arena) \u2013 well, morally it is the right thing to do. And it would obviously help to solidify the Hispanic component of the “new demography”. But I honestly don’t think that this is the ticket to keeping a Democrat in the White House past January 19, 2017. I don’t feel that the Democrats have much to lose by stalling for time on immigration and posting the blame on a do-nothing Republican Congress. And as to global warming issues — again, they are the right thing to work on, but it’s the wrong time to do it. Let the XL pipeline go, throttle back on new EPA initiatives, let the economy grow — and Hillary can then deal with the long-term issues in 2017, hopefully with some real political capital in her pockets.<\/p>\n One slight glimmer of hope regarding Obamacare \u2013 some recent polls<\/a> on public approval levels have shown the negative rankings to be declining and the positive impressions to be gaining, however slightly. Hopefully it will occur to more and more voters that Obamacare really is helping a lot of people. Another possible positive sign is that unemployment levels have come down below 6% over the past few months, and monthly net job creation numbers have stayed above 200,000. The one thing that has not yet responded to a (hopefully) recovering economy is wage growth. Some economists feel, however, that wage growth may finally<\/a> come around, as the job markets tighten in the coming months. <\/p>\n These are the two areas where Obama could do the most to keep Hillary and the Dems in play in 2016. President Obama needs to do whatever he can with the time and resources that he has left to keep the economy growing and make Obamacare work as intended, if he hopes to be remembered as \u201cnot only the first African American President, but the male President who paved the way for the first female Presidency\u201d. If he could somehow pull that off, then his place in the history books of tomorrow will be spacious and secure, despite all the disappointments along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I haven’t yet said anything about the mid-term national elections two weeks ago, but I will now break my silence. I wanted to \u201clet the dust settle\u201d, see what the pundits had to say about it. Well, as usual, the pundits have said a whole lot of different things. Most everyone agreed that the results […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4887"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4890,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}