Bruce Benidt
Jon Austin
tcarideo
Ellen Mrja
Mike KeliherTrying to sort signal from noise is tough in any business but particularly so in the hothouse world of presidential politics. In that context, are the following indicators or just static:
- Gordon Smith, incumbent Republican Senator from Oregon, is running ads featuring an implicit endorsement from Barack Obama.
- Team Obama says they expect to concentrate their efforts in 14 states that Bush won in 2004: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia. This list includes some states that haven’t voted Democratic in a while.
This goal – or hubris – got a response from the McCain camp that at least gets points for effort: “‘It’s revealing that Barack Obama has now been forced to expand the states on his map because he’s so weak in traditional Democratic targets such as West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida, not to mention his ongoing problems in Pennsylvania and Ohio,’ said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.”
- A Bloomberg-Los Angeles Times poll gives Obama a 15-point lead over McCain. June leads don’t always translate into big margins, it’s worth noting.
- The latest consumer confidence survey reports a month-over-month drop of nearly eight points to a stand-on-the-ledge 50.4 percent. Even more telling, their expectations for the next six months are even worse at 41.0 percent, the lowest levels ever recorded in the history of the survey. Similarly, the percentage of those expecting their incomes to drop in the future is setting new highs.
- Obama’s fundraising machine is offering special t-shirts for those who donate $30 or more before the June 30 FEC reporting deadline. You can also get a car magnet for $15. I don’t know if this means they’re trying to spike the ball in the endzone by raising a truly monster number or if they’re trying to avoid underperforming expectations, but given that a single event this week in L.A. raised $5 million for him, I’m not betting on him underperforming.
What’s it all mean, Crowdies? Evidence of a tsunami in the making? Uncorrelated factoids without meaning? Something in between?
- Austin
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Barack Obama, consumer confidence, electoral politics, fundraising, Gordon Smith, John McCain
They add up to what you’ve written about so well before Jon, an electoral thumping. Obama’s position in the wake of a brutal primary is strong, but I’m frankly surprised it’s not stronger. If he weren’t African American and a new model that voters still need to test drive, I think the lead would be bigger. Now we’ll see how the next few months of test driving goes.
JOE: “If he weren’t African American…”?
Joe, Obama’s race is the only reason he has the limelight.
A white candidate with the identical platform and disposition wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar.
Race is Obama’s big drawing card – at least with the media. It remains to be seen if his race will be decisive for a majority of voters (and I guess that’s your point).
Obama’s platform is substantively no different than Hillary’s, Kerry’s, Edwards’, Pelosi’s, etc.
Karl, I doubt we’ll agree on this one, and I’m not sure how research will ever resolve it.
Yes, being African American has an upside. No argument from me on that. But most of his supporters are motivated by his leadership skills, not his skin color. Evidence: I’d guess most of Obama’s millions of non-African American supporters didn’t support other African Americans for president in their lifetimes, which they would have done if race was their uber-motivator.
But his race also has a downside. There is still racism in American, sometimes front-and-center and sometimes back-of-mind.
Beyond racism, there are some people who worry that an African American will help poor African Americans at the expense their race and/or class group. That political liability isn’t based in racism, but it is based on Obama’s race.
So, I think his being an African American is a NET downside politically. It’s not huge, which is very encouraging for us as a country. But if the election gets close, it could be big enough to make a difference.
If Obama didn’t represent “a new model that voters still need to test drive,” John McCain would be challenging Hillary Clinton to a series of town hall debates right now.
I don’t necessarily buy the racist angle. America’s most popular TV personality (Oprah) is black, so is its favorite athlete (Tiger).
But for a large percentage of whites (those of a liberal bent) Obama’s race is the essential trait that he brings to the table. Yes, he has charisma and likability. But his platform is undifferentiated from any other Democrat’s. If he were white, he’d get nowhere near the same attention.
I predict that media-driven hoopla over Obama masques the displeasure of a silent majority which will reveal itself in November. The displeasure is broad and deep.
But Karl, you say, what about the 18 million donors Obama has amassed? I define them as a passionate subset of a largely discontent and unpredictable nation.
This has year as all the makings of a repeat of ‘00.
But for the folks who do harbor some bit of racism, it’s one thing to watch a golfer or a TV host and a-whole-nuther thing to have “one of them” run “your” country, don’t you think?
Me? I was really hoping we would have seen Condi run against Hillary. A woman vs. a black woman — who’s a Republican. It would have been beautifully upsetting to so many people!
As far as race goes…it is pretty well know that when an African American runs, they tend to poll better than they actually perform. Best example of this was when Doug Wilder ran for governor of Virginia in the 1980’s–the polls had him winning in a landslide, and he eked out a single digit victory.
Explanation–whites tell pollsters that they will vote for an African American, because they are afraid that if they say they won’t, they will be percieved as racist. So what they are doing is preference falsification. .They may be racist, they may not–this isn’t a part of the explanation at all, and there is no way of knowing why they don’t support that particular African American candidate. There are plenty of possible explanations for that (and racism is one).
But the point is that Obama’s polling number’s are almost certainly inflated by some whites saying that they will vote for him because they are afraid of being perceived as racist if they don’t say they support him.
If you are interested in this phenomena, there is a book by Timur Kuran on the topic (I can’t remember the title) which explains lots of interesting historical incidents (such as the surprisingly fast collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall–after all, in a police state, who would dare indicate anything less than total support for the government).
Great post PM. Thanks.