We’ll have to bookmark this wisdom of David Brooks and check back in November to see if he was prescient or dead wrong:
I’d say that Obama is a slight underdog this year: the scuffling economy will grind away at voters. But his leadership style is keeping him afloat. He has defined a version of manliness that is postboomer in policy but preboomer in manners and reticence.
Ezra Klein helpfully eviscerated the premise of Brooks’ column. The economic fundamentals predict a modest win by the president, and treating poll numbers as economic fundamentals is the work of a high-paid wanker. The president is suffering from a temporary dip in the polls brought on by the shock a lot of the country experienced when he endorsed gay marriage. Once people have a little time to digest that decision and the campaign moves on to other issues, the polls will return to the status quo. Nationally, Obama will lead by a small margin, but in the key states, he will have a comfortable lead. The reason for this is that Obama is very unpopular in the states he will lose, which brings down his national numbers. Yet, in the swing states, he is preferred to Mitt Romney.
The only time David Brooks mentions Mitt Romney in his column is to note that one analyst thinks Romney is operating with a disadvantage and another analyst thinks the contest is a toss-up. At no point does Brooks consider the possibility that the president is doing so well because his opponent is a terrible politician who emerged unloved from a disgraceful GOP primary. Instead, it’s all about the president’s post-feminist ‘ESPN masculinity.’
The president is winning because he’s self-evidently a better person and a better leader than his opponent. He’s winning because the economic fundamentals, while not strong, are good enough that people aren’t going to toss him out in favor of a bullying dork whose policies are based on fantasies and flip-flops. You can’t explain this election without noting the president’s strengths, including his likability. But you can’t explain it without noting the ridiculous state of the GOP and their preposterous standard-bearer either.
What I’m seeing are the swing state polls looking worse for Obama than before.
Ah, about manliness. I think Brooks is right in that Obama HAS this quality. He does have a modern “sensitive” guy image, but also a distinctly alpha male one. It’s not hidden. I think that does help him. But I also think it’s not why he is doing better than he should be.
Polls show that more people are motivated by the gay marriage decision to vote against him than vote for him, even though most people don’t care one way or the other. Thus, his poll numbers have dipped. It is temporary. First, people will increasingly accept his wisdom, and, second, they will be focused on other things.
I don’t see gay marriage as what moved the needle. But we’ll see I guess.
so, you think people rewarded Romney for his bullying then?
I said it over at my place — Romney is gaining because he’s not in the news as much now that the primaries are over. We politics obsessives are paying attention to him, but average Americans don’t see him on TV every night.
The less you see of Romney, the more you like him — and vice versa. And come fall, you’ll see more and more of him.
Right.
The other effect of the primaries being over is the consolidation of his support among Republicans. Supporters of other candidates who might have said “don’t know” or even “Obama” are falling into line behind Mitt.
Perhaps we’re not giving Romney enough credit. Looking back and giving equal challenges where due it’s hard to think of any other historical Rep challenger that would do that much better against Obama.
Reagan would have given him a go, if the TParty folded, not the reverse.
One of the reasons shows like UP with Chris Hayes is so appealing is that the in-depth conversations negates the ability of the getawaywithit one liner lies that MSM format forces on the listeners. Brooks always reminds me of someone who thinks talking points in his email box are life’s answers.
So THAT is why he’s paid so much: he’s an expert handicapper of political manliness. I never would have guessed.
If he were such an expert on that quality in POTUS elections, he would have acknowledged that short of a “black swan” appearing before election day, Willard can’t beat Obama. Therefore, Brooks is way overpaid.
When I read Brooks this morning I predicted it wouldn’t be long before you had to comment on his ridiculousness, Martin.
Reading between the lines: boomers suck!
It’s the Economy, Stupid. The Government can fudge GDP numbers and say “The Recession is Over”. They can write people out of the workforce and say “Unemployment is down!”. They can screw with weightings and seasonal adjustments and say, “There is Zero Inflation!”. But the voters know better. They see businesses folding every week. They look for work and can’t find it. Every time they buy something, the price is up, except for the valuation on their houses. They see JOMChase laughing off $2billion bets after getting Trillions from a government that can’t adequately fund basic social services.
Obama would be toast if Romney wasn’t such a widely hated dork. Obama IS likable. It’s all he’s got. Against another likable candidate like Huckabee, he would be a one-term President like Jimmy Carter.
I’m trying to figure out what your ideological affiliation is, and I’m genuinely flummoxed. It’s like you’re neither right-wing nor left, but all of the above.
I suppose I feel that I am a realist. The only politician that I ever completely agreed with ideologically was Howard Dean. Not always at first, but he gradually converted me with logic. Every time I thought he had a wrong policy, I wound up agreeing with him. I especially liked how he insisted that the real world trumped dogma. “If the theory doesn’t agree with the facts, then change the theory, not the facts.”
Note in the post above, I didn’t say that Obama caused the bad economy, nor that he didn’t try. It was just a statement of electoral truth as I see it.
Someone in the wilderness might not have the best understanding of what most people are thinking.
The notion that people aren’t seeing improvement in the economy is bull. There’s actually polling data linked to in the Klein post.
Who are they polling? No one that I know. But I suppose blue collar proles don’t count. Only the “best people” count.
This reads like parody. You know know anyone who was polled, so the poll must be worthless.
Every credible pollster out there, including those linked to in the piece, collects economic data on respondents in order to ensure an accurate sample.
This is twice now that you’ve denied actual data for no other reason than that it isn’t what you want to believe. That’s the opposite of reality-based.
No. I just report what I hear in the lunch room and the break room and from my neighbors. Where do you work and live and how much (broad figures) do you make. I don’t mind telling you my exact salary. Here it is off my latest paycheck, $57,486 per annum. I bet you make twice that in an office someplace. I work in paper dust and machine oil. I hope to retire with all my fingers intact. That would make me a minority. I fix machines. I talk with other repair personnel. I talk with machine operators. I talk our custodians (janitors to you). No one ever polled them either. None of them think the economy is getting better.
NoneOnly one of them thinks he can leave and get another job. I have a cousin who lost his job as a delivery driver four years ago when his company folded and he was 58. He still has no job, no money, no prospects. Tell him how low unemployment is.Well, I make a lot less than that and talk with janitors daily, and am bright enough to know that none of that means shit when it comes to the existence of statistics.
The fact that you and others don’t understand the methods doesn’t imply the methods are wrong. Pollsters don’t need to poll you or your coworkers to understand what people similar to you and your coworkers think.
I understand statistics very well, thank you. And algebra, matrix algebra, calculus, tensor analysis, complex variables, etc.
I also know that if you want to, you can make them say anything you want.
I believe what I see with my eyes. When I drive down a major road noting the boarded up buildings, I don’t believe there isn’t a recession. When I know personally at least a score of people with mortgage problems, I don’t believe happy days are here again, except for Jamie Dimon.
No, I don’t think you do. “I believe what I see with my eyes” is fine if you want to study religion, but it’s not statistically valid. You can’t generalize about a city economy that way, let alone a country (and certainly not one the size of the US). What happens on the southern part of Fargo isn’t necessarily indicative of Fargo as a whole, let alone Boston.
You can indeed make statistics say whatever you want. But you’ll get caught if anybody who knows stats makes a serious effort to debunk you. The determination on pollsters’ usefulness comes from their ability to predict. That’s why guys like Nate Silver grade them and ask for larger amounts of data to demonstrate transparency (note, too, that polling leading up to 2004 and 2008 was pretty accurate).
It’s not terribly difficult to figure out when pollsters are lying. Recall what happened with dKos’s pollster a couple years back.
I’ll give you the flip side: There are more businesses opening here in Tallahassee by my eyes. There’s new construction going on. Friends and neighbors are getting hired at a faster pace. But guess what? The change in economic activity here hasn’t been nearly as big as it would appear, because (1) I live and work in the quadrant where more of the activity is going on and (2) Tallahassee is a somewhat socialist economy — most money is connected to FSU, FAMU or the state government — and a handful of boarded-up restaurants and a new Target or two makes up too small a chunk of the work to have much impact.
You understand that 8% unemployment doesn’t mean that 1 out of 13 people you personally know has to be out of work but 1 out of 13 people looking for work across the country are out of work? Right?
Wow you make a lot of assumptions about Joe and I don’t know him but you know what happens when we assume.
Jim, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from I.I.T. and a Master’s from the University of Maryland. I was a National Merit Scholar and have a perfect score on the Physics GRE.
Please don’t talk to me as if I were a High School dropout.
Or did you assume that because I said I am a blue collar worker again?
I talk to you that way because you clearly don’t understand economics or how the government does it’s statistics. If you did you wouldn’t make those ridiculous comments.
No one cares what you do and no one is judging you based on what you do. We are just responding to your comments, which are just plain silly.
Please don’t talk to me as if I were a High School dropout.
Then say less-stupid things.
You do understand that the employment-population ratio (em-pop) is a more robust measure of the economy than the official unemployment rate, don’t you? In the 16-24 demographic it’s terrible — a condition that’s also prevalent and even worse in the UK, Spain, Greece, etc. In the historically relatively stable ages 25-54 portion of em-pop, it declined significantly from 2008 to 2009 and has NOT rebounded. So, that stat confirms what TVITW is seeing out in the real world and doesn’t confirm the stats you’re using to form your opinion.
What’s pathetic is that in this country politics is dominated by religio-facist nutcases (aka GOP) and “free-market” freaks, vulture capitalists, and “national security” freaks (aka GOP and DEM neo-liberals and neo-cons).
No. I just report what I hear in the lunch room and the break room and from my neighbors.
That’s a really lousy way to go about trying to understand public opinion. Have you ever heard the name Pauline Kael?
I live in Lowell, and teach in a school that is surrounded on three sides by the projects for a little under $250 a week. Want to start a proletarian dick-measuring contest with me? You’ll lose.
I’ve never made 57 grand a year in my life, but if I did fit the caricature you decide to make up to make yourself feel better, and worked in an office for six figures, would it be valid for me to assume that the opinions of my coworkers were a valid method of understanding the opinion of the general public?