Do you ever get tired of reading analysts who ignore that the presidential contest is a competition between two human beings and try to predict what will happen by looking at economic data or other historical factors? For me, the only historical factor that matters is how the American people have treated incumbent presidents. Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton were each reelected by much larger margins than they won in their initial campaigns. Carter and Poppy Bush were voted out. The three presidents who started land wars in Asia that we couldn’t win (Truman, Johnson, and Dubya) damaged themselves. Only Dubya even had the chutzpah to run for reelection, and he barely won.
To believe that Obama would lose, you had to think that his presidency was following the pattern of Carter and Poppy Bush. In other words, the economy was too weak for Obama to win reelection. But it’s a mistake to blame Carter and Poppy Bush’s defeats on the economy. They faced, respectively, the most talented Republican and the most talented Democratic opponents of their generation. Reagan and Clinton were political giants, and that is why they won. Bad economic times helped them, but they would win in almost any environment. They had political talent.
I don’t know why so few people looked at this election as a contest between a gifted politician, organizer, and orator and a complete buffoon. It’s mystifying to me. There was never any chance in hell that Mitt Romney would be competitive in this election regardless of economic conditions. He is a truly awful politician. Everyone should have been able to see that.
i’m busy fondly remembering the heady days of anti-Obama white “progressives” declaring Obama = Carter. good times, good times.
The petty little contest of who could be over him first.
Remember that Mitt is running solely because he looked more “presidential” than the looney toons who tried to run against him. Most voters hadn’t had the chance to hear him speak or learn much about him until he won the Republican nomination. And he was touted as such a brilliant businessman that those who were struggling in this economy assumed he could fix things.
Well, har har. He’s been completely exposed for the charlatan he is. He’s humorless, has no capacity for compassion, lacks an ounce of honesty, and is willfully ignorant about the plight of average Americans. His own party is disgusted and furious with his shitty campaign and his own running mate is going rogue like Palin did with McCain.
He’s fallen and I don’t see anyone reaching down to help him up. Here in Ohio we are flooded (five ads for every damned commercial
break) with Romney’s desperate attempts to highlight the economy
against Obama. People aren’t buying it.
Good riddance.
Not sure where you are in Ohio, but the ads are pretty distracting. I don’t think anyone is buying them at all. Everyone I talk to who is undecided just loathes even having to look at ads from either party. I think at this point, the economic situation is already baked into the cake, as far as informing people’s decisions.
Romney and the GOP were salivating at the prospect of the timing of August jobs report coming right on the heels of Obama’s acceptance at the convention. And the fact is, it didn’t move the needle at all. The slow, upward trajectory of Obama’s numbers continued unabated. So barring some tremendous economic catastrophe between now and November 6, I don’t think the GOP can depend on things like monthly numbers to make any kind of difference for them. They know this, and it is why they are starting to flail wildly. They are desperately shuffling and re-shuffling the deck, trying to find some magical trump card. Every day that passes makes it more and more unlikely that one will be turned up in time to save them.
My apologies for my fractured comment. It looked fine when I sent it.
Richard, I’m in Dayton, Ohio. The ads have been running for months, of course, but this past weekend they doubled. It is way more than distracting: it’s infuriating. And the attacks on Sherrod Brown are pathetic. They’re trying to go after his voting record, which is actually quite good.
Romney is harping on China and the economy now. Obama’s ads refute those charges easily with Romney’s own words, so it’s all back and forth and the same ads running over and over. It makes me want to throw a book at the TV.
I will be so relieved when this is over.
I did get an Obama/Biden yard sign yesterday. 🙂
Nice to have a yard sign but remember the Obama 2008 mantra: “yard signs don’t vote.”
Oh, I know. My husband and son have canvassed locally and done phone banking. We’re all voting and we go to rally events, too. Our yard sign is here to piss off the neighbor who blares Limbaugh off his front porch.
Yow! Limbaugh blaring off the porch?? That’s really disturbing the peace. I feel for you. And I’m so glad I live in California.
donnah, I’m headed to a rally this afternoon for Sherrod Brown. He is appearing in Middletown. It will be a good time!
I put my bumper sticker on last Sunday. I’ll have to post a picture. Not many stickers this year, or yard signs.
I think people have already played out in their minds what it might be like to have Romney at the wheel and rejected him. An economic disaster would probably actually boost Obama right now because they’re comfortable with him in times of crisis. Romney has already proven that he can not be trusted. Not a time to change leaders.
General perceptions of candidate quality can sometimes be somewhat retroactive. Remember Reagan’s “voodoo economics”? Last year Romney was seen by many as the competent, electable, moderate Republican with a lot of successful business and political experience. Next year everyone will “know” and will of course always have known what a terrible candidate he was.
There’s nothing retroactive about my analysis. The only thing that has changed is other people’s analysis has changed to match mine.
If everyone’s perceptions were as insightful as yours, who would read your blog? 🙂
Yes, you’ve been leading from the front, even before the opinion polls gave you much support. I’ve been careful to couch my comment in terms of “general” perceptions.
Not being as close to the action as you, I have been surprised by the sheer incompetence of his campaign. I thought that with a tepid economy, CU money, and a rabid racist base he was in with a shout if he could recover his poise after the primaries and build on his moderate image.
The sheer cumulative incompetence of his campaign has shocked me. I’ve worked with some very senior and very incompetent US businessman – including Bainies – but I’ve never seen anything so shockingly incompetent in political life.
It tends to confirm my theory that the US is more of a class society than even European societies and that the higher executive and country club set live in a bubble all of their own where even the most incompetent can get ahead and make money through having the right connections. It used to be that what we criticised European societies for. But now, through good public education, European societies are more social mobile than the much hallowed “free” USA. Who’d have thunk?
Being the kind of person I am, I’ve thought about your final paragraph and here’s how I explain it.
It has to do with the failure of meritocracy. Lack of protections in the past really did mean that some people with a lot of luck, talent or skill did get ahead. But that was generations ago. The current crop of elites is basically free-loading off the gains of their ancestors just like European aristocracy did. Only because our of meritocratic culture (or rather, the cultural myth of it) they believe to deserve their place. But that’s a misunderstanding even of the myth.
In Europe by contrast, most of the aristocracy in the modern era aren’t in politics or play a very marginal role. They do social events or play. And they certainly have their own financial elite.
However, you say that European societies are more mobile than America’s. Yeah, if you’re a white European. What if you’re of Turkish descent? Or Algerian? Or Pakistani? And that’s leaving aside the “lazy southerns” feelings that Germany among others have displayed during the financial crisis. When did the American economic consensus fracture? When the Democrats went for civil rights for minorities. European societies are more socially mobile because European societies are less color-diverse.
Things are changing very rapidly in Europe. Ireland used to be the most insular, mono-ethnic and mono-religious of societies, but now 17% of the population weren’t born here, and many are upwardly socially mobile (from a low base).
Immigrant communities in the UK, France, Benelux and even Germany have been making great strides in terms of social mobility although there are problems at the fringes and a fascist reaction in some countries.
My point was more about class rather than specifically ethnic mobility however, and don’t forget that when you are talking about Europe, and even the EU, you are talking about very many distinct societies, and only a very gradually emerging common European identity.
However whites will be a minority in both USA and EU by 2050 and of course hispanics are by definition European whereas some still don’t seem to regard them as “real” Americans!
You’re patting yourself on the back far too much for being smarter than the Washington Post opinion writers for a person who spent like six months saying Romney was so weak a candidate that the GOP would have a brokered convention.
…And no, you can’t hit me back for ever going soft on the President’s reelection odds. Which I have never said were less than 100% on this blog.
Find me one instance of me predicting that there would be a brokered convention.
What I said was that it was a possibility because Romney couldn’t seal the deal. Luckily for him, the voters kept vacillating between seven alternatives rather than settling on just two.
I laid down my marker on August 1st of this year here at the Frog Pond:
“My prediction: Romney will reach a tipping point by October or sooner in which, like Bob Dole, he is cut loose by the party and even the billionaire’s club backing him. The race will then be a full scale effort to salvage the House and possibly the Senate. There will at first be a trickle of Republican defections, as we’re beginning to see now, but that will rapidly turn into a panicked rush for the exits. Romney is a toxically bad politician, he is hated within his own party, and he will increasingly be seen as a loser.
I see Harry Reid’s mischievous story about Romney not paying taxes for 10 years to be another tell. That Reid, a fellow Mormon, would take this step now is significant. Much of the Mormon community will eventually turn on Willard, not wanting his very toxicity to poison the position the Church has worked hard to achieve. Likewise even Wall Street and vulture capitalists will turn on him when his radioactivity threatens to take the whole traitorous lot of them down.”
Any evidence for that last part?
Any day now. The Stench is getting to be too much.
Actually, yes…
I’ve said before a similar thought: I think Romney will go on vacation before election day. Rich frat boys like him don’t do defeat well- they just leave…probably to join their money offshore.
I think what happened is that liberals and conserv bought into either “isn’t Obama lucky” meme or “Obama’s naive & uppity” meme due in some parts if they’d admit on Obama being unlike any other AA pol they’d ever known. So Obama was never given his due for being a darn good campaigner, manager of his campaign, and now even debater. they all attributed it to not skill on Obama’s part, but mistakes by his competitors. it still permeates now, but seeing what a really. BAD campaigner looks like, I think it’s finally dawning on those people that hey, tnhis Obama guy knows what the heck he’s doing…luck ain’t go much to do with it. and it might not be as hard to beat him as they though
All you have to do is look no further than The Daily Show last night. Jon Stewart did an entire segment on how lucky the President is.
Luck favors the prepared.
And those that have, ahem, audacity: fortuna audaces juvat.
Thing is though, luck had nothing to do with him beating Hillary Clinton and sure did not help him defeat Bobby Rush.
He was lucky that Hillary put Mark Penn in charge of her campaign.
On the larger point, you’re right, he definitely has the goods. He hasn’t just gotten by on luck; he’s certainly had to bring his talent to bear. Luck doesn’t get you through the Reverent Wright tape.
Nonetheless, he’s certainly caught some good breaks.
The basic problem with the GOP is that they now insist on bullying dumbasses as their candidates. Ergo only a very significant bully or dumbass can hope to be the nominee. It’s not working.
From a Republican point of view, the ONLY reason America voted for an African-American liberal was that the economy was terrible, and we blamed the incumbent party. Therefore, as the economy is still bad, we should blame the Democrats and vote for the GOP, no matter how awful their candidate might be. It never occurs to them that some of us actually like and agree with Obama, or that the American people are smart enough to know where the blame still lies.
I don’t find it mysterious.
Political scientists are, like economists, social scientists in fields that put a great deal of emphasis on quantitative data.
So, it’s a common tendency in both fields to discount the significance of factors that are difficult to measure with a number.
In addition to what you said about the political skills of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter also had tough primary challenges when they ran for re-election. Carter faced a primary challenge on his left from Ted Kennedy in 1980 and George H. W. Bush faced a primary challenge on his right from Pat Buchanan in 1992.
“He is a truly awful politician. Everyone should have been able to see that.”
Everyone did see that. They just didn’t think it mattered.