« Newspaper Fronts In Historic Civil Rights Cities... | Main | Recrminations Watch: Boehner Asks To Keep His Job » Debate: Did Obama Realign Politics? Or Just Expand The Base?05 Nov 2008 11:40 am
So Barack Obama's victory equation: 1.20 (African American voters are a share of the electorate) + 1.0 (Hispanic voters, shifting their allegiances to the Democratic Party, particularly in the West) + 1.XX? (18 to 29 year old turnout, goosed by higher numbers among younger Hispanics) + a larger share of working class / non college whites than John Kerry (6 percentage points).
Geographically, Obama and the Democrats picked up a lot of suburban white collar counties in the Midwest and West... and lost ground in the South, doing worse than Kerry, Gore and Clinton. So -- Obama didn't realign the electorate so much as he flushed out and energized his base. More than any previous Dem presidential candidate, he took advantage of demographic trends. What, if anything, does this say about Obama's mandate?
Comments (29)
I have long thought the closest analogy to this election has been the 1980 election. If Obama has a reasonably successful term, which I believe he will, and if the Republican party responds by becoming even more white and even more religious and even more Southern - the idea being McCain wasn't conservative enough - then the next election could well be a replay of the 1984 election. It won't be that big of a blow-out, the South being the South, even Palin could win Texas and Mississippi and the like - but this margin might well be an appetizer compared to what awaits in 2012. 
Democrats are winning growing demographics, Republicans are winning shrinking demographics. I don't know that it's more complicated than that.
Did anyone notice Ralph Nader's vote totals in Missouri? http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrweb/statewideresults.asp?eid=256 Obama's down by 6,000 votes, and Nader drew 18,000 there. Thank goodness Missouri wasn't the only state standing between Obama and the Presidency. Nader almost succeeded in stopping the first Black President of the United States! What more does Nader want? He wanted to stop the guy with the most liberal voting record in the Senate? The guy was a community organizer, for Christ's sake!! Also, let's see how many of those North Carolina write-ins were for Nader. What a jerk.
and lost ground in the South, doing worse than Kerry, Gore and Clinton. I suggest you go back and review the electoral maps of the 2000 and 2004 election and strike this sentence. Obama won Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina. Gore* and Kerry won no southern states. * Ok he won Florida in a metaphysical sense but, well, it didn't count or he would have been President. What, if anything, does this say about Obama's mandate? "Mandates" are a meaningless concept promoted by media pundits who need something to talk about because they don't understand how government actually works. What matters is not what Obama's margin was in the election but whether he can find enough votes to pass his agenda in Congress, whether the policies he enacts work well, whether the economy recovers, and whether no disastrous foreign policy fiascoes or terrorist attacks occur on his watch. "Can a non-Obama Dem replicate Obama's numbers?" Almost any Democrat could have won this year. The states won would have been slightly different if, say, Hillary Clinton had been the nominee but it would still have been a victory of approximately the same order. As for future elections (presumably starting in 2016 since we'll assume Obama wins renomination in 2012), it's completely pointless to speculate this far in advance.
Read through your post. Since when are suburban collar counties the Democratic base?
Liberal against Nader: I was going to write about forgetting about Nader and moving on, but then I saw Ron E.'s comment about Florida, and realized that Nader's decisions do impact what happens to our country. Thank goodness Missouri wasn't decisive.
With all due respect, I don't understand how this could affect perception of "his mandate." Truth be told, wouldn't an expansion of the electorate--energized segments of young and undervoting ethnic minorities--suggest that, in the past, their needs, wishes, and interests weren't being represented? That is to say, measuring Obama's mandate by how many Kerry-Bush voters he won over relative to Kerry or Bush is much like deciding the Democratic party nomination based on the number of electoral votes a state has--it's a really silly goalpost.
Hillary probably wouldn't have taken IN and NC, but rest of map would look about the same for her as Barack...maybe she runs a bit better in Missouri? Of course McCain probably doesn't try for PA, maybe puts more in the NV/CO/NM area. The demographic shift in the West seems moving to a permanent favorable change for the Democrats- NV/CO/NM are becoming more Democratic. AZ probably would have moved to Obama as well absent McCain's home court advantage. If immigration becoming for Dems what Civil Rights Act was for Republican the more highly Latino populated states will move toward the Democrats. The other question to ask is what does a Republican map look like? It seems their best case is to repeat Bush 2004, though even then CO/NV/NM (and increasingly AZ) will be harder to hold and the only possible credible Kerry 2004 state to pick up remains PA. Does a conservative base candidate in the Huckabee/Palin mold have any chance of taking PA, or holding CO/NV/NM? Somewhat like the Democratic Party 1976-2000 when you needed a candidate in your opponents turf (eg moderate Southerners) Republicans will need to have a candidate in their oponents turf (eg moderate Governor from OH/PA/MI). It may take a 2012 blowout, like the Mondale blowout in 1984, to realize you cant win if your base is 40% of the country.
One more thing: how silly should the Republican party feel right now? Quietly, in 2007, Bush was hoping most in his party would agree to immigration reform and help deliver the large, emerging Latino demographic for the Republican Party. Latinos are more likely to have strong family connections, practice conservative catholicism, and operate small businesses. John McCain hopped on board, but then in the primary, he had to keep up with the stampede to slightly left of Tancredo. So, I didn't see any exit polls but I'd have to say this was a stunning rebuke of the Republican party--both by Dobbsocrats, who would wanted a GOP candidate who could run on a border-control policy, and Latinos alike.
Biggest shift was among college-educated whites in the suburbs. Orange County, California only went to McCain by 4 points. That's the lowest margin in US history for a Republican. Dupage County, Illinois, went blue for the first time (though the home state helped). Look at gains for Obama in the suburban Sun Belt - Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Nashville. Where McCain gained was among rural, uneducated whites in the South. And, yes, it was because Barack Obama is black.
I believe Hillary would have won, but her deficit-spending campaign chest would have almost certainly forced her into public financing. This would have left her fighting the old Pennsylvania-Ohio-Florida battle, with decent prospects in West (by God) Virginia and Arkansas. Of course Hillary in the race may have allowed McCain to pick a VP to appeal to Independents, since running against a Clinton may have been enough to energize the Republican base. Going forward, I think it will be much easier for Obama to pass along his support, since he will have four (or possibly eight) years to continue to identify and organize his supporters. I don't believe so much in the idea of 'mandate', other than it gives a new President an opportunity to pass his top agenda ideas in the first year or two. Then the 2010 Congressional cycle will create a new idea of mandate.
lost ground in the South Huh? Southern states won by Gore: none Southern states won by Kerry: none Southern states won by Obama: FL, VA, probably NC, almost GA
I'm thinking maybe you all are looking at this from the wrong end. Maybe the right question is "Why is the GOP so strong in places like Utah and Oklahoma, and what price are they paying for that elsewhere on the electoral map."
To Nathan and Oracle: Thank you. It's really this kind of small-bore, losing the forest for the trees "analysis" in this posting that is irritating the hell out of me this A.M. Could a non-Obama duplicate/replicate his performance? Well: That's what "models" are for, right? So: It would seem to me that over time people will extract (people who are not simply looking for ways to minimize a great achievement)key elements in Obama's campaign; e.g., good community-activism writ large, intersection of message and moment, effective use of technology/demographic data etc., etc. - And perhaps craft a model for winning that can be duplicated ... Kind of like Bush's ground operation in 2000 and 2004 provided a model for this election... Geez...
Can a non-Obama Dem replicate Obama's numbers? No. Your average Democratic candidate won't see the increased African-American turnout and voting margins (i.e., they'll only go 90-10 Dem, not 98-2), and youth turnout will probably drop somewhat. Perhaps that will be balanced by better results with downscale whites. Educated whites are Democrats so long as the Republicans remain the party of fundies and bigots. They don't like to be associated with that type of crowd.
How do you figure that Obama did worse than Kerry in the south? The only states in the south that Obama did worse than Kerry were Lousiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Obama did better than Kerry in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida. Even if you decide that Florida and Virginia aren't really part of "The South" you analysis still doesn't hold. If you look at votes and not states your analysis doesn't hold. This doesn't make any sense at all.
And please, no more "small-bore" or "large-bore" if you haven't shouldered a weapon in the last year.
I don't think you can extrapolate on Obama in that way. That's not to suggest that he is special, rather that the circumstances are. If you look at where Obama lost the south, you saw 20%+ of Texans polling that they though he was a Muslim, etc. 4 years from now, that fear won't exist. Fear is not a lasting thing, because it only works so long as there is no evidence to support it. If 4 years from now we aren't a socialist nation run by Muslim terrorists, then the dynamic that shaped much of this election simply won't exist for the next. Hell, only 9% of voters put terrorism at the top of their concern list - that's a massive change from 2004, and there's no reason to believe that any of the current dynamic will carry forward to 2012 or 2016. Identity politics should take a heavy blow from this. How much of a blow will depend on how good a president Obama turns out to be. I think anyone playing the 2008 playbook in the future will lose.
He did worse in the rural South because of race and the "Muslim" thing. Who knows if that will turn around in 4 years, but success is and always has been the best electoral strategy. If people feel they're better off in 2012 than they are today, Obama will be re-elected, probably by an expanded coalition. Then another generation of Americans will have the imprint of Republicans=Bush=Bad and Democrats=Obama=Good, and it will realign the map. If Obama doesn't have a successful term, he'll lose and you won't see any lasting shift. It's not that complicated really.
I don't know if a non-Obama Dem could have done this, but I know that Hillary sure as hell couldn't have. Yeah, but not because of who Hillary is, rather because of how she approaches politics. Hillary would never have fought for Montana, North Carolina, Georgia. She would have gone for Kerry + OH, MO, NV, NM, CO, FL. It would have been a 6 state election. She probably still would have won, but it would have been much closer, and the coattails weren't there. We wouldn't be challenging for Senate in GA, MN, OR because she wouldn't have built infrastructure in those places.
President-elect Obama IS change. The results of yesterday's election represent neither the end nor the beginning of that change, but a point in time on the arc of change. As Ron E. posted, discussion of mandate is irrelevant. One of the many things that shall continue to change is the way we talk about politics and governance. Those of us engaged in bringing this change did not start yesterday and shall not stop today. President-elect Obama is our elected executive. We are his team of dedicated organizers. We expect the map of 2012, our base, to expand again. To bring that change we shall need to support President-elect Obama and intensify our organizational efforts. Can we do it? Yes, we can.
Hillary would have competed in AR and WV too, Martin.
The country has been realigning toward Democratic principles (e.g. universal healthcare seems like something you would want, especially if you know someone who lost their job, and their health care, because they got sick.) Dems have responded pretty well, expanding their base because they're offering answers to things people care about while the Republicans refight the culture wars, invoking Reagan at every other term Even Though He Has Been Dead For Years And Out of Office For Decades. Obama is a once-in-a-generation inspirational figure, so another Dem couldn't duplicate his effect. (I'll leave aside Hillary, who brings up special anti-Clinton effects.) In terms of the states put in play in the west and south, I do think another Dem could do it, especially given that the Republicans seem to be falling into a Palin-lovin'-litmus test, the problem is we didn't mention Reagan enough because the problems of 1980 are the problems of now, funk. That's no way to expand your party, and if they spend the next four years honing that mutter I expect Obama to get an 84ish landslide in 2012. Maybe after that some conservative yet not crazy people will rebuild the party.
RTe: Southern states won by Obama: FL, VA, probably NC, almost GA FL is not a true Southern state. In has Southern elements, especially in the north of the state, but it's really a melange on the whole country: Dixie, the Northeast, the Mkidwest, the Plains (i.e., the clout its agribusiness has) the Southwest and the West Coast. Plus some exotic foreign elements as well
Can a non-Obama Dem replicate Obama's numbers? Isn't that kind of a dishonest question? It's going to be eight years before a non-Obama Dem will face a Presidential election. In that time, the demographics of this country will shift as 8 years of deaths, 8 years of 18th birthdays, and 8 years of immigration, emigration, and migration reshape the American political landscape.
Mandate?? W declared himself mandated twice with a cumulative total margin of victory far smaller than Obama's. Of course he has a mandate, and he got it by expanding the base and the blue terrain. So cute to see the Republicans (e.g. Coburn) trying to spin "no mandate here!" Suuuuure. Can a non-Obama Democrat ....? I dunno, Has a non-Reagan Republican? What's a non-Obama Demmocrat? Less intelligent? Less articulate? Someone with a less compelling vision? How many candidates for either party have turned out crowds the way he did, and not only in the US? I don't expect to see his equal as a candidate. And he's got all my hopes and dreams and best wishes as he takes over.
Obama's win can be attributed to his political skills and to the fact that he's not a middle-aged white guy. The days of tickets consisting of two white men are permanently over -- for both parties.
I agree with those who pointed out that Obama improved on Kerry's results in most of the south, excluding only Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, and the last one was definitely affected by Katrina. But Obama's success is even more pronounced when you look at the NY Times county map http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html In South Carolina, only two counties turned slightly toward Republicans between 2004 and 2008. Most of the counties became more Democratic by a significant amount. Similar though less pronounced trends are evident throughout the south, except for the three states mentioned above. And Obama significantly underperformed Kerry only in Arkansas. In all other states, he either held roughly steady or significantly improved on Kerry's result. Obama even did better than Gore in the south.
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I don't know if a non-Obama Dem could have done this, but I know that Hillary sure as hell couldn't have.
She would have won OH and FL and won the election, but NC, IN, VA, CO, NV? no way.
Posted by Dan | November 5, 2008 11:47 AM