Reply #10: Obama over Hillary by 44 among Dems, Hillary over Obama by 27 among Repubs. Hence Tea Parties.

[fellowsufferer]

As I wrote in response to his Salon.com article, Mr. Conason seems to leave out some of the most telling results from his summary:

1) Obama not only tops Bush II in a head-to-head match-up, he tops Bill Clinton (29 to 19) in a match-up with all living former presidents. Given that Bill Clinton is the most popular (living) former president by a wide margin, this result would seem to be very salient indeed.

2) Also left out from the Salon.com article (but highlighted in the post here) are the results from the head-to-head match-up with Hillary Clinton: 38 percent would still chose Obama over Hillary, while only 30 percent would now choose Hillary over Obama. This certainly counts as another victory for the White House, and counts against the notion that, given the overwhelming opposition to Health Care, Obama was the wrong candidate for the job.

3) Even more telling - and potentially more troubling for the White House - is the fact that Obama, despite winning comfortably over Hillary Clinton among Democrats (67-23. Relative Appeal: +44), is far less attractive among Republicans: 33 percent would vote for Hillary, and only 6 percent for Obama (Relative Appeal: -27). A disparity of 71 percentage points exists in Obama's Relative (to Hillary) Appeal, between Democrats and Republicans. What can account for such a huge disparity?

Short Answer: Obama is uniquely polarizing. There would be no ‘Tea Parties’ if Hillary or Bill Clinton (or even Al Gore) had become president in 2009. The uniquely inspiring hope/change candidate is (ipso facto) uniquely able to inspire fears of radicalism/socialism among conservatives, especially if he happens to be African-American. (On this note, see psychologist Jonathan Haidt on ‘Ingroup/Loyalty’ among conservatives. See also Shankar Vedantam's 10-13-2008 article in the Washington Post: "Even more remarkably, the psychologists found that the volunteers were quicker to associate former British prime minister Tony Blair with being American than Obama. Blair is white... On a conscious level, volunteers said that both Obama and McCain were American, but on a subconscious level, volunteers were quicker to associate McCain with being American than Obama -- and the strength of these subconscious associations predicted people's voting intentions... The provocative research also may help explain why Obama has proved vulnerable to negative messages that question his identity and his loyalty to America. From the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim and that he refuses to salute the American flag, to the repeated reminders at Republican rallies that Obama's middle name is Hussein and recent concerns that voters just don't know enough about him...")

Long Answer: The results of the Newsmax poll (in particular the results of the Obama-Hillary match-up) reflect the widespread perception among conservatives that Obama is a far-left radical. Such a perception has no basis in fact. Conservatives don’t trust Obama, and actively distrust him, despite the many concessions he has made to conservative principles. (Krugman/Stiglitz wanted the Stimulus to be much bigger, wanted more comprehensive financial regulation. War in Afghanistan was expanded. No single-payer. No public option.) From a policy perspective, there is no reason for conservatives to prefer Hillary Clinton over Obama, yet something about her personality makes her far more reassuring to conservatives. By a wide margin. And we would likely see the same phenomenon - conservative distrust of Obama - if other prominent Democrats (Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Biden) were matched up with Obama in a poll.

Many of the things that made Obama uniquely credible and inspiring as a genuinely different candidate now make him appear to conservatives – despite all evidence of his policy centrism to the contrary – a uniquely credible ‘threat’ of socialism and disaster. Conservative politicians and media figures have recognized this (Beck, Hannity, Palin, etc.). They too ignore the evidence and sound the alarm, reinforcing the disproportionate, rather incongruous vehemence of ‘Tea Party’ opposition to the current administration. As Obama has said again and again, there can be legitimate disagreements, but the extreme characterizations of him as a radical and a socialist have no basis in fact. And while there was some discussion of these issues in the press following Joe Wilson's outburst, people seem to have slowly forgotten, even as the wild distortions of the current administration's policies have continued.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/12/AR2008101201873.html
Does Your Subconscious Think Obama Is Foreign?
By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, October 13, 2008
The provocative research also may help explain why Obama has proved vulnerable to negative messages that question his identity and his loyalty to America. From the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim and that he refuses to salute the American flag, to the repeated reminders at Republican rallies that Obama's middle name is Hussein and recent concerns that voters just don't know enough about him, the attacks that have dogged the Democratic presidential candidate are not the traditional racial stereotypes that have been used against many African American politicians.

http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/the_healthcare.php
The healthcare debate: Jonathan Haidt on how our moral roots skew our reasoning
TED Blog
September 27, 2009
People who didn't vote for Obama started off with negative or ambivalent feelings toward him. Independents who may have voted for him without much love are easily turned against him by talk of tax increases, whether true or not. His race may contribute some negativity, for some people. Whatever the source, negative feelings make it easy for people to believe just about any negative proposition given to them about Obama, including conspiracy theories about his birth certificate. Negative feelings make it easy to believe any negative claim about his health care plan, including the stuff about death panels... The second principle of moral psychology is that moral thinking is for social doing: We engage in moral thinking not to find the truth, but to find arguments that support our intuitive judgments, so that we can defend ourselves if challenged. The crucial insight here comes from psychologist Tom Gilovich at Cornell, who says that when we want to believe a proposition, we ask, "Can I believe it?" -- and we look only for evidence that the proposition might be true. If we find a single piece of evidence then we're done. We stop. We have a reason we can trot out to support our belief. But if we don't want to believe a proposition, we ask, "Must I believe it?" -- and we look for an escape hatch, a single reason why maybe, just maybe, the proposition is false. So people who have a negative intuitive reaction to Obama, or who are fearful about the enormous changes going on, are already inclined to believe rumors against him and his plans. They hear about death panels and forged birth certificates and ask "can I believe it?" The answer is usually yes, particularly if Fox News raises these questions and brings on experts who claim that the propositions are true. Even if Fox News presents both sides, the fact that somebody on TV endorsed a proposition gives viewers permission to believe it, if they want to. Conversely, Democrats can give rebuttals till they're blue in the face, but if people are asking themselves "must I believe it" about the Democrats' claims then the answer they will usually reach is "no." Logic and consistency just aren't very important when it comes to morality. Reasoning is "the servant of the passions," as the philosopher David Hume said long ago.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN?
By Jonathan Haidt
September 9, 2008
My recent research shows that social conservatives do indeed rely upon those two foundations, but they also value virtues related to three additional psychological systems: ingroup/loyalty (involving mechanisms that evolved during the long human history of tribalism), authority/respect (involving ancient primate mechanisms for managing social rank, tempered by the obligation of superiors to protect and provide for subordinates), and purity/sanctity (a relatively new part of the moral mind, related to the evolution of disgust, that makes us see carnality as degrading and renunciation as noble). These three systems support moralities that bind people into intensely interdependent groups that work together to reach common goals. Such moralities make it easier for individuals to forget themselves and coalesce temporarily into hives, a process that is thrilling, as anyone who has ever "lost" him or herself in a choir, protest march, or religious ritual can attest.

In several large internet surveys, my collaborators Jesse Graham, Brian Nosek and I have found that people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally. (You can test yourself at www.YourMorals.org.) We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.
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Haidt's discussions are a slightly more nuanced version of what people like Michael Moore and Bill Maher have been saying of late:

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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1003/11/acd.01.html
Michael Moore on CNN
And my job every morning would be to... help the Democrats find a spine and to stand up for something... And I said on my Web site, they're in for an ass-whooping of biblical proportions in November if they don't start acting like Democrats and stand up for something... And what they like in the leader is someone who has got the courage of their convictions, that stands for something. That's why they liked Reagan. That's why they often like a lot of conservative politicians, because conservatives, they just show up and say, damn it, this is the way we're doing it. Get out of my way...

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1002/16/lkl.01.html
Bill Maher on CNN
But what the Democrats never understand is that Americans don't really care what position you take, just stick with one. Just be strong... they can sort of sense strength or weakness... So when you back off a situation like that, you just look weak... It seems like the Republicans, who are always the, you know, Jack Bauer, "24," tough guys, macho, they should be the ones who want to try this guy in Manhattan. That, to me, seems like the breast-beating macho position. Yes, we're going to try him right where the crime occurred.