2012: Why President Obama needs to cover his base to win re-election

[highplainsdem]

I found this new Daily Kos diary interesting (and so do others there, since it has over 200 comments just a couple of hours after being posted). So I wanted to share the link here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/24/969715/-2012:-Why-President-Obama-needs-to-cover-his-base-to-win-re-election

Sun Apr 24, 2011 at 08:00 AM PDT
2012: Why President Obama needs to cover his base to win re-election
by Steve Singiser for Daily Kos


It is, by now, an article of faith for most folks in the punditocracy that a Democratic President must triangulate to earn re-election. First brought to the public conversation in President Clinton's ultimately successful 1996 re-election bid, the concept is to position oneself as the bridge between two intractable parties/ideologies. Many a column inch has been devoted to alternately insisting that Barack Obama follow the same trail, or praising him when it appears that he is doing precisely that.

-snip-

You are about to read a rare exception. Perhaps not stunning, coming from a site that calls the progressive blogosphere home. Nevertheless, there is a legitimate, data-driven case that triangulation and tacking to the "center" (or, heaven forbid, the "center-right") will not yield President Obama the electoral dividends he seeks.

-snip-

Certainly, other factors beyond ideological positioning are of paramount importance. If voters still feel the country is off on the wrong track, and that the economy is stagnant, no amount of framing and posturing is likely to resurrect the President's electoral prospects. On the other hand, if genuine signs of healing and improvement lift the electorate's spirits, the President becomes a betting favorite no matter how the GOP primary plays out.

The bottom line here is that there is reasonable evidence that the risks of alienating or neglecting the base could well outweigh any potential rewards for doing so. This is not 1996, and the data makes it a bit tough to see where any erosion in liberal enthusiasm or support is going to be offset by surging Presidential support from the center or right.

-snip-

This is a very long dKos diary, and I recommend that you read all of it, since the paragraphs above are the basic argument -- not the detailed data from previous elections, or the four points that back up the basic argument:

1. President Obama needs the election-day turnout in 2012 to be 60-65% moderates and liberals. That would be similar to 2008 (when 66% of voters were moderate or liberal) instead of 2010 (only 58% moderate or liberal).

2. The President's approval numbers among liberals aren't as high as they should be to assure their turnout in 2012. A McClatchy-Marist poll from last week shows him with only a 68% approval rating among liberals. Other polls have shown closer to a 90% approval rating, but this dKos diary points out that it should be closer to 100%.

3. The President is very unlikely to get as many conservative votes in 2012 as he got in 2008.

4. President Obama already has solid support among moderates and doesn't have to tack right for them. Partly because -- and I think the diarist is right about this -- a lot of those self-labeled moderates are in fact liberals in terms of their ideology, but after decades of conservatives turning "liberal" into an epithet, they've started calling themselves moderate instead of liberal. (This would certainly explain why moderates are much closer to liberals than they are to conservatives on many issues.)

All in all, it's an interesting read.

And I hope some at the White House are reading it and considering it.