How a President loses his Party's base by Steve Kornacki, Salon

[Mira]

Friday, Apr 15, 2011 08:30

Steve Kornacki
Salon
How a president loses his party's base


Former President Jimmy Carter and President Barack Obama


Barack Obama's speech on Wednesday, in which he aggressively challenged the deficit reduction blueprint being embraced by congressional Republicans, seems to have quieted talk -- which was rampant earlier in the week -- about the president alienating his party's base. For now.

Rest assured, there will be more occasions between now and November 2012 when Obama's rhetoric or his policy choices (or both) offend vocal activists and commentators on the left -- at which point a stream of news stories will be devoted to the question of whether Obama is at risk of losing the election because of a fractured base.

The reality is that, from the standpoint of Obama's reelection, this is probably a non-issue. For all of the liberal commentariat's frustrations with Obama these past two years, the president has maintained a healthy approval rating among all Democratic voters -- and self-identified liberals in particular.
Gallup's latest data has Obama scoring an 80 percent approval number among Democrats; an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll puts the number at 83 percent. Among liberal Democrats, Gallup has Obama at 80 percent, while NBC/WSJ puts his support at 79 percent. His numbers have remained steady in this range since late 2009.

A case can be made that none of this is particularly remarkable. Obama is a Democrat and he's constantly being attacked by Republicans; thus, we can reasonably expect Democrats to tell pollsters they approve of his job performance out of simple partisan loyalty, even if they are deeply frustrated with his policy decisions.
There is definitely something to this -- maybe quite a bit -- but it's also worth remembering that there have been recent occasions when intraparty anger with presidents was easily detectable in polling.

for the rest go to:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/04/15/obama_base_carter&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110

[DCKit]

1. I think I recently responded to one of this guy's posts here on DU.

It must really suck having such a bleak outlook... if he's even really a (D).

[truedelphi]

2. The problem is - neither party now has more than

Thirty six percent of the total of American voters.

Pew Study in summer of 2008:

Democrats stood at 36% of the voting population of the United States.

While Republicans stood at 24%.

That totals 60%.

So 40% of the USA is rather independent of either party.

Progressives are between 14 to 18% of all voters.

And there are people who used to be Republican who are so unimpressed with the manner in which Obama has embraced Wall Street, that they are now up for grabs, as they voted for Obama in 2008. Then they saw Obama immediately go along with the Bush/Paulson Bail Outs. I don't know if that group comprises 14 to 18% of all voters but it could.