Why Support Obama?

As noted in an earlier post, current approval ratings do not seem to have an impact on this election...

President Bush: 27%
Democrat Congress: 10%

How can this be? Everyone who has taken a high school civics class knows that budget bills originate in Congress. Many of them know the Democrat Congress has consistently exceeded the president's budget requests every year since they took over. Thanks to Bush's bowing to demands from McCain, General Petraeus and others calling for a troop surge in Iraq, the war is now a secondary issue. Most people recognize that the war will end soon regardless of who wins the presidential election.

So why is it that the same people who recognize that the Democrat controlled Congress has been a dismal failure are willing to elect a Democrat president with limited political experience? Do these people really believe that the same people who screwed things up will do any better when they have a rubber stamp in the Executive Branch? Other than the war, the most significant failures of George Bush has been refusal to pull out his veto pen when the Democratic Congress ran roughshod over the American people with huge deficits, absurd new entitlement programs and promotion of the mortgage industry policy that created the current economic turmoil.

The answer is simple: Even though everyone knows the president cannot create budget policy, manage the economy or even control the costs of fuel without the cooperation of Congress, he is the national figurehead. America is about to discipline the party of Republican George Bush for the high crime and misdemeanor of... governing like a Democrat.

But what about tax cuts for the rich? The dirty little secret is that Bush's "tax cuts" also took some 30 milion low to moderate income people (including myself) off of the tax rolls. We are the beneficiaries of refundable tax creds such as the Earned Income Credit and Child Tax Credit which Democrats are allowing to expire so they can be resurrected as Obama's "middle class tax cut". The centerpiece of Obama's tax policy is that the part of Bush's tax cut that didn't work.

So we will soon have a Democrat in the White House prepared to pack the Supreme Court with the most liberal, activist justices in history with the aid of the most Leftist Congress in history because the "Compassionate Conservatism" philosophy drove George Bush to govern like a Democrat. The upside is that it will not be long before the president's approval rating will be the same as Congress'. The downside is that four years of unchecked Socialist policy may redefine what it means to be an American.

Hate Bush? We Know Why

President Bush has the singular distinction of being the most unpopular president since presidential popularity has been measured. Long gone are the 80% approval ratings he enjoyed during his first term – the highest approval ratings since presidential popularity has been measured. So what changed?

Bush’s approval rating was highest when he had a Republican Congress and the sting of 9-11 was still fresh in our minds. However, things happened to shape the perfect storm that drove his poll numbers into the ditch. First, he bungled the Iraq War – mirroring the political failure in wartime of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam. Were it not for the surge promoted by General Petraeus and Senator John McCain, the war in Iraq would be all but lost because of political rather than military management. Second, while Bush promoted extensive tax cuts, he also mirrored the politically unpopular social policies of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” after the Democrats took over Congress.

War Footing

Democrats and Republicans alike are unhappy with Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. Before long, the public will have the same misgivings about the Afghanistan front on the War on Terror. The rank and file of each party may not agree on whether we should have toppled Hussein in the first place, but all agree that management of the war effort has been too costly in terms of our national treasure – human lives and money – that could have been invested elsewhere.

Had Bush been better prepared and more circumspect before going into Iraq, chances are the military would have had the freedom to accomplish its mission to secure the country and return it to the people of Iraq in a much shorter timeframe. The Democrats would still hate him for his “war of choice”, but hawkish people in the Republican ranks would have viewed his decision as sound and the outcome successful. The irony in the war’s implications on the 2008 election is that the one person in Congress with the understanding and heart to fix the mess Bush made of the war is Senator McCain. His opposition to Bush on wartime policy has gone un-noticed because Bush tarnished the “Republican brand” along with his own reputation.

Read Daddy’s Lips

Taxes and spending have also been managed poorly from a “messaging” standpoint during the Bush administration. Bush’s tax cuts took 40 million low and moderate income taxpayers (including myself) off of the rolls. This is more than the reduction in taxpayer base than the tax cuts promoted by Reagan and JFK. An across the board tax cut combined with refundable credits for low-income people will almost always result in larger amounts of money saved by wealthy people – but proportionally lower tax relief. That was the case with the Bush tax cuts. Consider this analysis from the Pro-Obama New York Times:

“The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and their share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and received money back from the government. That so-called negative income tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit, a program that benefits low-income parents who are employed.

Put another way: rich families were the undisputed winners from President Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the earnings scale were not paying much in taxes anyway.”

The Times did not mention the Bush increase in the Child Tax Credit which also enhanced the “real” spending power of low income families which tend to be larger than their wealthier counterparts. Senator McCain wants to expand this credit and Senator Obama has similar “redistributive” leanings as well.

While the paper casts wealthy as the “undisputed winners” from President Bush’s tax cuts, the truth is that we all are winners when across the board tax relief is combined with targeted tax credits as was the case here. Still, the media insists on promoting the myth that a person who pays 35% of his earnings in taxes to the federal government instead of 36.5% is enjoying an unfair advantage over guys like me who pay no taxes at all – and in fact are eligible for their share of an immoral redistribution of Bill Gate’s hard earned wealth.

Many Republicans across all income levels see the tax cuts as one of the few things Bush did not screw up. The “other side” of the fiscal policy coin is Bush’s caving to the Democrats in Congress to pass the most sweeping and costly “Great Society” type program in history as they joined hands to expand Medicare entitlements and enact the Medicare Prescription Drug program. Republicans saw the expansion of social entitlements without corresponding cuts in other areas of government as a shortcut to bankrupting the country just as the social policies of FDR and Johnson did. Democrats saw them as token efforts that will not truly help people in need.

Bush has more baggage that inflames the wrath of people on both sides. Among them are a handful of initiatives that would have promoted “amnesty” for illegal aliens and his continuing support for an “ownership society” that allowed Democrats in Congress to expand the Community Reinvestment Act – along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is this last “offense” for which he and his entire party will be held accountable in November. It is ironic that the “GOP Rebels” in the House of Representatives and Senator McCain (along with about 18 of his GOP colleagues) have been fighting to have Fannie Mae more closely regulated since 2005. People know that Congress makes the laws and pass the budgets – but they also know the President has veto power and the responsibility to implement the spending and policy priorities sent to him by the congress. Since he failed in the public mind, his party will bear the brunt.

So Why “Hate” Bush?

Pointing the finger at the Democratic Congress just won’t work. Most Americans who’ve had even a basic Civics class knows that a president cannot do anything to affect the natural cycles of the economy. Still, they expect a president to take leadership on important economic and foreign policy issues. While Bush has done this, and while many in his party within the Congress have sought to rein in some of the profligate spending, politics reigns supreme. The leadership in Congress run the process with an iron fist and with a media that is 90% aligned with their cause, can hold a president hostage to their spending priorities by putting them in otherwise popular bills – assuring there will be no veto.

To his credit, Bush has vetoed some bad legislation, including some absurd spending priorities put forward by the Democrat controlled Congress. However, when the time came for leadership over politics, he did not confront the out of control congress. Now, he is paying the price – for himself, his party and ultimately the country – for not standing up to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

The Least Popular?

With a 27% approval rating in the polls, it’s hard to imagine that there is anyone less popular in American Politics than George Bush. It may surprise you that the less popular politicians are Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. While the congress’ overall approval is at 10% -- 17% lower than President Bush – Pelosi and Reid have even lower approval ratings. This is reported on with more detail on the QuiverDaddy blog.

It may be a result of the same “perfect storm” that Bush was whacked by, but it is more likely an indicator that other than the war, Americans of both parties are not up for Socialist policies that take from the middle class and give to the client class. Maybe it’s that they recognize the most profligate spending and irresponsible management of the housing crisis originates in the Congress. In the absence of a president who has the constitutional authority to originate a budget – and has failed to use his bully pulpit – Congress literally wrote the check their butts cannot cash.

One must assume Obama will have coattails and the projected gains among Democrats in Congress will become a reality. If that’s the case, we will have an unpopular president and an even more unpopular Congress four years from now.

And that’s the only “change” you can believe in.

Two Jokers with 50 Race Cards

If you’ve been following politics for any length of time, you’re familiar with the race card. It’s not necessarily dealt by African-American candidates, though it is almost always dealt by Democrats in a heated political contest to gin up support for their candidates among minority voters.

There have been some horrendous abuses of the race card in past elections, the worst of which was a video ad invoking the tragic lynching of an African-American man by chaining him to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death. The campaign spot claimed that the idea of Bush in the White House forced the narrator to relive that crime. Another ad warned black people that if Republicans won the election, black churches would be burned down.

With the aid of David Axlerod, a consultant who specializes in helping African-American candidates win in white dominated electorates, Barack Obama has come very close to transcending race as a decisive political issue. Campaigning as a post-racial and unifying candidate for change, Obama has been one of the most inspiring American political leaders of all time. Unfortunately with the race tightening, he and his surrogates seem to feel they need an insurance policy. The sad result is that a candidate who does not need to play the race card to win has made it the centerpiece of his campaign strategy.

To his credit, Obama has not dealt race cards as despicable as the ones used against George Bush. However, he and his surrogates in the media are dealing them in full hands as McCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, would say “from the bottom of the deck”. Even Bill Clinton, once hailed as the “first black president” was disappointed to find the race card played against him during the long primary contest between his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Obama.

Nuanced Bigotry

People do not realize how actively involved the media are in the Obama campaign. They may not be taking orders directly from the campaign, but there can be no doubt there is a coordinated effort behind the scenes to take the talking points, faxes, emails and press releases from the Obama camp seriously. This is fairly transparent in the nuanced bigotry that is hitting the media as almost every outlet comments that the polls are too close for Obama to actually win even if he’s ahead. Conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh plays montages on his show almost every day of mainstream media types using identical phrasing in their characterization of some event.

There is a common narrative in the media regarding the racial implications of the current presidential campaign. Try Googling “racially tinged”, for example. They cite the mythology of the “Bradley Effect”, a Democratic code phrase for white people saying they’ll vote for a black candidate because they don’t want to be labeled as racist.

Of course, the assumption is these racists will then vote for the white candidate in the privacy of the voting booth. The “Bradley Effect” was debunked years ago when someone figured out that a voter initiative generated more voter turnout among people who supported the Republican governor’s position than the position of Tom Bradley. The “Bradley Effect” in fact could more accurately be described as what happens when the candidate is on the wrong side of a divisive issue and his opponent is on the right side.

Polls have shown that more than 95% of African-Americans will support Obama. That’s not much more than would support any other Democrat candidate. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton appealed to white working class voters, often associated with the Reagan Democrats. When she mentioned this reality in a campaign speech, she was dealt the race card. Her offense was pointing out a political reality in black and white terms. The problem is that the white working class voters Hillary thought would support her were not doing so because of race but because of ideology. Obama is a Socialist – perhaps the most Liberal politician in U.S. history. Clinton, while no moderate, is left of center on many issues – an easier pill for working class people to swallow.

Obama has from the beginning emphasized his roots as a wedge issue. His attack on Republicans has been predictive rather than accusative. He claims the GOP will point out that he has a “funny middle name” – and then McCain makes mention of his middle name (Hussein) off-limits. He says the GOP will point out that he doesn’t look like other presidents on the dollar bills. To my knowledge, no Republican has mentioned Obama’s race other than in response to his dealing out a hand of race cards.

Secret Decoder Ring

The Obama camp and their surrogates in the media will accuse Republicans of using “racially coded messages” to telegraph to their constituents that Obama is somehow unacceptable because he’s black. Unfortunately, the public has not been given the key to these cryptic messages and there is no secret decoder ring in your box of Cracker Jack.

• Apparently, when McCain showed Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears in an ad intended to show Obama as nothing more than an airhead celebrity, the “secret code” was that he was a black man who would do awful things to these fine upstanding young white women.



• When McCain showed Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae who plundered the company and drove it into the ground, helping to precipitate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the “secret code” was that two “sinister black men” were responsible for the mess. The other “sinister black man” was Obama himself. The real message was that Obama took Raines and Jim Johnson into his circle of economic advisors – not a wise move if you don’t want to repeat the disaster these men caused.



• Obama surrogates claimed Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin’s comments about William Ayers, the domestic terrorist who bombed the Pentagon and other high profile government targets was “racially tinged” because she did not mention that Ayers was white. This race card would have been dealt differently if Palin had identified Ayers’ race… “Oh, so you think terrorists are normally NOT white?”



• Barney Frank alleged that McCain’s criticism of the way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac handled subprime loans was racist because the programs were targeted to the poor, most of whom Frank believes are African-American.



• A mysterious letter was dropped in the mailboxes of Obama supporters accusing them of supporting him because of “racial guilt” and asking them to visit a Website for more details. The group operating the Website posted a note disassociating itself from the letter and its anonymous author. No information about the number of people receiving such letters has surfaced, but if Democratic operatives wanted to stir up a little angst, they only need a few to draw media attention. The next step will be to blame McCain supporters for the letter. This is the oldest trick in the book, but it works.

Liberal commentators will continue to parse everything McCain says to find a racial overtone. In a blogher.com article, Maria Niles quotes David Gergen when he unwittingly leaked the Obama strategy:

"There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, 'he's not one of us,'" said Gergen, who has worked with White Houses, both Republican and Democrat, from Nixon to Clinton. "I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it's the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, 'I'm against quotas,' we get what that's about." Read entire article here

The tragic consequence of Democratic identity politics in this election cycle is that it could set race relations back nearly 50 years. Who wants to re-live that history. The use of the race card is not only offensive but unnecessary. Democrats enjoy the convergence of a perfect political storm of a declining economy, an unpopular war, an unpopular president of the same party as their opponent, and a media fully in their corner from faux commentary to carefully crafted hit pieces on Saturday Night Live. That combined with a charismatic candidate who reads his script with style and grace, and you have no need to play racial politics.

But they do anyway. The fact that Democrats will consistently play the race card – even when there is no political need to – demonstrates that they lost touch with the rest of America so long ago. The irony is that the first racially transcendent presidential candidate in history is being done such a disservice to those who worship in his temple. If you don’t see “secret codes” in McCain’s rhetoric or campaign ads, it’s because there are none. If you don’t see any appeal for Barack Obama in terms of substantive policy positions, it is because there is none. If racial politics is a contributing factor, it will be either because Obama played the card effectively or because voter backlash will send a final message to Democratic candidates: You can’t win on this gambit anymore.


Resources on Bradley Effect:

Mark Blumenthal (June 19)
Nate Silver (August 11)
Nate Silver (September 19)
Marc Ambinder (September 19)
Daniel Hopkins (August 4)

Thanks to Al Giordano of the Narcosphere for the above links.

Washington's Best Kept Secret

An Elephant in the Room That Could Be a Game Changer


It’s probably Washington’s best kept secret. A pair of statistics, the dynamics of which could blow this election cycle wide open doesn’t seem to get any play from either side of the aisle. It’s not intentionally covered up by the political class. In fact, it’s in plain view of every political junkie who surfs the Internet in search of some electoral bone to gnaw on.

I’m speaking of course about approval ratings. If you said, “I know…. Bush’s approval rating is the lowest it’s ever been – the lowest since someone invented polling,” you’re only getting a third of the story. It’s the other two thirds that should have dominated the news over the past few weeks when we were hearing about the latest Washington pork fest and the huge drag Sarah Palin was supposed to be on the McCain campaign after the Vice Presidential debate.

Perhaps, the reason neither campaign has made an issue of this secret is that both are tied to the consequences it could bring. It is a powerful snippet of information that cannot be easily spun to anyone’s political advantage. It is astonishing however that the Punditry – especially conservative talk radio and the right end of the Blogosphere – has not given it any thought. Nestled just below President Bush’s approval rating – the one we hear about on the mainstream media every night – is the Congressional approval rating. That would be the Democratic Congress.

Real Clear Politics:

President Bush Job Approval
RCP Average
Approve -- 26.7
Disapprove -- 69.0

Congressional Job Approval
RCP Average
Approve -- 17.8
Disapprove -- 75.6

Granted, there are Republicans in both houses of Congress, but the Democrats enjoy significant majorities making it possible for them to enact any legislation they see fit – including the $700B Wall Street welfare package that went down in flames a week ago. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House guaranteed her party a campaign issue by preceding the vote with an angry partisan speech that turned off wavering Republicans from joining the “Yea” votes. She blamed the Republicans for the bill’s failure and a cooperative media parroted the charge. Possibly nowhere in the mainstream media was it mentioned that not only does Pelosi enjoy a majority, but more Republicans voted for the bill than Democrats voting against it. In other words, of the 95 Democrats opposing the bill, only a few dozen would need to switch. It is this partisan politics of perpetual deadlock that has soured the American public on their Congress’ job performance. The “change” we keep hearing about, from the perspective of Main Street, is a change from the partisan gridlock that has characterized the Pelosi/Reid reign.

Some people are now beginning to analyze the impact of the partisan hackery of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, her Senate counterpart. Barack Obama has a lot to worry about if their analysis should ever make air or print. In short, the American public not only disapproves overwhelmingly of Congress’ performance, they place most of the blame on the Democratic leadership in both houses.

Rasmussen Reports, in two separate polls ranked the Bush approval rating and Congressional approval ratings. Bush earned a 34% approval rating for August, according to their September 2nd survey results. Bush enjoys positive reviews from 70% of Republicans, 11% of Democrats and 32% of those not affiliated with either party. While recent tracking polls show Bush falling out of favor because of the economic downturn, he still remains more popular than Congress.

An example of the damage partisan politicking from Democratic Congressional leadership is the underwhelming support Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid receive from people in their own parties.

Pelosi’s Problem:

In Rasmussen polling, Congress’ approval rating still hovers around 9% of likely voters. Rasmussen reports 25% of Democrats view their Speaker favorably and 14% of Democrats unfavorably. President Bush is viewed more favorably by Democrats than Nancy Pelosi and his unfavorable rating among Democrats is lower than that of the Speaker. For the first time in recent memory, many voters have begun to move away from the notion that all of Congress is a bunch of rubes except the guy they put in office. We may be facing an anti-incumbent trend in this election. If Rasmussen’s trends for the Congress in general and Pelosi in particular are any indication, the Democrats may not have as much a chance at expanding their majority as Chris Matthews and Bob Beckel would like you to believe.

Reid’s Rejection:

Harry Reid is even more unpopular among Democrats than Speaker Pelosi is. He is viewed unfavorably by 41% of Democrats, 8% of whom view him “very unfavorably”. While Rasmussen acknowledges a partisan divide – 64% of Republicans and 62% of unaffiliated likely voters have an unfavorable view of Congress, only 35% of Democrats feel the same, the news hasn’t reached the public yet that the party of hope and change is running the house of the status quo.

Why hasn’t this affected the Obama campaign? Chances are, the Punditry will blame McCain’s lackluster campaign or Sarah Palin’s normality. The truth may well have something to do with the Republican candidates or their campaign. However, the evidence points more to the fact that a clear explanation of who runs the 110th Congress – and how they’ve done business the past two years – has never made it into the mainstream media. Other than a few talk show hosts, nobody has pointed out that the current Democratic presidential candidate received more walking around money from Fannie Mae than anyone else in Congress other than Chris Dodd. In spite of the wide circulation of a YouTube video showing aggressive defense of the corrupt institution by leading Democrats, no effort has been made in the media to show how far back Republicans were sounding the alarm about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Democrat after Democrat defended Franklin Raine’s stewardship of the doomed enterprise even as he was running it into the ground, and even with a clear public record a mere Google search away, the story seems too hard for our “free press” to uncover.

Why hasn’t the Obama campaign’s ties to the corruption and avarice that created the current economic mess been covered? When the McCain campaign tried to expose the corrupt link between Franklin Raines’ plunder of Fannie Mae and his role as chief economic advisor to the
Obama campaign, McCain was accused of being a racist. His hate crime? Showing two “sinister looking black men” in a campaign ad. The two “sinister looking black men” happened to be the candidate and his chief economic advisor, both of whom need to be held to account for the failure Fannie Mae. Obama seems to have discovered the secret to successfully surrounding himself with felons, terrorists, cult leaders and thugs: make sure they have unfettered access to the race card. If McCain can’t show “sinister looking black men” in his ads, he cannot even show the Democrat candidate (whom Joe Biden has acknowledged is not “sinister looking”. Virtually any question of Obama’s policies or associations has been met not with refutations or clarifications; he has resorted to the last refuge of political strength that is the weapon of choice for community organizers – race. If McCain could level the charges – and proof – that are appropriate for anyone and simply push back on the race card, Obama can be shown for the cog in the Chicago Political Machine that he is.

The Elephant in the Room:

The public knows that the 110th Congress is broken and that we need change. They know that Bush’s administration has not been stellar – especially in the past two years having to work with a do-nothing Democrat Congress. Amidst all of the clamor for change is the elephant in the room. It looms large in the potential for an anti-incumbent sweep of Congress and not a few unexpected losses in the Senate. Even if both leading candidates for President are part of the Sausage Factory, both are campaigning on a platform of change – Obama toward a Socialist utopia and McCain toward a bipartisan cooperative. Neither is realistic in the final analysis. But if Joe Six-pack wakes up some morning between now and November 4th, looks at the mess Congress made and who the key players are, there is a faint hope that we can at least give bipartisan cooperation a fair shot.

Links:

Rasmussen Reports: Bush Approval
Rasmussen Reports: Democrat Congress Approval