New polls show Obama has taken hit, fallout continues
Up until a few days ago, he had built a national 9 or 10 point lead over Clinton in terms of popularity in the Democratic primary. As of today, they are tied. Also as of a few days ago, Obama had pulled into a statistical dead heat with John McCain, ranging anywhere from 1 point ahead to 3 points behind. Today, he is 9 points behind McCain. Also, Obama's favorability ratings have dropped to 48%. For the first time, more voters think unfavorably of Obama than those who think of him in a favorable manner. Clinton has similar unfavorable ratings whereas McCain has roughly 9% more favorables than unfavorables. See www.rasmussenreports.com for the poll information. Since these are three day poll averages, odds are the full effect of this drop has not yet been seen.
If this news substantiates what I predicted the other day, I make a further prediction that this potential turning point in the campaign is still an ongoing problem. Obama has made the following comments to defend his earlier remarks:
"Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you. And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington."
And on another occasion he defended them by stating:
"I said something that everybody knows is true which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois who are bitter. They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through," Mr. Obama continued. "And now I didn't say it as well as I should have because you know the truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation -- those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to. And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families.''
Again, the earlier remarks, stated in a San Francisco fundraiser, were:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Obama's comments stated explicitly that people "cling to" guns, religion, bigotry, anti-immigration, and trade isolationism because of bitterness over their economic status of being left behind by Clinton and Bush. Obama is under fire here for a slew of reasons, not the least of which is the incredibly condescending tone of the remarks. It is the notion that the right to bear arms and religion are only important to people because of their poor economic condition. Not only is that untrue, but the two would be considered utterly and completely unrelated. The suggestion that economic condition affects these things, or having been left behind, or being upset with politicians demonstrates he has little to no understanding of these values at all. Next, he flat out calls those in economically dire straits bigots, and led to vote by bigoted "antipathy to people who aren't like them" values.
The next problem with his replies is that he thought it would be clever to throw in "issues like gay marriage" into his defense of his comments. Translated literally, I believe this means "gay marriage, guns, and/or abortion." These issues, however, are not something that, as Obama stated, "people end up, you know, voting on issues like" because of feeling economically abandoned so that they "don't vote on economic issues." Stating that his perspective is "something everybody knows to be true" probably does not help much either. That merely adds conceit.
Obama's explanations that he only meant to point out that people are not voting their economic values is even more problematic. Not only does it not address any of the specific groups he has offended nor the broad indictment against poor small towns, thereby reinforcing his stand by what he said to offend them, but he is now making it a values issue. "Value voters" conservatives who have been cold on supporting McCain are becoming hot against Obama because he is stating a typical talking point that social conservatives cannot stand by liberals - that they wrongly vote values issues instead of their economic self-interest. This not only demeans which values are most important to these voters, that is, those values important enough for them to base their votes on, but it also suggests a lack of intellectual rigor about which party supports their economic self interest. What Obama "meant to say" does not help him here, it makes things worse. Further, his counterattack on McCain here dove into McCain's stance on tax cut issues, again trying to reframe this issue as about economic self-interest versus values issues.
Now, many Obama supporters and pro-Obama media outlets are focusing solely on the "bitter" comments, problematically condescending in and of themselves, but they ignore the rest of his statement, which is the real reason this was such a huge misstep for Obama. Some high profile Obama supporters, like Bob Shrum, have stated that this will all clear up in Wednesday's debate between Obama and Clinton on religion and values issues. This is incredibly unlikely in my mind, because (1) Clinton will use the occasion to hammer the impact of these statements to the rest of the Democrats who are not yet aware of the problems inherent in his comments, (2) Clinton will point out how unelectable these comments make Obama, and (3) Obama's recent comments are making things worse, reflecting he still does not really get it. He is owning these comments without apology, unless you count the "I'm sorry if anyone was offended by the true statement I made" as an apology, which I'm pretty sure all the people who are offended will not. Another high-profie Obama supporter tried to deflect the issue by stating that if Obama's comments aren't true, then why don't we just have a third Bush term. This seems such a weak and irrelevant reply to this issue that it is not worth further comment.
One of two things will happen in the Democrats' debate on this issue. One, Clinton will try to hammer on this issue and he will try to merely talk about why people are "bitter" in his perspective, ignoring the rest of his comments and, by an effort through which he tries to talk about how important religion and values issues really are, redirect the conversation. Two, Clinton will try to hammer on this issue and Obama will engage on these comments, leading Clinton to wipe the floor with him, provided she maintains a level head. Whether or not Obama can steer the debate through option number one will be largely dependent on the moderator/media who controls which questions are asked of the candidates.
One commentator stated that Obama committed a politician's worse nightmare by accidentally saying what he really thinks. Based on Obama's fractional apology and exacerbating replies, it appears its even worse than that. Obama said what he really thinks, and - he meant to say it.
