Mixed Messages From Latest Polling

The new Gallup poll shows a statistical dead heat between Obama and Romney in a dozen swing states, but what interested me most-- but didn't surprise me at all-- in their data was that GOP enthusiasm for voting was up again and Democrats, still disappointed in Obama and his tepid, conservative approach, are still unenthusiastic about voting. Last time that happened, the GOP took over half Congress and half the states and immediately set about-- almost blatantly-- to wreck the country for narrow partisan gain.

Republican voters are more likely to express enthusiasm about voting, both nationally and in the swing states. On the national level, 56% of Republican registered voters and 48% of Democratic voters are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. In the 12 swing states, the Republican advantage in enthusiasm is 59% to 48%.

There is a wider partisan gap in favor of the Republican Party among the most enthusiastic voters-- those who say they are extremely enthusiastic-- in the swing states and among the broader U.S. voting population.

And that's despite the continuing collapse of the Republican brand in the minds of more and more Americans. In Yesterday's Washington Post Aaron Blake reported that "Obama may be struggling with a bad economy and flagging poll numbers, but his party is still more popular than the alternative. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 48 percent of people view the Democratic Party favorably, compared to just 40 percent who view Republicans in a good light. Although that poll also seems to predict that Obama and the Democrats don't have what it takes to get voters to the polls, presaging another electoral catastrophe like the one Obama led the Democrats into last year.

As the 2012 election draws closer, Democrats are getting less-- not more-- enthusiastic about the prospect of voting for president.

In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll just more than four in 10 (42 percent) Democrats said they were either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about the 2012 vote.
Those numbers compare unfavorably to Democratic enthusiasm number in CNN surveys from the spring and summer, when 56 percent and 55 percent of Democrats, respectively, described themselves as either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting next year.

By contrast, the level of Republican enthusiasm has been high and steady for months. In a March CNN survey, 64 percent said they were “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting in 2012; an equal 64 percent said the same in the October survey.

Here’s why the decline in Democratic excitement about 2012 matters. The enthusiasm gap in March was eight points in Republicans’ favor; now it’s 21 points in their favor.

Why? Many Democratic voters and left-leaning independents are nonplused about Obama, disappointed in his pro-Wall Street agenda, his crappy healthcare reform bill, and his inability to stand up to the Republican nihilists and protect the country from them. The GOP is boldly destroying the public sector-- long a right-wing dream-- and Obama comes across as either to weak to stand up to them-- or too conflicted.

Conservative Republicans have long clamored for government downsizing. They're starting to get it-- by default.

Crippled by plunging tax revenues, state and local governments have shed over half-a-million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. And, after adding jobs early in the downturn, the federal government is now cutting them, as well.

States cut 49,000 jobs over the past year and localities 210,000, according to an analysis of Labor Department statistics. There are 30,000 fewer federal workers now than a year ago-- including 5,300 Postal Service jobs canceled last month.

By contrast, private-sector jobs have increased by 1.6 million over the past 12 months. But the state, local and federal job losses have become a drag on efforts to nudge the nation's unemployment rate down from its painfully high 9.1 percent.

The economy has been expanding, at least modestly, since the middle of 2009. And state and local governments are usually engines of job growth during recoveries. But not now, said economist Heidi Shierholz of the labor-aligned Economic Policy Institute.

"The public sector didn't start to lose jobs right away," she said. "But then it did as the budget crunch really hit. State governments are not allowed to run deficits. So, the private sector is expanding while the public sector is shedding jobs - to the tune of 35,000 jobs a month."

Since mid-2008, Arizona lawmakers have cut $3.4 billion from state spending, all of it in permanent reductions. That's equivalent to the entire K-12 budget for this year, or enough money to build the Hoover Dam bypass bridge 14 times over.

This fiscal year's budget of $8.4 billion is 20 percent smaller than the fiscal 2008 budget, which was the spending high point for Arizona.

The state workforce has shrunk 15 percent, a loss of more than 5,000 jobs.
President Barack Obama sought to ease the crunch by including $35 billion to prevent layoffs of police, firefighters and teachers in his $447 billion job package. But that big bill hit a GOP wall in Congress.

Efforts to pass what Obama called "bite-sized pieces" of the big bill have stalled, too. Republicans don't want to swallow them, regardless of the serving size. Senate Republicans blocked the $35 billion installment late last week when Democratic leaders called it up as stand-alone legislation.

The dynamic is already reverberating through the gathering presidential-campaign cycle, with Republicans making an issue out of what they depict as Obama's inability to turn the economy around. This has been driven home in every one of the frequent Republican presidential debates and is certain to become even more intense as the GOP field narrows.

The weak economy is a main factor in Obama's current approval ratings, the lowest of his presidency.

No sitting president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940 has been elected with the unemployment rate as high as it stands today - hovering near or above 9 percent for more than two years. In 1936, the rate was 17 percent and in 1940, 15 percent; but then, it was on a downward trend from more than 24 percent earlier in the Great Depression.

And all this in the context that even the most willfully ignorant voters-- let's take Florida, a perfect example-- recognize that the economy is suffering from concerted Republican Party sabotage.

In what could be the first statistical data to indicate that a liberal talking point is catching on, nearly half of Florida voters said Republicans were deliberately sabotaging the economy in an attempt to weaken President Obama’s re-election efforts.

In a Suffolk University-WSVN poll conducted between Oct. 26 and Oct. 30, 49 percent said Republicans were “intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not re-elected.” Only 39 percent said they disagreed with that assessment, and 12 percent were undecided

While no lawmakers have come out to directly levy this charge, Democrats have tried to paint Republicans as obstructionist, and frequently cite Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) statement that “the single most important thing is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Even in Maine, where McCain barely cracked 40% in 2008, Obama is struggling. His 18% margin of victory is all shriveled up and speaks to the general dissatisfaction with the Obama presidency-- if not an embrace of any of the alternatives.

Now 47% of voters there think he's doing a good job to 48% who disapprove. His biggest issue in the state is a lower than usual 75/17 standing with Democratic voters. He's also slightly under water with independents at 46/49.

Maine makes 8 states PPP has polled on in the last few months that Obama won by at least 9 points in 2008 where he now has negative approval numbers: Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and now Maine.  It speaks to the struggles he's having even in states that weren't exactly in the toss up category the last time around.

Obama's approval numbers in Maine may leave something to be desired, but it doesn't look like he's at much risk of actually losing the state in 2012. He leads the entire Republican field there by double digits.  Mitt Romney comes the closest but still trails by 11 points at 49-38.  The rest of the GOP field does about as bad as John McCain did in the state or even worse.  Herman Cain trails by 17 at 54-37, Ron Paul is down 19 at 53-34, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann both have a 20 point deficit at 55-35, and Rick Perry does the worst with a 21 point gap at 55-34.

Why is Obama doing so well in head to heads in a state where voters don't really like the job he's doing? It's a familiar story- Mainers like the Republicans even less.  Mitt Romney is the most 'popular' with a 38/49 favorability breakdown.  After him it's Herman Cain at 32/46, Michele Bachmann at 23/55, Ron Paul at 24/57, and Newt Gingrich at 25/63. The most eye popping number in this poll might be Rick Perry's favorability: only 16% of voters in the state have a positive opinion of him to 66% with a negative one.  It's amazing how he's become so toxic, so fast.

The numbers in Maine very much reflect what we're seeing nationally at this point. Romney is doing 7 points better than McCain did in the state and a 7 point swing on the national popular vote would result in the tie that most of the national Obama/Romney polling right now ultimately boils down to. Meanwhile the rest of the GOP field can't do any better than McCain did, speaking to the reality that if the Republicans nominate anyone other than Romney they risk squandering a great opportunity to knock off an unpopular Obama.

Thursday, Krugman addressed this from a different perspective, one I doubt White House strategists ever grapple with, Oligarchy, American Style. Maybe Obama's friends at the G-20 are telling him how important this perspective, regardless of what crap he's hearing from William Daley. It explains the 99% Movement-- as well as why the Democratic base is not psyched up to vote.

Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators!

Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.

So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

The budget office laid out some of that stark reality in a recent report, which documented a sharp decline in the share of total income going to lower- and middle-income Americans. We still like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country. But with the bottom 80 percent of households now receiving less than half of total income, that’s a vision increasingly at odds with reality.

In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: the data are flawed (they aren’t); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. The most popular argument right now seems, however, to be the claim that we may not be a middle-class society, but we’re still an upper-middle-class society, in which a broad class of highly educated workers, who have the skills to compete in the modern world, is doing very well.
It’s a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it’s not true.

...So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority.

The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong.

If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent-- the richest thousandth of Americans, who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent over the period from 1979 to 2005.

Who’s in that top 0.1 percent? Are they heroic entrepreneurs creating jobs? No, for the most part, they’re corporate executives. Recent research shows that around 60 percent of the top 0.1 percent either are executives in nonfinancial companies or make their money in finance, i.e., Wall Street broadly defined. Add in lawyers and people in real estate, and we’re talking about more than 70 percent of the lucky one-thousandth.

But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?

Some pundits are still trying to dismiss concerns about rising inequality as somehow foolish. But the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.

Could this really be happening with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic majority-- albeit a tenuous and fractured one-- in the Senate? Well, it is-- and you don't have to be a Nobel Prize winner to notice.