Why Should Young Voters Be Embracing Cynicism? Barack Obama

Keith Ellison is as crystal clear as one can be-- without coming out and trashing Obama completely-- that the president's willingness to compromise with America's mortal enemies (the Republican Party and the oligarchs and plutocrats who own them) is bad for American working families. Yesterday Alex Isenstadt explained the politics of this in a Politico piece for people who have been sleeping for the last several months. He explains how Obama has blurred the lines-- lines going back 100 years-- between Democrats and Republicans on protecting working families with popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Voters have backed the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Democratic political class, including sleazy characters like Obama, against the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Republican political class for one reason: the Democrats have stood up for ordinary people, not the rich. Obama is the first Democrat to shift-- Clinton may have even been worse-- but Obama has made the worst mess of it-- especially in trying to take end the valuable political concept that Social Security is the third rail of American politics.

The president’s shift came after an election year in which Democrats made the GOP’s embrace of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare a centerpiece of their campaigns. The offensive, Democrats say, helped them net eight House seats-- a respectable figure but short of the 25 they needed to seize the lower chamber.

Historically, polls have shown Democrats are the party seen as most likely to defend entitlement programs.

How large a role Medicare and Social Security play in the 2014 debate remains to be seen-- Democrats intend to highlight issues like immigration and gun control, with an eye toward driving minority and younger voters to the polls. But they also want to use entitlements as part of a broader message branding Republicans as overly ideological and uncaring about the middle class.

Driving home that theme, some Democrats say, will be tricky after the president’s controversial endorsement of chained CPI, a stingier way of calculating growth in Social Security benefits, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts.

“It is highly problematic,” said one Democratic pollster and veteran of congressional races, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as picking a fight with the White House. “There is no question the entitlement debate makes for an easy campaign ad.”

...While Obama would love for his party to win the House-- he has said he would do everything in his power to help Democrats take the speaker’s gavel from John Boehner-- his budget highlighted tensions with congressional Democrats. The president has said he wants to reach a grand bargain with Republicans to tame the nation’s $16 trillion debt. And getting there, Obama signaled with his budget, requires taking a whack at entitlements.

“The White House is more concerned about his legacy,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster. “It’s the classic dilemma of the second-term incumbent.”

Some Democrats say slashing Medicare and Social Security will turn off the senior voters who are traditionally among those most likely to turn out to the polls in a midterm election.

“During nonpresidential election years, the percentage of voters age 65 and older is higher, and polls consistently show that voters age 50 and older strongly oppose use of chained CPI to cut benefits,” said Chuck Loveless, director of federal government affair for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “So from our point of view, the use of chained CPI is not only bad policy, its bad politics.”

“It would suppress Democratic turnout,” he added. “It’s pretty clear people are paying attention to this.”

In the days since Obama released his budget, many of the Democrats who have been quickest to distance themselves from his blueprint are those from senior-heavy districts. California Rep. Raul Ruiz, a freshman Democrat who represents a Palm Springs-area district where seniors compose about half of all registered voters, said “putting the burden of the national deficit on the backs of our seniors is wrong.”

Democrats are even concerned that Republicans could reverse the dynamic and portray Democrats as the bad guys on entitlements.

In an interview with CNN after Obama unveiled his budget earlier this month, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon called the plan “a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said.

And it isn't only the elderly who will be staying home. Yesterday, the NY Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg explained how enthusiasm among young voters for Obama in 2008 has lead to cynicism about politics (something we predicted in 2008, having already seen exactly what kind of a politician Obama was in his few years as a senator). Obama was always two things: better than a Republican alternative and an inspiring politician. It's been mostly downhill from there. And she has a survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard to back it up-- or at least to back up the perception.

The Harvard survey, of more than 3,100 voters under 30, found that faith in most major institutions-- with the notable exception of the military-- has declined over the past several years. Today, only 39 percent of young voters trust the president to do the right thing, as opposed to 44 percent in 2010. Just 18 percent of voters under 30 trust Congress, compared with 25 percent in February 2010.

“The hyperpartisanship and gridlock that has befallen Washington, D.C., is having a traumatic effect not just on our nation’s status at home and abroad, but on the political health of tens of millions of once (and hopefully future) idealistic young people,” wrote John Della Volpe, the Harvard institute’s polling director, in the study’s conclusion.

The economy is a major reason for the disillusionment of young voters, who are saddled with student debt and worried about how to find jobs, said Kristen Soltis Anderson, who tracks young voters for the Winston Group, which advises Republican candidates. Mr. Durgin is one example; part of his upset with Washington, he said, has to do with his livelihood.

“I’m losing money,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing positive that has happened to me in the last 12 months.”

Young voters seem disappointed with both political parties, although Ms. Anderson, the Republican pollster, said her party appears to be taking the brunt of millennials’ dissatisfaction. Mr. Obama had a 52 percent approval rating in the Harvard poll-- slightly better than his approval ratings in polls of older adults nationwide-- but down from his approval rating of 58 percent in a Harvard poll of millennials in 2009.

“They are disappointed with him, yet many question the motives of Republicans even more,” Ms. Anderson said.

She added: “It’s tough to be young these days-- the economic concerns are very great, and a lot of what you hear out of Washington is not addressing those concerns. There are a lot of questions: Does either party really have my best interest at heart? And I think the answer to that is, ‘No.’”

That cynicism is coupled with a deepening partisan divide. While Mr. Obama’s job performance rating would suggest that most young voters feel he is doing well in office, a deeper look at the numbers reveals a split: 86 percent of young Democrats approve of Mr. Obama’s job performance, while only 10 percent of young Republicans do.

“At no time since President Obama was elected in 2008 have we reported less trust, more cynicism and more partisanship among young voters,” Mr. Della Volpe wrote in the study. “Young voters, like older Americans, are becoming more partisan by the day.”

...Political analysts know that voters are heavily influenced by the president and the political climate in which they come of age; young voters of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era, for instance, tended to stay Democratic throughout their lives, while those of the Ronald Reagan era still tilt strongly Republican.

And that brings us back to Keith Ellison and other progressives in Congress and running for Congress who may be backing Obama on marriage equality and immigration and gun safety but want nothing to do with him on his backing for the failed Republican Austerity agenda. Ezra Klein has always looked like a real Obamabot to me but Monday night on Maddow's show, if you read between the lines, he's almost saying, defensively, that Obama is... well, "better than a Republican." He may be, but he's sure not as good as a Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Jeff Merkley.