1. The circumstances (even taking account demographic changes favorable to the Democrats) are favorable to a narrow Republican win. The circumstances of 2008 were the most favorable for a Democratic win that I’ve ever seen. So Romney has that going for him.
2. I don’t know what to make of the slight rise in Obama’s Real Clear Politics average job approval from the 47%-48% range to just about 50%. How many people who approve of Obama’s job performance are going to vote Romney? I figure about 0%. That means that Romney has to run the table among those who don’t approve of Obama’s job performance - even those who disapprove of Obama very mildly. I don’t know what is driving this rising job approval. Maybe the slight decline in the top line unemployment number + the rise in the stock market has something to do with it. Maybe some fraction of the persuadable public bought the argument (made at the Democratic convention) that Obama did reasonably well given the undeniably bad circumstances he inherited. They sure didn’t hear a compelling critique or alternative from Romney at the Republican convention – unless you consider the story of George Romney’s roses a compelling governing alternative (no, I’m not done mocking that.) Maybe the real possibility of a President Romney has concentrated the mind. I wouldn’t rule out that some people who are on the fence about Obama have talked themselves into very mild approval for Obama’s job performance as a way to rationalize voting against Romney. We are only talking about a shift in approval of one in fifty of the people in the polling universe.
3. In a below thread John asks what I mean when I talk about the impact of Ryan talking to people at campaign events (and to some extent on television.) Here is how I think about it:
I think that, almost without really thinking about it, the people at those Ryan rallies will pick up how he talks about issues, about what is important, and about the arguments for the most important policies, and they will want to hear more of those arguments from other Republican candidates. Over the course of the campaign, this is going to add up to hundreds of thousands of Americans. The vast majority of these people would have been voting Republican anyway, so the effect won’t show up in the 2012 election results. But these people will still be part of the Republican constituency after November. Some of them are (or will become) activists. Some of them will run for office. A process of intraparty education can change what the party’s elites and members want and, when that party has an opportunity to govern, it can change what a party does with power. I think that is a reasonable hope anyway. It would have been better if Romney himself had taken on the mantle of conservative reformism. He had the microphone to speak to both Republican-leaners and persuadables who pay modest attention to politics. But that’s not the world we’re living in.
September 22nd, 2012 | 2:21 pm
Pete, regarding Obama’s approval numbers. I think at this point in the election his approval should be understood as graded on the curve where Romney is the mean. His spike is likely due to Romney’s 47% gaffe. If I recall, Bush in 2004 at this time started solidifying around 50% at this time due to the less appealing Kerry. Hopefully Obama’s approval will prove less stable.
September 22nd, 2012 | 2:56 pm
1) Is possibly correct.
3) seems almost certainly correct. Albeit if John P. only knows Paulista’s then it is telling. (Romney is winning Texas, and Obama Mass). I think it is true that a lot of smarter folks do like Ron Paul. And what you are saying you want Paul Ryan to do is basically create a different sort of “Paulista”. A base for a Paul Ryan run in 2016.
2) Is still a sort of expectations game, notice that the Whitehouse is re-tweeting the Gallup numbers which are less favorable (47 approval, vs. 48 against). It is a bit early for Obama to consider himself a lock for over 50% of the popular vote, albeit such predictions are credible.
2.1) George Romney’s roses might be compelling, The flower industry exists so there is a corporate tie-in. Not to mention a good chunk of guys and gals would be better off spending money on flowers than worrying about “Feminism”. If you want to carry this joke out a bit further(give it a mechanic, thus making it policy), I have some law school texts I am willing to redeem for flower certificates from say Flowers.com. (Does Romney know business leaders?)
A very humorous and concrete derivative if you ask me. Obama by virtue of being a democrat coupled with republican policy scare tactics resulted in more people buying guns, and ammunition. A quasi-liberal policy is to allow folks to trade in guns for groceries(…or whatever sponsoring businesses commited to reducing gun supply, offer as consideration…and thus increasing aggregate demand for newer guns?(the policy has a lot of criticisms.)
It wasn’t exactly “policy” but the election of Obama did lead to increase gun sales.
In any case if you can get as “hypothetical” as you do in 3 about proximate cause, then there is no telling that a conversion to Mormonism, or the adoption of Romney family values, isn’t itself a form of family law policy. “Nudge” theocracy pace Aristotle=seek out examples, of the good and good habits, i.e. the habit of buying flowers/showing love.
It certainly isn’t “hard” policy, and it certainly doesn’t answer “feminism”, but it would be hilarious and useful to me at least if Mitt Romney offered a program via the free market that would redeem feminists texts in exchange for roses. (a la guns for groceries).
Just want to see if we can get a joke going about Romney taking away “our feminists”(or at least family law legal) texts, and replacing them with roses.
Personally I don’t consider these legal texts with a feminist policy bias to be nearly as ominous, as the folks that don’t have the misfortune of owning them immagine them to be.
But given Romney’s quasi-silence on policy, it would be interesting to hear the lament that Romney was trying to replace serious policy with the habit of buying roses.
September 22nd, 2012 | 4:16 pm
Pseudo’s hopefully depends on a Kerry-like strange and wooden debate performance by Obama.
September 22nd, 2012 | 7:03 pm
Peter, what I intended to say is that Obama’s recent bump in approval is likely due to Romney’s 47% gaffe, on the reasoning that voters are now instinctively evaluating him against the alternative candidate. So a costly mistake on Romney’s part will likely materialize to Obama’s benefit in job approval. Just as Bush’s approval numbers benefitted at Kerry’s expense.
If Romney can resist the tempation to give his rival such juicy material on a regular basis, we might just see the national attention turn once again to the burning edifice that is Obama’s foreign and domestic policy.
September 22nd, 2012 | 10:56 pm
Pseudoplotinus, I looked at the RCP average job approval graph. Obama’s approval hits 49 three days after the Democratic convention ends (and as post-convention polls come online.) The aveage has since crawled up by about half a percent. According to RCP, at this point Bush had a 5.4% lead on Kerry in their average of head-to-head polls. Obama has a 3.9% lead on Romney. The numbers got closer after Kerry won the first debate. A similar win by Romney over Obama would put the race in tie territory. I don’t rule out that it could happen but I wouldn’t count on it.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/obama_vs_romney_compared_to_bush_vs_kerry.html
September 22nd, 2012 | 11:59 pm
It could happen. That’s more encouraging.
September 24th, 2012 | 3:53 pm
Based on the above comment by “Pj Palmer” and certain comments on another post, it appears that this Website has stopped moderating comments.
September 24th, 2012 | 3:56 pm
Are the comments on this blog moderated anymore? Just wondering.
September 24th, 2012 | 7:16 pm
djf, thanks for the catch.
October 3rd, 2012 | 7:33 pm
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