It has become a commonplace in the past decade or so to talk about a polarized US. What is most commonly meant by this is the divide between conservatives and liberals on everything from issues such as abortion, faith teaching and single-sex marriage to foreign policy and the size of the state.
Going into a presidential election year — and with the first Republican primary in Iowa today — there is another less remarked divide that is equally profound: a generational one.
While much has been written about US President Barack Obama’s approval ratings dipping as low as 38 percent in Gallup’s long-running survey (only 2 percent worse than former US president Bill Clinton’s worst ratings in his third year in office before he convincingly won re-election in 1996 against former senator Bob Dole), a breakdown by age group tells a different story. Among voters under 30, the group most sympathetic to left-wing causes such as Occupy Wall Street, Obama is favored over the leading Republican contender, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, by a staggering 24 points. At the other end of the generational spectrum, Obama trails Romney among voters in the “Silent Generation” — the group just older than the baby-boomers which is heavily represented among Tea Party supporters — by 13 percent
It is not simply a generational divide. Surveys of those who have chosen to donate to Romney’s and Obama’s campaigns thus far suggest strong differences in terms of gender as well, with 70 percent of those giving to Romney being male in comparison to 56 percent giving to Obama.
The reality is that this election is unlikely to be much like the one that we have been told to expect by media and party activists and pundits over the last three years. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has faded into irrelevance, while others of the Palinesque tendency have either been forgotten — remember Christine O’Donnell? — or have imploded, such as Representative Michele Bachmann. While the Republican Party has moved sharply to the right, what is still open to question is how much the vaunted Tea Party insurgency overlaps with a wider electorate.
While the road to the Republican primaries has sometimes seemed like a grisly beauty pageant for social conservative values — indeed 45 percent of the “likely” Iowa caucus voters, who number only 120,000, define themselves as “very conservative” on social issues — their two top concerns are a visceral desire to reduce government and government spending, and the economy and employment. Social issues are cited as a top issue by only 12 percent.
In other words, the key areas of political contention are likely to be far more conventional than otherwise billed. Obama chose to lay out what was effectively his manifesto for re-election in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where, just over a century before, then president Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, laid out his own vision for a “New Nationalism” in which he argued for a strong federal state to regulate the economy and guarantee social and economic justice to those most in need, including, ironically, a public health system and a minimum wage for women.
While some saw Obama’s criticism of a Wall Street responsible for the present financial crisis as a nod to the language of Occupy he was, however, explicit in rejecting the language of the 1 percent and the 99 percent, instead making an appeal to the aspirations of the middle classes, who, he said, “the cards” had been stacked against in the US’ redistribution of wealth to the super-rich.
It is on issues such as these that Romney, the most electable-looking of the Republican field and leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire, is most vulnerable in the country at large. A wealthy former hedge fund founder, whose top 10 donors are all large Wall Street companies, his offer of a US$10,000 “bet” during a Republican debate has already made him appear out of touch with ordinary Americans’ financial concerns. While his polling as a whole has looked strong against Obama, it has been in comparison with a tranche of weak rival candidates. That is likely to change when his policies and personality are compared directly with that of the incumbent.
And Romney has other disadvantages. To get to the White House, the Mormon former bishop will have to achieve what few US presidents have ever managed — to make a bid having failed in a previous attempt in a country that does not much like political losers. He will also have to contend with the fact that for a large number of social conservatives almost any other Republican candidate is preferable to Romney.
But what of the story Obama has to sell? While his weaknesses have been much dissected by disappointed progressives, not least the struggles he has had to push through his agenda for change, often those criticisms have deliberately ignored the limitations on his office imposed by the separation of powers in the US between the legislative and executive branches.
A more telling criticism is that Obama is better at politics than policy, squandering opportunities in his first two years in power to enact change, while demonstrating a curious unwillingness to fight his Republican opponents for what he wants. On the issue that really matters — the economy — it appears things are finally going Obama’s way. Last month, the Federal Reserve predicted moderate growth in the US this year, while US businesses have been creating jobs in the last quarter at a rate of around 150,000 a month, making it harder to attack him on his economic record in the midst of a global recession. At present, only a full-scale economic meltdown in Europe could threaten that trend of improvement.
Like former US president Ronald Reagan in 1984, who annihilated the Democratic candidate, former vice president Walter Mondale, after being bolstered by improving economic figures after a lengthy recession, it is a trend that benefits the incumbent.
On Saturday, Obama’s team reiterated his plans for the election year: a campaign based on “economic justice,” job creation and an effort to demonstrate that Republican obstructionism in Congress has hurt the US.
His opponents are struggling to design an inclusive message, constrained by the necessity of appealing to a narrow social conservative base presently on the ascendant in the Republican Party. Until they can, this election remains Obama’s to lose and not a Republican one to win.
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