By Clive Crook
Published: November 8 2009 19:21
Bromley illustration
Barack Obama and the Democrats want you to know they had a good week. Last Tuesday Republicans threw away a New York congressional seat they had held for a century, preferring to fight each other than win an easy contest. Excellent, say Democrats. Civil war in the Republican party augurs well for next year’s mid-term elections.
What’s that, you say? Oh, yes, Democrats did lose the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia, with huge swings to the other side, but this was to be expected with the economy in such bad shape. Read nothing into that, say Democratic strategists.
Still joyous over this electoral affirmation, Democrats in the House of Representatives then made history over the weekend, with passage of their health-reform bill. The margin was narrow, admittedly, in a chamber they dominate. So what? A win is a win (except in New Jersey or Virginia). Everything is going to plan.
Here is the disturbing part: watching administration officials shovel this nonsense, one begins to wonder if they believe it. If they do, and keep it up, they are asking for a drubbing in 2010 that will do for Mr Obama’s agenda what the wipe-out of 1994 did for Bill Clinton’s.
Last week’s elections went badly for the Democrats. New York was the outlier – unless Democrats expect their opponents to field two warring candidates in every seat. The Republican party is leaderless and incompetent, but not insane – and not, by the way, as divided as the Democrats. For the Republicans the New York loss was salutary, and the lesson inescapable: unite or lose.
The lesson for the Democrats was almost as clear, but their learning disability is more severe. The centre of the US electorate – loosely attached Democratic voters, self-declared independents and loosely attached Republican voters – decides elections.
Last year this centre elected Mr Obama and put Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress. This year it is switching sides in an unusually abrupt way. Polls have been saying this since the summer and the elections confirmed it. Independents voted against Democratic candidates two to one.
Political scientists rush to point out that these off-year elections are not predictive. Obviously. A lot can happen in a year.
But the Democrats should be worried about what voters think of them right now. The lesson for Mr Obama and his party is simple: listen to the centre. They are not listening. They appear to be stone-deaf.
In Mr Obama’s case this is perplexing. He triumphed last year as a moderate, a pragmatist and a bridge-builder. He promised to change Washington. It was what centrists wanted to hear. It helped, of course, that Mr Obama is a man of charm and intellect, enormously likeable, a case-study in presidential demeanour.
His is still well-liked. His approval ratings have fallen lately but have not tanked. But he and his party are fools to be much consoled by this, because in 2010 the electorate can reshape Congress without having to decide about a president they still quite like. If voters are worried about the policies emerging from an unfettered Democratic government – and they are – they have the option of introducing some constraints.
The idea is not new to them. Fewer than one in three US voters, according to a recent poll, think it is better to have one party controlling both Congress and the White House.
During his campaign, in effect, Mr Obama promised to be the constraint: to oversee Congress and guide it with a moderating hand. That was the difference he promised to make. There were always going to be limits to what he could do, but his failure so far even to try has been total.
He has let nearly every agenda be set by the Democrats’ left-leaning congressional leadership. This comes in a country in which 40 per cent of voters call themselves conservatives, 36 per cent moderates and 20 per cent liberals.
Voters are confused and concerned about the policies coming forward – above all by their mounting cost – but he has made little effort to explain or reassure, let alone influence. He has chosen to act as cheerleader for whatever congressional Democrats cook up.
On healthcare, Mr Obama stood aside during months of chaotic haggling in Congress. By the summer, unsurprisingly, voters opposed to reform outnumbered voters in favour – again, above all, expressing worries about the cost.
In recent days, the House took up a bill even more expensive than previous proposals, with features especially provoking to moderates. It even alarms many Democrats – hence the 39 defections in Saturday’s vote. Nothing in this inspires public confidence. Yet Mr Obama expressed no reservations, applied no pressure: he blandly endorsed the bill.
Health reform might still fail. Senate Democrats are developing a more moderate measure, though liberal enough on current plans to repel all Republicans and trouble their own centrists.
There is talk now of delay until after Christmas. What the Senate produces must be merged with the House’s bill. So there is more to come of the wrangling that has already so dismayed the electorate.
Rallying the country behind health reform in the abstract has been the limit of the president’s ambition. It has not worked. Mr Obama must take responsibility for an actual proposal and rally the country behind that.
On health, on energy, on public spending, independent voters want him to exercise centrist leadership, as he promised he would. Can’t he even pretend? For the sake of his Democratic majorities, he had better show voters he is listening, even if his allies in Congress are not.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
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