UGA Presidential Discussion Group – May 9, 2012
We returned to the exercise we conducted in our April 4 session on assessing campaigns. There are four main factors that affect a campaign: the parties, the issues, candidate evaluation and the nature of the times. With respect to parties, Republicans appear to be getting behind Romney and the Democrats are behind Obama. The issues remain a mixed bag, but the issues don’t seem to make that much of a difference in most elections apart from party. For example, the American public is no longer supportive of the Afghanistan War. Obama’s stance is not popular, and Romney does not want to touch the issue. It is doubtful that many voters will decide their vote on the basis of Afghanistan. The candidate evaluation appears to favor Obama, while the nature-of-the-times favor Romney. This analysis suggests that Obama needs to focus the campaign on candidates and the difference in the economy since 2008. Romney needs the focus of his campaign on the state of the economy in the last two years. Campaign themes should take into consideration these four factors. Successful campaign themes in the past have been Trust by George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Hope and Change for Obama in 2008. Obama’s theme this year is Forward that talks about not going back to the Bush years. Romney will settle on the jobs and the economy.
In getting a glance at tactics in the Fall campaign, it appears that Obama plans on setting small fires to get Romney distracted. To this point, Romney has not been good at avoiding the distractions. Two weeks ago it was on college loans. Romney tried pre-emption, but Obama commanded all the press with Romney’s statement noted as an after-thought. When the national campaign begins in earnest, Romney’s pre-emptive tactic may work better. Last week was the killing of bin-Laden anniversary. Romney took several positions during the week before trying to limit his damage. Obama was apparently sending a message to Romney that any criticism of current foreign policy will be met with overwhelming force. Romney’s quick criticism of the handling of the blind, Chinese dissident situation looks like it will turn out well for Obama. Romney may also come to regret the use of the need to be adding 500,000 jobs a month since the last time we accomplished that level was in 2010 during the Obama administration and it has only happened 10 times since 1950. See
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-10/romney-s-500-000-monthly-jobs-in-u-s-anything-but-normal.html
This week Romney failed to criticize the questioner who accused Obama of treason and claimed credit for the auto bailout. As we were meeting Obama stepped on the Romney bailout story by announcing his support of gay marriage. This announcement posed the question as to whether the Biden endorsement of gay marriage on Sunday was a trial balloon or a major gaffe. Another question raised was whether evolution on an issue amounts to a flip-flop.
There has been some indication that Romney is still fighting the primary battle rather than turning to the general election. The situation is ironic as he appeared to be turning to the general election during primary season and getting ambushed by Santorum. Part of his problem is that he never was the front runner until close to the end. The big task for each campaign right now is to define Romney. The Republicans want to define him as competent and experienced with the economy with the Democrats defining him as a rich flip-flopper. Experience did not work too well for Hillary Clinton in 2008. Romney seems to be running away some from his experience as he pushed for earmarks when turning around the Olympics and RomneyCare as his major accomplishment in his tenure as Massachusetts governor. One of Romney’s surrogates suggested earlier this week that his economic plan was an update of the Bush plan, something that could benefit the Obama campaign. We stressed that it is early in the campaign, and not many people are paying that much attention now, but the moves now give us insight into what could happen in the future.
The elections this week may provide some glimpses. The NC results do not bode well for Obama’s gay-marriage position, particularly in a swing state. The IN results suggest that experience is not as important as ideology, owning a house in the home state, and age. The turnout in WI suggests a big battle in a month on the recall. The WV primary does not bode well for Obama flipping that state. The French election was anti-incumbent, anti-moderate and anti-austerity. Not good for Obama during the election nor for a President Romney in January. It was pointed out that Greece is experiencing real austerity, but France is just curbing increases in spending and not true austerity. Can Romney sell the Ryan budget as President or the Rubio immigration plan in the election and as President? Obama will be trying to make sure that he can’t.
If Obama and Romney have trouble energizing their bases, then money and volunteer time in swing states may be diverted to Congressional races. Questions raised included, “Do the Tea Party choices for Senate such as Murdock in IN and Mandel in OH damage Republican chances in November?” and “Will there be reverse coattails in swing states with close Senate races?” We also discussed the Independents or Swing Voters and whether there really are swing voters. The modelers such as Campbell and Abramowitz tend to limit the true swing vote to less than 10%, but wave elections suggest that voters swing. An interesting commentary on this topic appeared after the session in Larry Sabato’s newsletter
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/do-independent-voters-matter/
We are pleased to report that the discussion was “frank and fruitful.”
Two books that were mentioned during the discussion are
Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail. 2009. Regina Lawrence and Melody Rose.
https://www.rienner.com/title/Hillary_Clinton_s_Race_for_the_White_House_Gender_Politics_and_the_Media_on_the_Campaign_Trail
The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents. 2012. Linda Killian
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/swing-vote-untapped-power-independents-linda-killian
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