Subscribe to this Feed by Email
Understanding this year's big midterm election isn't so hard after all.Two numbers from a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll—46 and 48—tell you all you need to know.
The first is the percentage of voters who think the health-care overhaul was a bad idea, which shows how that legislative achievement has never become the asset Democrats hoped. Instead, for some Democrats at least, the milestone has become more of a millstone.
Getty Images America is in a phase of broad political volatility.The second number is the percentage of voters who say they would rather elect a congressional candidate with no experience whatsoever than one with 10 years of experience. That sentiment illustrates the rise of the tea-party movement and the general mood of insurrection that marks this year's campaign.
In their own ways, those two numbers confound both conventional wisdom and what history would lead us to believe. They show why this has become such an unusual year, and underscore that America is in a phase of broad political volatility.
The health-care number has to be particularly perplexing for Democrats, for it illustrates how the issue in which they invested so much capital has played more neatly into the narrative Republicans have built for this year's campaign than the one Democrats have constructed.
The Democratic narrative holds that the party has finally started to tackle the deep, structural economic problems that Republicans long ignored and that led to the economic catastrophe that hit in 2008.
The Republican narrative holds that the Democrats have led the country on a big-government, big-spending binge that imperils its future.
Democrats knew when the health bill passed, of course, that Republicans would try to write it into their narrative, but they also calculated that the passage of the bill after nearly a year of relentless political pounding from opponents would represent its low point in public acceptance. Once the effects of the scare tactics wore off, and voters started to see the advantages the health overhaul brought them, the public embrace would be warmer.
Instead, the new Journal/NBC News poll suggests that virtually nothing has changed in public attitudes since the legislation passed. In March of this year, when President Barack Obama signed the bill into law, 48% said it was a bad idea. That number now is holding virtually constant at 46%. The share of voters who think it is a good idea stood at 36% in March, and remains at precisely 36% today.
Moreover, those who don't like the health bill feel more passionately about their opposition than its fans feel about their support. Some 41% say they feel "strongly" that the health overhaul is a bad idea, while just 25% feel strongly that it is a good idea.
Even more important in understanding the dynamics of 2010 is the broader backdrop. That broader dynamic became clear when voters were asked in the poll how they would vote if their choice for electing a member of Congress came down to a candidate who had served 10 years in Congress or one who was running for political office for the first time.
Given that choice, 48% said they'd vote for the political novice, while just 23% said they'd pick the candidate with experience.
That finding captures the throw-'em-out, break-some-crockery mood that produced the tea-party movement, which in turn has done much to define and animate the campaign. Indeed, a striking 68% of those who identify themselves as tea-party supporters said they'd back the political novice, while just 10% would pick the candidate with experience.
But the finding illustrates more than the genesis of the tea party. It shows just how much Americans' political impulses have changed since the end of the Cold War. For decades, being the experienced candidate usually proved to be an asset in the end. The backdrop of a nuclear standoff with another superpower told voters the stakes were high and the world was complicated, and that they'd better not take chances with novices. Experience was something to tout.
This year, experience has become, for many candidates, something to apologize for. The irony for Democrats is that this attitude actually represents s continuation of the one that made President Obama possible in the first place. At the outset of the 2008 campaign, many wondered whether the country would elect a man just four years removed from the Illinois state senate to be president, but Mr. Obama's outsider status—his ability to project an image of change—turned out to be an asset.
What benefited Democrats then benefits Republicans now. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who co-directs the Journal/NBC News poll, notes, it's hard to think of a year in which there were more candidates from outside the mainstream. For some voters, that seems to be the point.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
View the original article here
0 comments:
Post a Comment