Obama's Real Reelection Problem
By John Feehery
TheHill.com
The Chicago Sun-Times’s Lynn Sweet picked
out an interesting morsel in Jodi Kantor’s book
about the Obama family:
“When Michelle Obama worked in Mayor Daley’s City
Hall in the early 1990s, she was 'distressed' by how
a small group of 'white Irish Catholic' families —
the Daleys, the Hynes and the Madigans — 'locked up'
power in Illinois.
"She particularly resented the way power in Illinois
was locked up generation after generation by a small
group of families, all white Irish Catholic — the
Daleys in Chicago, the Hynes and Madigans
statewide.”
Obama White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, one
of those hated white Irish Catholics, resigned the
same weekend the book’s juiciest tidbits leaked out.
It is probably all just a coincidence, but sometimes
coincidences reveal bigger truths.
And the bigger truth is that Bill Daley left the
White House because he lost to Valerie Jarrett and
to the president’s wife in the battle for the
philosophical direction of the Obama White House.
I don’t know if Michelle Obama’s antipathy toward
white Irish Catholics finally became too much of a
barrier to Daley or not. But I do know that Daley
was only ineffective because his boss would not let
him be effective.
Bill Daley is a political pragmatist. He cuts deals.
Like his father and his brother, he is not a
left-wing ideologue; nor is he a Republican in
Democratic clothing.
He is a pro-business Democrat, an increasingly rare
breed these days in Washington.
Obama is not a pro-business Democrat. His wife is
not a pro-business Democrat. They don’t like the
business community. They don’t trust the free
market. They want to spread wealth around (other
people’s wealth, I might add).
It has become increasingly clear over the last
several months that Obama has little interest in
tacking to the political middle to improve his
standing with the broad center of the country.
He has decided that he wants his presidency to mean
something different, and he has made the fateful
decision that he will govern as a left-wing
political populist. That is why he has embraced the
Occupy Wall Street movement, why he keeps using
class-warfare rhetoric, why he has given up on
deal-cutting, why he has decided to run against
Congress rather than on his accomplishments.
But the problem for the president is that this
tactic is not working with crucial swing voters.
More specifically, it is not working with white
voters.
As Ron Brownstein pointed out, in writing about an
Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll
released on Dec. 16, Obama’s approval ratings among
all white voters are absolutely terrible:
“In 2008, he carried 52 percent of those
college-educated white women, but attracted much
smaller shares among college-educated white men (42
percent), white women without a college degree, the
so-called waitress moms (41 percent) and the
non-college white men (just 39 percent).
"The new survey shows that with all four groups his
approval rating is appreciably lower than his 2008
performance. He’s fallen to 42 percent of the
college-educated white women, 37 percent among the
college-plus white men, just 34 percent among the
non-college white men and all the way down to 30
percent with the waitress moms.
"Looking at whites by age underlines the picture of
broad-based weakness. In 2008, Obama carried a 54
percent majority of whites under 30; but in the new
poll his approval rating with them has tumbled to 39
percent.
"His standing with white seniors now is almost
identical: In 2008, he won only 40 percent of them,
and his approval rating with them now is 41 percent.
His numbers are lowest with whites in the prime
working years: just 29 percent of whites [age]
30-44, and 35 percent of whites 45-64 say they
approve of his performance. In 2008, he won 41
percent of the former and 42 percent of the latter.
"Among all whites, now just 35 percent approve of
his performance and 58 percent disapprove. That’s
virtually identical to the results in the 2010
congressional election, when whites gave 60 percent
of their votes to Republicans and just 37 percent to
Democrats, according to the National Election Pool
exit poll conducted by Edison Research ... "
Some might conclude that these white voters don’t
like Obama because they are inherently racist, but I
think that is a dangerous and stupid conclusion.
After all, Obama won the majority of white voters in
the last election.
I think it is because the Obama White House has made
the decision that it doesn’t need those white voters
to win. That may be true in 20 years, but it is not
true today.
The swing vote in this next election is the same as
it has been in the last six elections. It is the
white working-class voter.
Ignoring and marginalizing Bill Daley might have
pleased the wife and Valerie Jarrett, but Daley’s
departure is very bad news for Obama’s hopes for
reelection.
Those white Irish Catholics whom Michelle Obama so
despises are the key to her husband's campaign
success. And getting rid of Bill Daley is one more
example of President Obama’s real problem this
coming election year.