Alan Abramowitz & Drew Westen
Perspectives on the 2012 Presidential
Election
In the first CMBC lunch of the 2013 Spring semester, Alan Abramowitz (Political Science, Emory University) and Drew
Westen (Psychology, Emory University) offered contrasting analyses of the
results of the 2012 presidential election and what they suggest for future
elections. The contrast (mercifully)
wasn’t Republican vs. Democrat. It was,
in part, a fascinating disciplinary contrast between the perspectives of a
political scientist and a psychologist; and, in part, a contrast reflective of
internal Democratic angst: could the Democrats, and Obama, in particular, have
done more, or is that wishful thinking given current political realities?
From the political science perspective, Abramowitz offered a
tripartite explanation of Obama’s larger than expected 4 point margin of
victory. First, 2012 saw modest economic
recovery. Had the U.S. economy suffered
another dip into recession, the results would most likely have been much
different. Second, Obama enjoyed the
first-term incumbency advantage, which has seen every President to re-election
in the last 100 years with the exception of Jimmy Carter. The third reason concerned deep partisan
division. It is perhaps easiest to see
why Obama won when you couple the fact that 92% of Democrats voted for Obama
with what Republican strategists seemed to be blind to or in denial about until
(and, in the case of Karl Rove, even after) the election results had become
undeniable: thanks to a rapidly evolving demographic landscape, Democratic
voters now outnumber their Republican counterparts. Abramowitz explained that Obama’s victory
wasn’t due to Hurricane Sandy, or the brilliance of his campaign, but rather to
the changing face of the American electorate.
Although Romney won the white vote by 20 points, Obama won 80% of the
non-white vote, which accounted for almost 30% of the electorate. If non-whites continue to vote in such
proportions for Democrats, the prognosis for Republicans is not good: currently
50% of Americans under the age of 5 are non-white. Abramowitz also noted, more generally, that
young voters today are more liberal on issues like gay marriage, legalizing
marijuana, and abortion than older voters; and that this represents a true
generational shift, and is not just a function of age.
Despite this unfavorable demographic outlook, because of
gerrymandering, Republicans managed to win a majority of House seats in states
like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where they lost the popular vote in
state-wide elections. As for the Senate,
Republicans should now control it, too, were it not for the unelectable
candidates generated by their primaries.
Since rural states like Wyoming (which, Abramowitz pointed out, has a
population smaller than DeKalb county’s!) get no fewer Senators than New York
and California, and tend to be Republican, there is a Republican advantage
built in to the structure of the Senate.
For these reasons, it will be difficult for Democrats to win back the
House and keep the Senate in coming elections.
Moreover, in 2016 the Democrats will lose the advantage of first-term
incumbency, so it is possible for the Republicans to take back the White House.
Then again, by that time Republicans
will face an even more hostile demographic landscape.
From a psychologist's perspective, Westen’s presentation
focused on the role of messaging in explaining the successes and failures of
the two parties and their candidates. In
addition to echoing Abramowitz’s point regarding demographic disadvantages,
Westen noted how Romney ran a particularly myopic campaign, failing to
anticipate obvious questions about his wealth and finances. Westen suggested how Romney could have easily
dealt with the drawn-out issue of his tax returns, for example, by making clear
that while he pays low rates, he gives generously to charitable causes. This would have played to many Americans’
conviction that personal responsibility and charity, not government
intervention, is the proper solution to social ills. Beyond Romney’s campaign misadventures, Westen
emphasized that there was a deeper, structural factor that accounted for the
Republican defeat. Over the past 30
years, Republicans have created a monster of a message machine. According to Westen, Fox News and similar
outlets have made 40% of the electorate remarkably disinformed and racist. While the enthusiasm Republican media fuels
has helped to win House seats and was instrumental in the elections of George
W. Bush, it backfired in 2012. The
Republican base proved at once large enough (and vocal enough) to set the tone
of the Republican primaries (which Westen compared to a clown show), but too
small to ensure the victory of its candidate at the national level, where a
non-white electorate had unprecedented clout.
In reality, argued Westen, Romney is not that much different politically
from Obama. Both the Romney who governed
Massachusetts and President Obama have governed from the center-right. (On Obama’s right-leaning governance, Westen
cited his failure to stand up for immigrants, his “evolving” views on gay
marriage, hedging on abortion coverage in the healthcare bill, and the contraception
coverage loopholes therein.) But the
Romney who governed Massachusetts could not get elected by the Republican
primary process – he needed to pivot hard right to appease the Republican base. By 2040, moreover, the United States is
projected to be a “majority minority country,” which is to say, the majority
will be made up of non-whites. If
Republican presidential candidates continue to have to appeal to a disinformed,
racist Republican base, they will have no chance of winning on the national
level.
But the Democrats have messaging problems of their own, according
to Westen, in particular, the lack of a clear and consistent message. Whereas during the New Deal era, Democrats
were defined by a clear commitment to taking care of those in need, the message
of today’s Democrats, Westen contended, must pass through the filter of wealthy
campaign contributors, and what comes out on the other side is significantly
diluted. In this connection, Westen
cited Democrats’ talk of cutting social programs, regressive payroll taxes, and
fiscal stability. In the end, for
Westen, the Democrats’ mixed messaging is a symptom of a deeper problem: lack
of strong leadership.
Westen’s critique of Democratic leadership provoked a debate
with Abramowitz on the question that has been raised about Barack Obama, even
by his ardent supporters, in response to his first term in office: could Obama
have achieved more of the progressive agenda he campaigned on in 2008, given
the wave of enthusiasm and support that swept him into the White House, if he
had been more of an effective leader, or,
given Republican recalcitrance and ill-will towards him, expressed, for
instance, in Mitch McConnell’s stated commitment to make Obama a one-term
President, did Obama do as well as anyone could have?
Westen’s contention that Obama could have done more stemmed
from his analysis of political messaging.
Westen provided a number of examples of how relatively simple tweaks in
the formulation of a political message can make all the difference in how it is
perceived by both politicians and the broader public. To take one, Westen said that the White House
should never have talked about a “public option,” since the word “public” tends
to make people think of overcrowded waiting rooms and mediocre healthcare. Westen said that a message as simple as
“we’re going to let people buy Medicare and Medicaid” would have avoided the
negative connotations of anything “public” and the ensuing furor provoked by
the “public option.” Westen also
suggested that the White House could have performed better in the tax debates
with a message like the following: “In tough times like these, millionaires
ought to be giving to charity, not asking for it.” Westen’s fundamentally optimistic view of
what can be achieved with the right message was met with skepticism by
Abramowitz, who reiterated his original point about the unprecedented extent of
political polarization. Ultimately, it
is difficult to say for sure what would have
been possible, if only…. One potential basis for such hypotheticals is
offered by historical parallels, but there can always be questions about the
extent to which historical precedents are actually parallel in the relevant
respects. Abramowitz rejected Westen’s
invocation of LBJ as evidence that Obama could have done more, on the grounds
that LBJ enjoyed much larger Democratic majorities than Obama has had, and enjoyed
them for a significantly longer period of time.
It is perhaps not surprising that no agreement was reached
on how to assess Obama’s presidency.
After all, the history is still being made. I want to underscore, in closing, the
significant points on which Abramowitz and Westen agreed. In the first place, there was clear consensus
that the Republican party is badly plagued by structural issues, and that these
boil down to demographic factors at odds with what has emerged over the past 30
years as the Republican platform. Second,
both Abramowitz and Westen agreed that the Democratic message is not as clear
and consistent as perhaps it might be, although there was disagreement about
what this means. For Westen, it signals
a lack of clear, strong leadership of the FDR or LBJ variety; for Abramowitz, on
the other hand, it has more to do with the nature of the Democratic party,
which has always been more pragmatic than ideological. This raises an interesting question about the
kind of choice we face as voters. Assuming
a two-party system, would we rather have two parties representing competing
ideologies, or rather one ideological party and one non-ideological, but
pragmatic party? Which presents the starker
contrast? Which affords the greater
chance of bipartisan agreement? These
are some of the questions that Obama’s leadership style has prompted, and I
take it that they remain very much open and evolving.
