Katrina vanden Heuval’s recent WaPo op-ed sketches a disturbing picture of Republican voter suppression in a number of state legislatures, an important story that has been bounced to the back pages of the MSM by the debt ceiling controversy. From her op-ed:

In states across the country, Republican legislatures are pushing through laws that make it more difficult for Americans to vote. The most popular include new laws requiring voters to bring official identification to the polls. Estimates suggest that more than 1 in 10 Americans lack an eligible form of ID, and thus would be turned away at their polling location. Most are minorities and young people, the most loyal constituencies of the Democratic Party.

The i.d. campaigns are based on a particularly flimsy excuse, the myth of “voter fraud” as a significant problem in the U.S. As vanden Heuval explains,

…Voter fraud, in truth, is essentially nonexistent. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice found the incidence of voter fraud at rates such as 0.0003 percent in Missouri and 0.000009 percent in New York. “Voter impersonation is an illusion,” said Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center. “It almost never happens, and when it does, it is in numbers far too small to effect the outcome of even a close election.”
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) disagrees. He argues that voter fraud is a serious problem that requires serious action. But as proof, Kobach cites just “221 incidents of voter fraud” in Kansas since 1997, for an average of just 17 a year. As a Bloomberg editorial points out, “During that same period, Kansans cast more than 10 million votes in 16 statewide elections. Even if the fraud allegation were legitimate . . . the rate of fraud would be miniscule.”

The suppression initiatives appear tweaked to fit demographics of different states. As vanden Heuval notes,

In Ohio, for example, a recently signed law to curb early voting won’t prevent voter impersonation; it will only make it more difficult for citizens to cast their ballot. Or take Florida’s new voter registration law, which is so burdensome that the non-partisan League of Women Voters is pulling out of Florida entirely, convinced that it cannot possibly register voters without facing legal liability. Volunteers would need to have “a secretary on one hand and a lawyer on the other hand as they registered voters,” said Deirdre MacNabb, president of the Florida League of Women Voters…This year Texas passed a voter ID law, but wrote in a provision that explicitly exempts the elderly from complying with the law. The law also considers a concealed handgun license as an acceptable form of ID, but a university ID as insufficient.

At the annual NAACP convention in Los Angeles, President Benjamin Jealous underscored concerns about the deliberate disenfranchisement of people of color leading up to the 2012 elections, reports Alexandra Zavis in the Los Angeles Times:

He cited new laws in 30 states that require voters to present approved photo identification at the polls. “Simply put, people who are too poor to own a car tend not to have a driver’s license,” he said…In Wisconsin alone, he said, half of black adults and half of Latino adults are now ineligible to vote because of this requirement.
Jealous also took issue with laws in Georgia and Arizona that require voters to attach a copy of their driver’s license, birth certificate or passport to their registration forms. And in Florida, he said, the establishment of a five-to-seven-year waiting period before felons can vote would disqualify more than 500,000 voters, including 250,000 blacks.

In addition to the i.d. requirements, shrinking of early voting periods and felon disenfranchisement expansion, the GOP is also suppressing voting power of people of color through redistricting. In North Carolina, for example, the Republicans are twisting the intent of the Voting Rights Act to dilute minority voting, as WRAL’s Laura Leslie explains:

According to Republicans, the VRA and resulting case law require lawmakers to create districts with majority populations of minority voters that can elect the candidate of their choice. They argue the creation of such districts will protect the state from potentially costly civil-rights lawsuits.
But Democrats disagree. They say the VRA does not require lawmakers to create such districts, except in truly exceptional cases. They’re accusing the GOP of using the VRA to justify “packing” minority voters into a handful of districts to reduce their influence elsewhere.
In the Senate, where the Senate and congressional map votes were strictly partisan, Democrats accused Republican mapmakers of drilling down to precinct-level caucus data to separate black voters from white ones…Senator Josh Stein, D-Wake, asked why the GOP Senate map splits 40 voting precincts in Wake County alone. “The only possible explanation is that you want to reach out and grab every black person you can find and put them in Dan Blue’s district. And for what purpose?”

The Republican voter suppression initiatives are not unconnected in purpose or timing, as vanden Heuval points out:

What’s worse is that these aren’t a series of independent actions being coincidentally taken throughout the country. This is very much a coordinated effort. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a corporate-funded organization that works with state legislators to draft model legislation. According to The Nation’s John Nichols, “Enacting burdensome photo ID or proof of citizenship requirements has long been an ALEC priority.” It’s not surprise then, that the Wisconsin state legislator who pushed for one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation is also ALEC’s Wisconsin chair.

Vanden Heuval quotes Alexander Keyssar, a top voting rights scholar and author of “The Right to Vote”:

…”What is so striking about the wave of legislation for ID laws is that we are witnessing for the first time in more than a century, a concerted, multi-state effort to make it more difficult for people to exercise their democratic rights…It is very reminiscent of what occurred in the North between 1875 and 1910 — the era of Jim Crow in the South — when a host of procedural obstacles were put in the way of immigrants trying to vote.”

This is the first part of what will almost certainly be a three-stage voter suppression program. Call it the pre-election suppression campaign, likely to be followed by election-day shenanigans at the polls and then ballot-counting “irregularities” in Florida and Ohio, among other states.
It’s tough to challenge voter suppression campaigns in Republican-controlled state legislatures and state and federal courts. But Democrats should keep demanding that the Justice Department review these laws for compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and have legal teams in place to monitor election-day suppression and ballot counting.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
There are two warring insider narratives in Washington right now over what Republicans really want in the negotiations over the debt limit. One is that the content of any deal is less important than how it is framed politically. The other is that the GOP is just driving a really hard bargain in order to gain maximal policy concessions. But there’s a third and largely overlooked phenomenon that’s gumming up the works of any possible deal: the growing number of conservatives who genuinely believe that they (and the country) would be better off without one.
Under the first narrative proffered by insiders, any debt ceiling deal that could be interpreted as making Barack Obama’s re-election more likely is intolerable. This is supposedly the rationale for Mitch McConnell’s proposal last week, which backed off earlier Republican demands for spending cuts and instead created a series of pre-election hurdles intended to make the president look bad. The second narrative, on the other hand, is that the GOP’s hard-line opposition to a compromise on the debt limit is largely tactical. The deliberate and cynical deployment of hard-core Tea Party activists is simply intended to increase the leverage of GOP negotiators by creating the appearance their hands are tied. This tactic will work, many predict, because of either the (take your pick) sense of responsibility or gutlessness of the White House and congressional Democratic leaders.
Both these theories, however, imply that the GOP will accept the best deal they can get at the last possible moment. That means there’s no reason to take seriously the large and growing number of conservatives inside and beyond Washington who are shouting ‘No Deal At All.’ It’s the latest version of the ancient Beltway Establishment belief that Republicans are a party led by adults, whose noisy, bad children will, in the end, bite their lips and shuffle off to their rooms at bedtime as commanded. That may yet turn out to be true, if only because the injunction of Republican elders to conservative activists to behave on the debt limit will be backed up by the paymasters of Wall Street. But I wouldn’t be so sure.
To begin, a large number of conservative activists and Republican pols have been lashing themselves to the mast of intransigence on the debt ceiling issue like Odysseus sailing into the land of the Sirens. They include those who have convinced themselves that a failure to raise the debt limit will not actually produce a default on debts, as well as those who read the polls and decided there was no advantage to be gained in defying both the Tea Party Movement and long-standing public opposition to any and all debt limit increases. But they also include the nine presidential candidates (ten if Rick Perry runs), 12 Senators, 39 House members, five governors, and 183 conservative organizations that have signed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Pledge opposing any debt limit increase if it is not accompanied by all three prongs of that politically impossible proposal. The chief engineer of this pledge, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, is an extraordinarily powerful figure these days, both in Washington and on the 2012 campaign trail, thanks to his home state’s pivotal position in the GOP presidential primary.
Moreover, the power of the “just say no” faction extends beyond the ranks of actual Pledge signatories to all those Republican officeholders who do not wish to expose themselves to Tea Party wrath or primary challenges. This faction’s ultimate position was well articulated yesterday by RedState proprietor and ideological commissar Erick Erickson:

In the past 48 hours I have had call after call after call from members of the United States Congress. They’ve read what I’ve written. They agree. But they feel the hour is short and the end is nigh.
So some are calling looking for alternatives. Some are calling looking for energy. Many are calling looking for absolution.
And so I address them and put it here so you can see my advice.
I can give no absolution for what you may be about to do. I can offer no alternatives. …
You went to Washington to change Washington. You went to Washington because you said it was broken and you worried about the future for your children and grandchildren.
And now, at the moment of crisis you are worried and second guessing yourself and looking for alternatives, ways out, and most of all a clear conscience. Cut, Cap, and Balance is the only plan that can save our credit rating and our financial integrity. I can offer you nothing else, nor should you waver from fighting for it alone.

The first thing of note is Erickson’s framing of his edict as a sort of papal bull. In the heat of negotiations, the debt limit issue has been elevated among conservative activists to the level of religious frenzy and absolutism. The second notable feature is Erickson’s implicit dismissal of the economic consequences of a debt default as more acceptable than any deal short of the no-deal Cut, Cap, and Balance ultimatum.
Indeed, lurking just beneath the surface of much of the conservative hard line on the debt limit is an ironclad conviction that all sorts of economic havoc, including a much deeper recession, might be preferable to the continuation of twentieth-century “welfare state” policies. And even conservative elites are buying into that proposition. Longtime deficit hawk Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post has articulated the point of view that we are at an epochal turning point in which sacrificing such quaint values as equality and full employment may be sadly essential. “The old order, constructed by most democracies after World War II, rested on three pillars. One was the welfare state,” he writes in his column. But in the current era, he notes, “Ideas and institutions that, on the whole, served well since World War II are under a cloud.”
The idea that today’s conservatives will ultimately abandon their revolutionary goals at the drop of a hat–or a signal from Wall Street or their congressional leadership–mistakes their sense of world-historical importance for mere self-importance. They may well feel a moral obligation, in other words, to screw up America’s economy for the foreseeable future. It could, they believe, be worse: Americans could continue to harbor the terrible illusion that FDR, not Herbert Hoover, was right.

The false equivalency commentators of the MSM are juxtaposing the speeches of President Obama and Speaker Boehner last night in predictable “on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand” reports. But WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. has a more perceptive take, for those who prefer to take it straight:

President Obama made clear tonight that the debate over the debt ceiling is not left vs. right. It’s center vs. right. There was nothing remotely “left” in this speech, unless you count higher taxes for corporate jet owners and a few other populist bits.
He summarized his approach this way: “Let’s live within our means by making serious, historic cuts in government spending. Let’s cut domestic spending to the lowest level it’s been since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Let’s cut defense spending at the Pentagon by hundreds of billions of dollars. Let’s cut out the waste and fraud in health care programs like Medicare — and at the same time, let’s make modest adjustments so that Medicare is still there for future generations. Finally, let’s ask the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to give up some of their tax breaks and special deductions.”

Dionne adds that the exchange is likely to clarify the GOP brand for those viewers who were still unclear: “…Republicans have defined their party as being committed to low taxes for the wealthy above everything else. If anything good can come out of this strange episode, it is that no one will ever be able to doubt that proposition in the future.”
Dionne also credits President Obama with doing a good job of explaining the reasons for the economic crisis and nailing the GOP for their double standard: “It was a direct hit at Republicans who seemed not to worry about deficits until Obama took office — and now blame him for much of the red ink they themselves spilled.”
But “The most persuasive argument in Obama’s speech,” according to Dionne, had to do with calling the Republicans out on their plans for holding the economy hostage in the future:

Based on what we’ve seen these past few weeks, we know what to expect six months from now. The House will once again refuse to prevent default unless the rest of us accept their cuts-only approach…And once again, the economy will be held captive unless they get their way.”

But Dionne believes the Republicans may be putting themselves into an indefensible position with just one way out:

Obama’s speech spoke more to middle-of-the-road Americans than Boehner’s did because Obama was clearly talking to them. Boehner has to prove over and over that he’s faithful to the folks at the right end of his caucus, and it’s starting to take a toll. That’s why Republicans may yet find themselves wanting to get the debt-ceiling matter out of the way without forcing another round of this madness.

Dionne acknowledges that “this whole mess is not making any politician in Washington look good.” In a struggle between a flexible centrist and a faction of increasingly rigid ideologues, however, any advantage is more likely to benefit the former.

More and more, it appears that Republicans are experiencing a severe bout of overconfidence regarding their intransigence in the debt ceiling negotiations, as TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira explains in his current ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

Here’s one of the reasons why: 53 percent of respondents in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll said that President Barack Obama cares more about the economic interests of the middle class, while just 35 percent thought that was true of the Republicans in Congress. In contrast, 67 percent thought Republicans in Congress cared more about the interests of large business corporations, compared to 24 percent who thought that of President Obama.

Teixeira adds, “…Conservative intransigence is starting to seem less a matter of principle than an expression of whose side they’re on.” In terms of what should be done, the public has little sympathy for the GOP position:

Reflecting these attitudes, the public believes Republicans should compromise on raising taxes in a debt ceiling deal. Sixty-two percent think they should give in and accept tax rises on the rich, while only 27 percent think they shouldn’t give in. But the public doesn’t believe Democrats should give in on cutting Social Security and Medicare, programs that are hugely important to middle-class economic security. By 52-38 the public believes Democrats should not agree to such cuts even if it’s the “only way” to get a debt ceiling deal.

The Republicans seem to think playing chicken in the debt ceiling negotiations is helping their image. But the latest opinion data indicates that their strategy is starting to look more like a very big turkey.

As we all wait around to see if Republicans will go along with a debt limit solution that doesn’t involve total surrender by Democrats in time to avoid all sorts of financial and economic chaos, it’s worth watching what the ideological commissars of conservatism are telling their folk. RedState’s Erick Erickson has a remarkably strident take on what he’s saying to GOP officeholders. Gaze in awe:

In the past 48 hours I have had call after call after call from members of the United States Congress. They’ve read what I’ve written. They agree. But they feel the hour is short and the end is nigh.
So some are calling looking for alternatives. Some are calling looking for energy. Many are calling looking for absolution.
And so I address them and put it here so you can see my advice.
I can give no absolution for what you may be about to do. I can offer no alternatives….
You went to Washington to change Washington. You went to Washington because you said it was broken and you worried about the future for your children and grandchildren.
And now, at the moment of crisis you are worried and second guessing yourself and looking for alternatives, ways out, and most of all a clear conscience. Cut, Cap, and Balance is the only plan that can save our credit rating and our financial integrity. I can offer you nothing else, nor should you waver from fighting for it alone. You should, however tired you may be of hearing me say it, hold the line.
But what you think will give you a clear conscience — the alternative you seek — is what has been done before. You punt. You kick the can down the road. You take the chimera and convince yourself it is real and you have done good.
A generation before you, men and women went to Washington saying they were going to turn the tide, stop the out of control spending, and stop the growth of Washington into our lives. They were going to do it for their children and grandchildren.
Now you sit where they sat. Now you do what they did….
In 1856, Abraham Lincoln said that the reason this country was great was because in this country unlike any other “every man can make himself.” When you cut your deal and clear you conscience, the American Republic is not going to die, but the ability of men to make themselves will.
Here and now, this fight — this is the last best hope to turn back. The choice is yours. There is no absolution.

I don’t know what’s more remarkable about Erick’s rant: the identification of conservative fiscal priorities with the pre-Civil-War moral posture of Abraham Lincoln, or the framing of his post as a denial of “absolution” for Republican pols considering the wicked path of avoiding a financial and economic meltdown.
I fear Erick’s papal bull on the debt limit increase is not really that much of an inflation of the influence of conservative activists on the GOP. Many Republican members of Congress are terrified to do what they are being told to do by Wall Street, their own leadership, and public opinion polls. For that reason alone, the rest of us should not be that confident they will do the obviously right thing. What’s a mere financial and economic collapse as compared to the opportunity to promote the Tea Party’s demands for a U-turn in every step of social progress achieved since the 1930s?

In his New Republic article, “How Tax Reform Represents Obama’s Greatest Shot at Hope and Change,” Mark Schmitt challenges Dems to seize the initiative “to move the whole country in the direction of greater fairness, growth, and financial stability.”

…Nothing about tax reform is going to be any easier than the debt-limit deal itself. Still, if a budget deal commits Congress to do something, the goal of tax reform can be much more than just moving the long-term revenue line a little closer to the spending line. Because the tax code sets some of the basic parameters of our economic structure, it can also be an opportunity to move the whole country in the direction of greater fairness, growth, and financial stability.
…While far from the only cause of structural inequality, the tax code is a big part of it, and tax reform can change it. The first step is to end the special treatment of capital gains and dividend income–not just because the wealthy get more of their income in that form, but because of the incentives it has created to increase inequality and risk. That’s a reform that would both clean up the code and give us more of what we want more of.
But imagine a tax code that tried to undo its own damage. When so much inequality is created within single companies, why not reward companies that are narrowing the gap and tax companies that widen it? The average CEO now takes home 350 times the pay of the average worker, a difference that’s more than tripled since 1990, and is unknown in any other country. Leo Hindery, a former telecommunications executive, has proposed a tax penalty for companies where executive compensation exceeds a certain level; another proposal, put forward by investor Steve Silberstein, would adjust the corporate tax rate based on the ratio of CEO pay to the average worker. A company with a ratio at the 1980 level of 50:1 would pay tax at the current rate of 35 percent, with the rate rising for companies with a higher ratio and lower for those with a narrower pay gap.

Schmitt argues that merely allowing the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more than $250K would not raise enough revenue to “make a dent in the conditions of those in the bottom 60 percent who have gained almost nothing over the last 30 years.” He likens it to “dipping into great fortunes with a teaspoon, and sprinkling it over the rest of the country” and, besides, the revenue raised this way in the President’s proposal is “earmarked for deficit reduction.”
He also cites the tax code incentives for spiking executive pay upward as a major systemic injustice that must be corrected in any plan for meaningful reform, and adds that an historic transformation toward greater fairness is now a real possibility. “Taxation provides the basic structure of incentives in our economy, and the Bush and Reagan tax changes got them wrong,” explains Schmitt. “If the budget deal does lead to tax reform, it’s a welcome opportunity to get them right this time. ”

If there was a contest to identify the most influential political buzzword, phrase or term of the last year, I would have to give the nod to “job-killer.” I don’t have a ‘word cloud’ or content analysis to back me up, but it’s so ubiquitous that you rarely hear a GOP speech that doesn’t parrot it to describe some progressive proposal.
OK, you want numbers? I just did a quick Google, which pulled up 53,300,000 hits for ‘job-killer’ on the web and 230 hits for the term in today’s news.
The really bad news is that the vast, overwhelming number of those hits is for citations using the term to support some conservative distortion or other. Engage a Republican in dialogue about the need for revenues and the rich paying their fair share of taxes, for example, and his knee will immediately jerk, accompanied by the term ‘job-killer’ in description of all taxes, or any progressive reforms, for that matter. It’s more than a little ironic, considering that Republicans do more job-killing than anyone.
Some of the page one usages of the term in my Google search described the minimum wage, climate control regulations and HCR. The California Chamber of Commerce fronts an annual list of “job-killer” legislative proposals, also on page one.
The reason there are so many hits is because the lapdog MSM dutifully reports nearly every usage of the term, although 53 million hits suggests it’s getting a little, well, shop-worn. Apparently they like vivid descriptive terms, even when used in a totally bogus context.
There’s no denying it’s a powerful, resonant term. Common sense tells us that something is killing jobs. The Republicans favor one simplistic explanation in particular — taxes, and they are not afraid to use ‘job-killer’, again and again in that context. Liberal eyes roll with every usage, but GOP wordsmiths (see Luntz, Frank) tell them that it still does the job. Repetition is a cardinal principle of Republican propaganda, and they have the message discipline and echo chamber to back it up.
The good news is that the term can be used with more credibility by progressives. But the sole progressive use of ‘job-killer’ among the page one hits in my Google search was for David M. Cutler’s article, “Repealing Health Care Is a Job Killer: It Would Slow Job Growth by 250,000 to 400,000 Annually” at the Center for American Progress website.
Joshua Holland has a more recent example of a progressive take on the term in his Alternet post “Why the Wealthiest Americans Are the Real ‘Job-Killers’.” It would be good to see ‘job-killer’ being used in a progressive context in the MSM, as well as the blogosphere, which could be encouraged if Democratic politicians would take the term out for a little spin once in a while.
But there will come a point when the term loses its power from overuse and becomes just another cliche. Meanwhile the Republicans are milking it dry. They are more clever at creating resonant catch-phrases and buzzwords for sound-bites, probably because of their more pervasive connections in the advertising industry. At this point it would be a welcome development for Democrats to begin thinking more about how to catch up.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Over the past half-century, Ohio has been the quintessential bellwether state in presidential elections. That’s why the nascent Obama campaign should be paying careful attention to a Quinnipiac survey of the Buckeye state released this week, which shows the president with weak job approval numbers and an unimpressive lead over Mitt Romney. The Ohio results bolster the view that if the economy doesn’t improve before next November, a majority of the electorate may well be open to the idea of firing the man they placed in charge less than three years ago.
Ohio has gone with the winner in twelve of the past thirteen contests; the last Democrat to win the White House without carrying Ohio was John F. Kennedy. The last Republican to win the presidency without Ohio? In the 39 quadrennial cycles since the founding of the GOP, no Republican has ever been inaugurated without Ohio in his column. This isn’t because of the raw math of the electoral college; any armchair strategist can find a way for Obama to get to 270 electoral votes without the Midwestern state. It is rather that the formula for winning a national majority is essentially the same as for prevailing in Ohio.
Indeed, Ohio is a political bellwether because it is a microcosm of the country. Its economy is balanced, with shares of its workforce in manufacturing, construction, services, sales, education, health care, and the professions mirroring the national breakdown. Its demography looks a lot like America’s too. The median age of its population is 37.9 years (36.5 for the country); 13.6 percent of its population is over 65, but so is 12.6 percent of the country. African-Americans make up 11.7 percent of the population (12.4 percent of the country). Latinos constitute the only notable difference: 15.1 percent of the country, but only 2.6 percent of Ohioans. This is a double-edged sword for Obama. On the one hand, the paucity of Latinos in Ohio helps to explain why his margin in that state lagged slightly behind his share of the national vote. On the other hand, if the predicted drop-off in next year’s Latino vote comes to pass, it will have much less effect in Ohio than in any other large swing state. [All demographic figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau.] Now for the Quinnipiac survey, released in two tranches on Wednesday and Thursday. To begin, it finds that the 2010 Republican tide has ebbed considerably. Newly elected governor John Kasich enjoys a woeful 35 percent approval rating, in part because his agenda is out of sync with that of the electorate. Although Ohioans think it’s fair to ask public employees to pay more for health insurance and pensions, only 34 percent support Kasich’s push to limit their collective bargaining rights. Fifty-eight percent think public employee unions should be able to bargain over health insurance, 56 percent oppose banning strikes by public employees, and 56 percent support a referendum to repeal Kasich’s changes to Ohio’s labor laws.
While Kasich made his mark in Washington as a leader on fiscal issues, the Ohio electorate is turning thumbs down on his budget as well. Yes, the people like the fact that the budget was balanced with spending cuts, not tax increases. Still, 54 percent of Ohioans disapprove of the way their governor is handling the budget. Fifty percent think that the newly approved fiscal plan is unfair to people like them; 34 percent think that the cuts go too far, versus only 25 percent who think that they didn’t go far enough; and only a third believe that the cuts will help the state’s economy.
In other words, if the 2012 election in Ohio were a referendum on Governor Kasich’s first two years, Obama would probably be home free. But there’s good reason to believe that it won’t be. Take health care. Fully 67 percent of Ohioans disapprove of the individual mandate in the new federal health care law–Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative. A proposed amendment to Ohio’s constitution blocking the mandate’s implementation may well pass and will certainly keep the electorate focused on that issue. In addition, 78 percent of Ohio’s voters (including 66 percent of Democrats) favor a state bill requiring would-be voters to show photo identification in order to cast their ballots, a change that Democratic operatives believe would reduce their margins in lower-income and minority communities.
This brings us to Obama’s chances. Fifty-eight percent of Ohio’s voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, despite the fact that Ohio unemployment has declined by two full percentage points–from 10.6 percent to 8.6 percent–since February of 2010, versus only 0.5 points (9.7 to 9.2 percent) for the country as a whole. Only 46 percent approve of the president’s overall job performance. The same percentage–46 percent overall, and 40 percent of Independents–feel that he deserves to be reelected. While the survey shows him way ahead of Tea Party favorites such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, Obama’s edge over Mitt Romney is a barely significant four points, 45 to 41.
The most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows much the same thing: Obama’s job approval stands at 47 percent, and he leads Mitt Romney by 48 to 41 percent. And the generic question is revealing: Asked to choose between President Obama and the “Republican candidate,” 42 percent of voters said they’d probably vote for Obama, versus 39 percent who opted for the Republican candidate. But fully 10 percent–a share that hasn’t varied much this year–said that it would depend on the identity of Obama’s opponent.
Of course, it’s early, and as a useful Gallup analysis shows, an incumbent’s ratings in the twelfth quarter of his presidency are more predictive than are those in the tenth, the quarter that Obama has just completed. But it’s not too early to see the basic options for 2012. If the economy perks up even modestly, Obama wins. If not, we’re in for a repeat of 1980, when a majority of the electorate was willing to fire the incumbent, but not unless they felt comfortable with the challenger–a sentiment that didn’t crystallize until the pivotal Carter-Reagan debate. So if the Republicans manage to nominate a mainstream conservative who seems reasonable, they may well win. If they nominate Palin or Bachmann, they’ll commit creedal suicide, as each party ends up doing about once a generation. As for Rick Perry–the Republican flavor du jour–it remains to be seen whether he can become the party unifier who energizes the Tea Party base and Main Street conservatives without repelling the moderates and independents who will decide a close election.