Tired of generational analysis of politics? You know, the assumption that this or that pol represents the world-view and/or aspirations of the age cohort into which he or she was born. If so, you’ll love this comment from Dana Goldstein at TAPPED:

Sure, the experience of living through Vietnam and the student protest movement indelibly shaped politicians like Clinton and Mitt Romney. But every generation has its liberals and its conservatives, its hopeful optimists and its hard-nosed power brokers, its intellectuals and its businesspeople. Furthermore, a “generation” is almost impossible to define in any self-contained way.

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Makes abundant good sense, eh? It’s sort of like the reason I’ve always had a hard time taking astrology seriously (apologies if I offend any astrology fans here). I mean, really, I’m supposed to believe I have more in common with a Bangladeshi hemp farmer who happens to be a Virgo than with, say, my Sagittarian father? To a lesser but still significant extent, I have the same objection to generational typecasting.
Moreover, Dana’s right: generational definitions are a little squishy. She notes that Barack Obama, the purported avatar of post-baby-boom politics, is himself a baby boomer, having been born in 1961. When the term “baby boom generation” first came into use, in the 1960s, it was applied to people born immediately after World War II, from 1946 to 1952. At some point it was extended to 1960. Now, apparently, the line between baby boomers and Gen Xers is 1964.
So maybe we need to start defining Barack Obama as a “baby boomer with X rising.” Or better yet, find another way to describe him altogether.

The GOP version of the Washington Post/ABC poll of Iowa is now out, and the storyline is all about Mike Huckabee.
Mike’s now within the margin of error of Romney in this poll (28%-24%). The other candidates are pretty much where they were back in July. More importantly, Huckabee’s base of support seems a lot firmer than Romney’s, as Gary Langer’s analysis for ABC points out:

[A]mong likely caucus-goers who are “very enthusiastic” about their choice, Huckabee leads Romney by 37-25 percent. Among those who say they’ve definitely made up their minds, 34 percent support Huckabee, 24 percent Romney. That makes for a better turnout profile for Huckabee.

This may matter a lot, because this and previous polls consistently show less enthusiasm among Republicans than Democrats in Iowa, which (along with strong indications that independents are likely to participate on the Democratic side) could mean a relatively low turnout.
One factor that doesn’t matter for the GOP is second-choice preferences. Unlike the Iowa Democratic Caucuses, the presidential segment of the Republican Caucuses is a straight straw poll, without all the thresholds and preference reassignments that make the Dem Caucuses so unpredictable. That’s too bad for Huckabee, since every other candidate would love to see him derail Romney in IA. You do have to wonder if they will avoid attacking Huckabee in Iowa between now and January 3, against the wishes of the conservative opinion-leaders who can’t stand him and are beginning to worry that an IA win could catapult him into serious contention down the road.

In a rare development, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post penned a column today that offered a cogent and oriiginal point about a political subject (though maybe I’m just suffering from Column Envy).
All the talk about Mitt Romney’s religion, says Cohen, has detracted attention from the fact that Mike Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, which is a relatively unusual phenomenon on the presidential campaign trail. Indeed, while there’s not much evidence that Romney’s faith has any particular impact on his policy positions, Huckabee’s been trading on his evangelical credentials pretty heavily of late. So why, asks Cohen, isn’t anybody asking the Arkansan to do a JFK-style speech reassuring people about his religious views?
It’s a good question, and one that may get asked a lot if Huckabee manages to upset the Mittster in Iowa.

The big buzz today, just over six weeks out from the iowa Caucuses, is a new ABC-Washington Post poll of the Democratic field in Iowa. For casual news consumers, the top line of this poll–Obama up by 4 over Clinton–may seem like a big, exciting shift. But actually, the same poll had Obama up back in July. The more dramatic change is that Obama’s up 8 points over Edwards, though even that difference shrinks to 5 percent among the likeliest voters, and the margin of error is four-and-a-half percent.
Like last week’s CBS-New York Times poll, this one shows Clinton trailing Obama and Edwards in “second-choice” support, though it does not break out supporters of those second-tier candidates who might actually have to make a second choice at the Caucuses.
The internal finding that the Post finds most significant is that Obama’s now no more dependent on first-time Caucus-goers–and thus a big overall turnout–than HRC (though both are significantly more dependent on such voters than Edwards, the candidate who would probably most benefit from a lower turnout).
Meanwhile, there’s a new CNN/WMUR poll of the Republican field in NH, which shows Mitt Romney expanding his lead, Rudy Giuliani and (most calamitously) Fred Thompson declining, and Ron Paul leaping into fourth place. CNN/WMUR’s September poll was the one, you might remember, that sparked a bunch of “Giuliani Catches Romney” headlines. Not so much today, since Romney’s lead over Rudy is 17 points, with McCain actually in second place without adding or losing support since September. Big Fred dropped from 14 percent in September to 4 percent now, and an amazing one-half of poll respondents said they wouldn’t vote for him under any circumstances.
Sic transit gloria, eh Fred?

Via pollster.com, we learn that Elon University has done a presidential nominating candidacy poll of adults (e.g., no screen for registration or likelihood to vote) in VA, NC, SC, GA and FL.
This is interesting because most prior primary polls in the South have focused strictly on South Carolina and Florida.
Among Dems, Elon has HRC well ahead, at 45%, with Obama at 17% and Edwards at 11%. Front-runner-factor notwithstanding, this is pretty impressive, since Edwards is a southern white male (with his home state and native state in the mix), and Obama is an African-American (the black share of the Dem vote in these states is probably somewhere between a fourth and a third of the total).
On the GOP side, Rudy leads with 25%, with Big Fred at 16%, Romney at 12%, and McCain and Huckabee tied at 8%.
All these numbers are obviously vulnerable in a big way to early state results and regional campaigning. But it does indicate that all the down-ballot-fear-of-HRC stuff we hear about Southern Democrats is an elite, not popular, phenomenon, and that Rudy’s national lead is predictably smaller in the SE, and even more inviting to a candidate who can unite conservatives before the first Southerners vote in SC.

In another sign that the Conservative Establishment is getting worried about Mike Huckabee’s rise towards political viability in Iowa, the Editors of National Review have published a brief piece dissing him on a wide variety of grounds, centering on his “mixture of populism [note: not a compliment] and big-government liberalism.”
But here’s the really interesting thing: NatRev also thinks Huckabee’s advocacy of the so-called “Fair Tax”–a national sales tax scheme that right-wing talk show types love like drunks love cheap hootch–is a really bad idea, too:

This proposal would almost certainly make a presidential nominee unelectable. But even if he got elected, it would be impossible to deliver. To bar the door on the income tax we would need to amend the Constitution. Otherwise we would end up with the income tax and Huckabee’s sales tax. We would call it a pipe dream, if Huckabee weren’t so anti-smoking.

You might want to make a note of this graph, in case Chuck Norris’ buddy takes flight in the Iowa Caucuses. Add in his increasingly strident support for a national constitutional amendment extending the full benefits of the Equal Protection Clause to human embryos from the moment of conception, and you’ve got a potential GOP nominee whose genial personality masks a lot of crazy talk.

My post yesterday about the Democratic Left’s “Obama problem” was cross-posted at TPMCafe by that site’s request, and at this point, has attracted more than 60 comments, mostly about Obama’s Social Security rap.
And over at OpenLeft, Matt Stoller takes pretty strong exception to my analysis, primarily, it appears, because he considers discussion of Obama’s framing and rhetorical themes “non-substantive.” He also seems to think I’m poorly qualified for the task of providing insights on “the Left” because I am insufficiently “Of the Left” myself, a point of view that would cast a negative light on a lot of progressive analysis of conservatism and the GOP. He is right that I should have noted some progressive policy disagreements with Obama, such as the Iraq residual troop issue, and maybe his health care plan.
I’ve traveling right now, but will address Matt’s post in greater length later today.

Having watched the CNN Democratic debate last night, and read a lot of the spin, I think Matt Yglesias has far and away the best take on it: The CNN crew, and particularly Wolf Blitzer, distorted the whole event by coming up with bad, “gotcha” questions and then getting hostile when the candidates naturally resisted walking into a trap and instead tried to address the broader issues involved in, say, immigration reform or Iraq.
Add in the weird efforts to restate audience questions, and the exceptionally intrusive CNN branding of the debate (including the clock-chewing basketball-players-take-the-court intros of the candidates, which mainly allowed CNN “analysts” to tell us what we were about to hear), and the generally lame-o post-debate commentary, and you had a “debate” that struggled to overcome its media sponsor.
I also agree with Matt that the whole MSM take on the debate–a media-contrived HRC “comeback” after a media-contrived HRC “stumble”–was news management at its worst. It was hard, though, not to sympathize a bit with Clinton after two straight debates set up as exercises in King of the Mountain.
There were a couple of occasions when Wolf and company made unaccountable omissions in which candidates got to address which questions, probably because of CNN’s self-inflicted time problems. Obama didn’t get to talk about teacher merit play, though he’s the only candidate who’s addressed the subject in anything other than a negative way. And even more striking, the question about the need for bipartisanship was pitched to everyone other than John Edwards, who has made a big deal out of a very contrary attitude towards cooperation with the GOP.
All in all, not a shining moment for CNN, or for the level of political discourse.

With another Democratic candidate debate on tap in Nevada later today, you can bet Barack Obama is going to get questions about his proposal for modifying the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes. But it’s important to understand why this is such a big deal for a lot of progressive Democrats. His proposal isn’t the controversial thing (though it certainly would be in a general election campaign, where it would be hammered by Republicans as a tax increase); it’s his decision to raise the subject at all, and particularly his use of the word “crisis” to describe the status of the Social Security system.
The immediate reason for this reaction is obvious enough; by the well-earned end of Bush’s 2005 drive to divert payroll tax funds to create private retirement accounts, Democratic critics of his plan were devoting just as much time denying there was a Social Security solvency problem as they were attacking the plan’s baleful consequences. So ironically, a proposal by Obama that’s “Left” in terms of its specifics (avoiding any benefit changes while making the payroll tax burden more progressive) is drawing fire from the Left itself as a heretical concession to the rationale for Bush’s proposal, and to those much-derided “Centrist” media types who like to talk about entitlement reform. And for that reason, the reaction among left-bent Democrats to Obama’s Social Security rap provides a microcosm of the exquisite ambivalence they are experiencing over the Obama candidacy in its entirety.
For an idea of the significance invested in this issue by many progressive netroots activists, check out this person-to-person grilling that Obama received from MyDD’s Jonathan Singer:

Barack Obama: I think the point you’re making is why talk about it right now. Is that right?
Jonathan Singer: Yeah. And why use the term “crisis”?
Obama: It is a long-term problem. I know that people, including you, are very sensitive to the concern that we repeat anything that sounds like George Bush. But I have been very clear in fighting privatization. I have been adamant about the fact that I am opposed to it. What I believe is that it is a long-term problem that we should deal with now. And the sooner the deal with it then the better off it’s going to be.
So the notion that somehow because George Bush was trying to drum up fear in order to execute [his] agenda means that Democrats shouldn’t talk about it at all I think is a mistake. This is part of what I meant when I said we’re constantly reacting to the other side instead of setting our own terms for the debate, but also making sure we are honest and straight forward about the issues that we’re concerned about.

Singer’s take on this conversation?

In all it’s not everything that I wanted to hear. But perhaps more importantly, Obama had the opportunity to hear that folks don’t want him talking about a non-existent “crisis” in Social Security. And hopefully, he will pay heed to that sentiment.

There, in a nutshell, is the lingering concern a lot of folks on the Left have with Barack Obama: his policies are suitably progressive, but his framing of those policies, from his constant invocation of bipartisanship to his occasional violation of progressive taboos (e.g., lecturing teachers about their opposition to merit pay, and bloggers about their “incivility”, and consorting with anti-gay gospel singers), makes them suspect he’s really talking past them in order to appeal to the David Broders of the political world.
The recent buzz surrounding the possibility that Obama’s on course to provide a real challenge to Hillary Clinton has brought these conflicted feelings about Obama on the Left to a head once again. And the “crisis” over Obama is heightened by the fact that John Edwards is simultaneously offering, not just the progressive “steak” but all the netroots-style “sizzle” any Broder-hating blogger could ever ask for, line for line and word for word.
As we get closer to actual voting, the Left’s “Obama Problem” is becoming acute. At one site alone, OpenLeft, and on one day, you have Matt Stoller citing the candidate’s new package of technology proposals as the reason he’s now leaning towards support for Obama, and Chris Bowers hoping against hope that Obama, despite himself, could marshal the creative class/minority working class coalition that Chris considers the future of progressive politics. Both these gents have strongly criticized and (in Chris’ case) written off Obama in the very recent past, mainly for the heresies cited above.
I’m discussing this phenomenon mainly to crystallize the subtext of much of the netroots debate on Obama, Edwards, and the entire Democratic nominating contest. Does it really matter in terms of actual voters? You’d have to guess John Edwards thinks so, given his ever-more-faithful channeling of netroots-approved rhetoric these days. And to the extent that everyone agrees media coverage of the campaign does move votes, it’s not so strange that New Media coverage would have an impact as well.
But votes will move media, too. If Edwards wins in Iowa, it will inevitably be viewed as an ideological as well as organizational triumph, and even if Obama survives to fight again, his support on the Left will rapidly dissipate. If Obama wins Iowa, and gets the desired one-on-one with HRC, the Left’s Obama Problem may be resolved in the opposite direction, though the agony inflicted by Obama’s “centrist” rhetorical tendencies could grow with the realization that the Left has nowhere else to go.
In the meantime, this “primary within the primary” will continue. And so, too, will the quieter but still very interesting internal debate among Democratic “centrists” about Obama and his rivals, a topic I’ll write about in the near future.