Ron Fournier’s “Why (and How) Romney is Playing the Race Card” at the National Journal takes a perceptive look at the GOP candidate’s dog whistle strategy. It’s about stoking the insecurities of white working-class voters with racially-charged code words. Fournier relates a conversation with two old friends back in McComb County, Michigan, in which they express opinions that African Americans (“they”) in the area are no angry because the get “subsidization” in the form of a “magic card they can swipe” to pay for things. Fournier adds:

A poll this spring by the Pew Economic Mobility Project underscored how minorities and whites see their divergent economic trajectories. Whites earning between $25,000 and $75,000 per year were more than twice as likely as blacks in the same income range–and nearly twice as likely as Latinos–to say they had already achieved the American Dream. A majority of Latinos and a plurality of African-Americans say they expect to be making enough money 10 years from now to live the lifestyle they desire. A majority of whites consider that a pipe dream.
Working-class whites, in other words, are already more prosperous and secure than working-class minorities, but they’re less optimistic because they don’t believe they’re climbing anymore. They’re simply trying to hold on to what they’ve got, and see others grabbing at it.

Further, adds Fournier,

Thanks to Romney, they see minorities grabbing at their way of life every day and all day in the inaccurate welfare ad. It opens with a picture of Bill Clinton (a man obsessed with Macomb County and Reagan Democrats) signing the 1996 welfare reform act, which shifted the benefits from indefinite government assistance to one pushing people into employment and self-reliance.
A leather-gloved white laborer wipes sweat from his forehead. “But on July 12,” the ad intones,” President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send your welfare check and “welfare to work” goes back to being plain old welfare.”

As for the effectiveness of the ad, Fournier notes:

…First, internal GOP polling and focus groups offer convincing evidence that the welfare ad is hurting Obama. Second, the welfare issue, generally speaking, triggers anger in white blue-collar voters that is easily directed toward Democrats. This information comes from senior GOP strategists who have worked both for President Bush and Romney. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
Furthermore, a senior GOP pollster said he has shared with the Romney camp surveys showing that white working-class voters who backed Obama in 2008 have moved to Romney in recent weeks “almost certainly because of the welfare ad. We’re talking a (percentage) point or two, but that could be significant.”

Fournier goes on to roll out a little polling history that reveals that a substantial percentage of white workers embrace racial stereotypes. He concludes that “Romney and his advisors stand by an ad they know is wrong – or, at the very least, they are carelessly ignoring the facts. That ad is exploiting the worst instincts of white voters – as predicted and substantiated by the Republican Party’s own polling.”
That may be why Romney looked pleased when he got booed at the NAACP gathering back in July for saying he would repeal the ACA. It was likely a case of a planned gambit that worked just the way he wanted.

For some insightful comments about the Democrats approach to discussing the ACA at the Convention, read Ed Kilgore’s “Talkin’ Obamacare” at The Washington Monthly. Among Kilgore’s observations:

…Yes, ACA doesn’t poll that great, at least as an abstraction. But as we’ve known for a long time, a sizable chunk of those expressing disapproval of the legislation are people who think it should have been much stronger and/or more “public” than it was–i.e., people with zero sympathy for the GOP point-of-view on the law. And more importantly, polls have consistently shown solid majority support for most of ACA’s key provisions, with the exception of the individual mandate. Given the Republican Party’s ironclad decision not to offer any glimpse of what if anything they’d replace ObamaCare with if they succeed in repealing it, Democrats had little to lose and a lot to gain from dramatizing what Americans would lose if the law goes away–including, very crucially, provisions that have already taken effect…The potential power of this way of discussing ObamaCare was pretty clearly shown yesterday by Stacy Lihn’s speech about the lifetime cap on insurance payments that ACA outlawed, and that if reimposed could rob her of the ability to secure for her daughter life-saving heart surgery…

You can read the rest of it at this link.

A few days before the Republican convention The London Economist ran an editorial titled “So, Mitt, what do you really believe? Too much about the Republican candidate for the presidency is far too mysterious.” The editorial’s quite startling conclusion was that, if Romney continued on his current “evasive, needlessly extreme” approach, “America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper.. ”
It’s a really stunning slap-down. For the self-proclaimed “businessman’s candidate” to get trashed so dramatically by the leading business magazine on the planet blows a gaping hole in his entire case for election.
But don’t believe us. Read these excerpts from the Economist’s editorial (italics ours):

When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favoured keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35% to 28% for the richest Americans.
All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr Romney could win an Olympic medal in it. And that is a pity, because this newspaper finds much to like in the history of this uncharismatic but dogged man, from his obvious business acumen to the way he worked across the political aisle as governor to get health reform passed and the state budget deficit down….
But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character… [Romney] has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper…
In theory, Mr Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex). Mr Romney began by saying that he wanted to bring down the deficit; now he stresses lower tax rates. Both are admirable aims, but they could well be contradictory: so which is his primary objective?
Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?

The Economist editorial concluded by saying that Romney “has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.” As we now know, his acceptance speech didn’t answer any of them. So, as of right now, the London Economist is on record as saying “America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper…”

Aside from Michelle Obama’s rave reviews, the first day of the Democratic Convention included an unusual number of solid speeches and a more aggressive than usual opening strategy, as TDS managing Editor Ed Kilgore, a veteran Dem convention insider, explains at the Washington Monthly:

..the first day of the Democratic convention exhibited two things some observers weren’t sure to expect: (1) a robust defense of Obama’s governing record, especially (and unexpectedly, as Ezra Klein notes) ObamaCare; and (2) a direct, uninhibited assault on the GOP generally and Mitt Romney specifically. On the latter front, Deval Patrick gave what might have been remembered, had Michelle Obama not blotted out the sun, as the best first-night speech. And “keynote” speaker Julian Castro provided a hefty combo platter of Latino solidarity with Obama; an implicit contrast with the laissez-faire oriented Latino outreach of the GOP convention; some good shots at Romney; and an appeal to younger voters.
As a veteran of the 2004 convention, when the word came down that speakers were not to criticize Republicans at all (based on some focus groups of independents expressing hostility to partisanship), this was all pretty amazing…

Read the rest of Kilgore’s post right here.

The following memo, by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, is cross-posted from DCorps.com:
This is a close presidential race where President Obama and the Democrats still need a good convention to get momentum and define the choice in the election to lock in their 3- or 4-point lead. In our view, that is very likely.
The reason why we think it is important to have a good convention is that the real economy is so difficult that it gives Romney and the Republicans an audience on spending and budgets, even when the country views them with disdain. In the survey we conducted just before the Republican convention, Obama maintained a 2-point lead. But because Republican-leaning independents pay more attention in this period and are a larger portion of the national survey, the survey results are tough: the President fell to 6 points behind Romney and Democrats 9 points behind Republicans on who would do a better job on the economy. That poll shows people struggling in their personal economies, which were weakening further, even as there was more churning in the job market. As a result, the president was barely winning big economic arguments in the survey.
So, we just should not underestimate how difficult it is out there and what we are asking people to do – to support re-election – despite 60 percent thinking the economy is headed in the wrong direction and so many thinking spending and deficits hurt the economy. They are ready to vote for Obama because they know how unique these times are and how much Bush contributed to the mess. They are ready to vote for him because they respect President Obama and are not focused on the past but on what the candidates will do to make things better. They are ready to vote for Obama because they worry about the Republicans’ social agenda and because they truly don’t want a new version of trickle-down economics.
There are reasons why Democrats enjoy a 6-point advantage in party identification and are at parity on who voters trust to handle taxes – both pretty amazing numbers – but revealing on why Obama will likely move back into the lead.
But Democrats need a good convention to make all those dynamics dominant over the material economy. That is why we are writing this list of things Obama can get done at the convention.
Read the full memo from James Carville and Stan Greenberg.

TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore has an interesting take on former President Bill Clinton’s role at the Democratic Convention — and it’s potential impact at the Washington Monthly. Kilgore explains:

Until quite recently, the obvious role for Clinton was to rebut the idea that Obama’s policies–particularly his tax policies–were somehow antithetical to economic growth incompatible with a thriving private sector, or responsible for the nation’s fiscal problems. That remains an important task, and one that Clinton should respond to very personally, since he, too, had to battle the argument that very slightly higher top-level income tax rates would create an economic calamity, or more generally, that political leaders had to bend to the maximum demands of “job creators,” who would spitefully plunge the nation into a downward spiral if forced to support public investments or tolerate regulation.
But as I’ve argued earlier, Clinton has an even more urgent opportunity and obligation in Charlotte: to demolish, as no one else can, the mendacious claim that Obama is unraveling successful and popular Clinton policies, most notably the 1996 welfare reform legislation.

Read the rest of Kilgore’s post right here.

As the Democratic Convention begins, it’s instructive to take a moment to evaluate the overall quality of campaign reporting thus far. Slate.com columnist Sasha Issenberg’s post “Why Campaign Reporters Are Behind the Curve” at NYT’s ‘Campaign Stops’ is a good place to begin. Issenberg acknowledges the oft-stated critique that too much MSM time and energy is being squandered on “horse race” analysis. But, worse, argues Issenberg, the horse race reportage is generally sub-standard. As Issenberg explains:

…The reality about horse-race journalism is far more embarrassing to the press and ought to be just as disappointing to the readers who consume our reporting. The truth is that we aren’t even that good at covering the horse race. If the 2012 campaign has been any indication, journalists remain unable to keep up with the machinations of modern campaigns, and things are likely only to get worse.
…Over the last decade, almost entirely out of view, campaigns have modernized their techniques in such a way that nearly every member of the political press now lacks the specialized expertise to interpret what’s going on. Campaign professionals have developed a new conceptual framework for understanding what moves votes.
…Campaigns have borrowed techniques from the social sciences, including behavioral psychology and statistical modeling. They have access to private collections of data and from their analysis of it have been able to reach empirical, if tentative, conclusions about what works and what doesn’t.

Issenberg sees the decline in quality of horse-race reporting accelerating around the year 2000, when ” campaign analysts began to pull in reams of new data on individual voters,” including “new demographic data and lifestyle markers” such as “lists of people who purchased religious material or had gun licenses or had recently taken a cruise.” Issenberg continues:

…Few journalists had access to any of the campaigns’ data, or even much understanding of the statistical techniques they used. We found ourselves at the mercy of self-promoting consultants who described how they were changing politics by ignoring stodgy old demographics and instead pinpointing voters according to their lifestyles. We played along, guilelessly imputing new mythic powers to microtargeting. In many retellings, data analysis became the reason George W. Bush was re-elected….It was the combination of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of data points that offered value: algorithms could weigh previously imperceptible relationships among variables to predict political attitudes and behavior.

Yet, even today, says Issenberg,

Journalists tend to mistake the part of the campaign that is exposed to their view — the candidate’s travel and speeches, television ads, public pronouncements of spokesmen and surrogates — for the entirety of the enterprise. They treat elections almost exclusively as an epic strategic battle to win hearts and minds whose primary tools are image-making and storytelling.
But particularly in a polarized race like this one, where fewer than one-tenth of voters are moving between candidates, the most advanced thinking inside a campaign is just as likely to focus on fine-tuning statistical models to refine vote counts and improve techniques for efficiently identifying and mobilizing existing supporters.

Citing Romney’s “victory” in the Iowa caucuses (it was later revealed he actually lost to Santorum) as an example of distracted media analysis, Issenberg argues that “Mr. Romney had exploited the inefficiency at the core of contemporary campaign coverage: the press’s fascination with strategic calculations and gamesmanship well exceeds its ability to decode the tactics underneath.” Romney had “deployed statistical models to track Iowa supporters and current vote counts for his rivals. It amounted to a largely invisible 21st-century upgrade to the traditional infrastructure of offices, phone banks and staff that most journalists visualized.”
Here’s hoping the Obama campaign has an even stronger edge in advanced statistical analysis and the modernized campaign needed to make the most of it.