As discussed here, there was a lot of talk yesterday about two big national polls that showed some weakening of public support for elements of the Obama agenda, and a sudden upsurge of concern about budget deficits, along with continued high support levels for the President, and continued hard times for Republicans. (A third poll, from Pew, came out later in the day, and generally showed the same trends).
Most of the commentary on the polls focused on short-term issues, particularly health care. But over at The New Republic, TDS Co-Editor William Galston offered a much broader assessment about public opinion trends that point towards possible difficulty for Democrats in the 2010 elections. After noting the President’ still-strong overall approval ratings, and the strong public belief that he inherited many of the country’s problems, Galston notes these danger signs for Obama and Democrats:
[T]he people have little confidence in government as an effective instrument of public purpose. Trust in government remains near an historic low and has not improved significantly since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. Only 34 percent think that government should do more to solve national problems, down seven points in the past three months. Sixty-nine percent express “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of concern about the expanding role of the federal government in areas such as automobile companies, corporate compensation, and health care.
Second, people are unsure about Obama’s overall economic strategy. Only 46 percent say that they are “extremely” or “quite” confident that the president has the right set of goals and policies to improve the economy; 53 percent are not. According to Pew, approval of the president’s handling of the economy has declined by eight points (from 60 to 52 percent) since mid-April.
Third, evidence is accumulating that the administration misjudged the public’s reaction to increased spending and rising budget deficits, which now rank second in the list of top concerns in the NYT/CBS poll, behind only job creation and economic growth, and ahead of health care costs as an economic issue….
Fourth, while there is majority support for the broad architecture of health reform that the administration espouses, doubts about specifics are multiplying.
Moroever, says Galston, the economic situation is not likely to visibly improve–particularly in terms of unemployment–before voters go to the polls in November of 2010:
Indeed, [the] history of recessions over the past three decades suggests that unemployment is likely to be at least as high on Election Day next year as it is today. In the face of jobless recoveries, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton saw their personal popularity decline during their first two years in office, and their parties experienced significant losses during the first mid-term test.
The best thing Democrats have going for them right now is the public’s near-total withdrawal of confidence from the Republican Party, which now “enjoys” its lowest rating ever recorded in the NYT/CBS survey–a finding that Pew confirms. But if the deficit surges while the job market languishes, even the Republicans’ collapse may not be enough to save the governing party from a painful reverse next year.
Democrats need to take these warning signs seriously, but I would note three mitigating factors, all related to the fact that elections are between parties and candidates, and are never pure “referenda” on the “governing party.”