Big primary day in the 2010 election season, with all sorts of things happening. Under the radar the 2012 season also begins, as does a battle likely to come in the Senate Democratic leadership fight, with feelings that Sen. Harry Reid may be heading for a loss. Amidst this we get a one-issue marketing magazine all about Sarah Palin. You might wonder why? Driving everything is something I mentioned yesterday, which David Sanger analyzes fully today, though no one should bet on 10-year forecasts, while voters may simply focus on the obvious.
Or, as Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, used to ask before he entered government a year ago, “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”
Consider this ruminations on the current state of political play.
All you have to do is look at the Rubio race in Florida, with Charlie Crist now falling behind. The right is no longer an organized mass, with different factions vying for relevancy. Crist’s connection to Obama driving voters away, with Rubio’s “conservatism” the reaction to what people are feeling.
Off year election seasons are always about energizing the base. But this year emotion politics is the beginning and the end. Few candidates stressing their party affiliations at all, these associations simply a conduit for getting in. But depending on the state, tapping into constituency emotions is bigger than party. Whereas emotions used to come through the national identity, partly because of money, now something else is happening, with national parties struggling as people become more independent, splintering forces.
Take what the Virginia legislature just did. The Democratic-led Virginia legislature made it illegal to mandate health insurance, putting themselves as far away from Obama and the national Democrats as is feasibly possible. Mandating health insurance something I’ve railed about, including on TV, once it was clear there would be no competition in whatever health care bill Dems were proposing. Obama’s failure on health care manifesting through Virginia law. As a warning, let’s just say Obama’s fortunes for taking Virginia in 2012 have soured some what.
Take Harold Ford, Jr., the candidate of Wall Street in a state where that crew matters. He went on Colbert last night and laughed at himself, with “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough doing Ford a lot of good, the show’s involvement even forcing Gillibrand to make an appearance. Once an unknown, Ford has jumped in the polls, with one-quarter of the public undecided. Ford has also run against national Democrats, calling Gillibrand a party “parakeet,” which is bad these days, no matter what party is invoked.
But back to the “independent” Palin mag. This is further example that whatever Mitt Romney’s plans are for 2012, including a perfect economic set up, a wall is now rising against his presidential ambitions. Not a Palin wall as much as an emotion deficit, the opposite of Romney what Palin represents. Huckabee also has it, but will he survive a “Willy Horton” type attack on his security vulnerabilities? Too soon to tell. Romney’s a presidential catalogue candidate at a time when politics is getting messier and party lines smudging. Mitt has a lot of things, with the economy and deficit a set up for him, but he doesn’t have the emotion thing. This time around neither will Barack Obama unless he changes his game plan significantly, something we haven’t seen so far.
We’re heading into a time where politics is becoming more and more a jump ball, but that doesn’t mean you can get by without ideology, as Obama did blurring those lines in 2008. Pres. Obama is locked into an image that is associated with the king’s fortress at the shoreline. The rising tide against, not Obama personally whom people like but what he represents, is amassing into an emotional tsunami that threatens to wipe away his foundation. It doesn’t matter that Obama is trying to fix what went wrong, since he missed last year’s opening for a big stimulus when his approvals were sky high, instead unloading a whopping budget when his influence has waned and skeptics abound. All that people feel is that he’s part of the problem.
One thing about emotions, they’re not based in facts or details, but they can wipe you out all the same, especially when there’s a venting conduit in another direction. Emotion politics, which is always important, now overtaking party politics completely.
