Delawarean, David Plouffe, Smacks Down GOP Partisanship
The source of Obama’s advantage is critical: independent voters, who give the president high marks on his handling of the economy and his job overall.
Obama won these voters, who famously recoil from what they see as overly partisan and shortsighted politics, by eight points in 2008 — a dramatic improvement for the Democrats from 2004, when George Bush and John Kerry tied.
There are other groups of voters worth watching. Among those with a history of voting in presidential elections, Obama and Sen. John McCain essentially ran even. Obama won first-time voters by a convincing 39 points — owing largely to a combination of younger voters, Hispanic voters and disaffected voters.
The sentiment seems alive and well today. Seventy-three percent of all voters, The Post found, believe that the president is trying to cooperate with Republicans. Only 36 percent believe the same to be true of the GOP.
Thus far, Republican leaders have let their strategy be guided by their most conservative base, capturing perhaps a third of the nation’s voters. For Republican candidates seeking the support of right-wing activists in Iowa, who will exercise outsize influence in the presidential selection process in four years, that strategy — while not entirely defensible in the midst of an economic crisis — is understandable.
Are you listening Mike Castle?
Plouffe is right on this — and for all of the talk of a new GOP or a new revolution, the bottom line is that they just look like they are still working hard at representing themselves, certainly not any voters that they want to convince. They are also off kilter in this — so far, Obama is doing (mainly) what he said he’d do on the campaign trail. So little of this is a surprise to these independent voters, while the GOP seems constantly surprised by it. So while Obama is going about the business he said he’d tackle, the GOP is still quite stuck on their quite failed messages from this past Fall.
This is also a good reminder to those Dems who want Obama to go farther and faster policy-wise. He probably won’t, and certainly not with the current composition of Congress.
Sorry but Obama is driving the economy in to the ditch. Obama owns the economy and his party own Congress, the time for excuses is getting short.
The voters who were foolish enough to but the Hope and Change mantra will leave his side when unemployment reaches 10%, the taxes increase and his promises are realized as empty campaign slogans.
The GOP is not stuck on the campaign message of last fall but the Dems are and it isn’t working.
Ah — Desperate Mike, the Mortgage Liar is back.
But it’s all good. This site serves as an archive of all of your idiocy for the next time you run for something.