How the Electoral Tides are running….
Since last time there have been some very significant developments which are worth noting in passing. Both Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have ended their campaigns. This means that all the primaries over the past three weeks have been a Romney only affair although the GOP affair with Romney isn’t too darn hot.
To return to the metaphor of the prom…this is the GOP Prom boy or girl who’s the class ugly duckling but refuses to dance with the spotty class geek. In Indiana Romney polled only 64%; North Carolina: 66% & West Virginia 70% – with Newt then out and Paul still in. Last Tuesday with no other candidates formally on the ballot Romney got 71% in Nebraska and 73% in Oregon. This is compared to Obama’s routine 90% plus in his unopposed primaries.
In North Carolina (a marginal state Obama narrowly took in 2008) on the same day of the primary in a State referendum they voted 61% to 39% to ban same-sex marriage.
A referendum was not necessary since state law already bans such marriages but the referendum went further saying that civil unions are not recognized under state law. This cocks a snoot at those states like Massachusetts and California where there are what we in the UK might call Civil Partnerships.
The outcome was never in doubt but it assumed a larger significance since the Democratic Convention is in North Carolina (Charlotte) this year and Obama was seen to be fighting hard to repeat his unexpected of victory in 2008.
The President then did something that caught the commentariat off-guard. He unequivocally supported for the first time same-sex marriage.
Note this is not Civil Partnerships…in the USA the civil rights debate has moved to the term marriage in part because of the Defence of Marriage Act and the determination of the social conservatives to protect ‘marriage’ as a narrow legal and singular Christian concept.
This isn’t the first time states have used marriage laws and such in pursuit of a social agenda. All the segregation laws, the laws against mixed race marriages; the sodomy laws; some public health laws and and such; and the laws against buggery and same same-sex acts – these were enacted in conservative states in the South and South West towards the end if the nineteenth century as surrogates for a wider policy of racial discrimination and social intolerance.
Obama’s decision to speak-up in favour of gay marriage has since been the subject of huge speculation – was this caused by a Biden bounce – the Vice President had said in an interview that the Party had to support Gay Civil Rights. Or was it the fact that some of the biggest donors to the Democrats campaign are gay millionaires who said simply that there was no cheque to the campaign unless the president said something positive in support for same-sex marriage.
As was noted in earlier analysis here Michelle Obama had already being speaking out strongly in favour of same-sex marriage in the latter part of last year. Her interventions may well have been testing the electoral waters before the President dipped his toe into them.
Still although opinion in the USA as in the UK and Europe has been moving steadily in favour of same-sex marriage this decision isn’t without electoral consequences.
A number of swing states or states like North Carolina, Florida and Virginia that Obama won in 2008 have large Evangelical blocks of voters. Black voters in these states are also more socially conservative than their fellows in Illinois or New York or California.So, although the President will risk little in the blue states like Massachusetts, New York or California – there is some risk in the rust belt states and the swing states where smaller electoral margins mean more.
Since his decision to come out as it were in favour of same-sex marriage the state polling has begun in earnest. But so far his decision has not made a huge impact either in the Toss-up states nor in the Red States that lean towards Romney. Indeed a poll in North Carolina still has Obama ahead by 1% over Romney – about where we were in 2008.
A high profile gamble with a dog-whistle social issue seems to have consolidated the President’s position with the Democrat base without alienating the vital Independent voters, who will decide the election, come November.
There were other things to watch for in these May Primaries and here there have been two massively important results.
In Indiana Senator Richard Lugar that doyen amongst old style conservative Republicans lost his primary run-off against the Tea Party insurgent Richard Mourdock by a stunning margin of 60% to 40%. The Senate election is now a toss-up between the very conservative Mourdock and a so called Blue Dog Democrat (conservative), Doug Donnelly is currently a Congressman from Indiana.
The Republicans had this seat in their safe column but their choice of Mourdock has moved it to a toss-up – though surely still leaning to GOP. But now, the GOP must put money into a state which they should have really had sewn- up.
In Nebraska senate primary where Jon Bruning was the favourite to win the Republican nomination for the senate insurgent Deb Fischer – who had the late but useful endorsement of Sarah Palin – pulled off another surprise victory… by 10,000 votes in another very low turnout.
Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic Senator who had thrown his hat in the Nebraska ring in February but looked very likely to go down easily to Bruning, has been thrown an unexpected life-line. It’s once more a competitive race with Democratic donors putting money into Kerrey’s campaign chest.With friends like these the GOP need no enemies. Once more they’ve made winning the Senate in November harder than it have been. And once more all of this speaks to the struggle in the GOP between its head and heart. And those Tea Party insurgents are still riding high in Romney’s Republican Party.
The race itself has moved once more to favour the Republicans. Romney at times has shown up to a 7% point lead. The Democrats have also fallen behind in the generic vote for Congress – the margin varying between 3-7% points. This said Obama maintains that all important advantage in the state voting. Florida alone of the big swing states has narrowly moved into the Romney column. And Florida is not enough to change the Electoral College math in Romney’s favour.
This said the economy in the US is stalled once more and as here in the UK and everywhere in the wider world it is the uncertainty of Europe and the Euro that drags confidence in the recovery. These tides have so far run against incumbency whether of the right or left. It has destroyed Pasok in Greece and the socialists in Spain; and now displaced Sarkozy with the socialist Hollande in France.
Mrs Merkel’s CDU suffered a dreadful defeat in North Rhine –Westphalia last week – possibly one of its worst ever election results in the largest of the German Lander. The UK local elections have set off another tremor and a full blown quake may yet be delivered by the Irish who are voting in a referendum shortly on the Financial Pact and may yet by way of revenge on the EU scupper the new treaty.
This ought to play against Obama in November. But if this mood music is more about electoral intolerance of austerity and anger that those who appear to have responsible for this mess also appear to be the ones not to have had to pay for it – then Romney’s unsinkable advantage – big business nous – may in the best traditions of the Titanic have been holed beneath the water-line.
Successful politicians need to be lucky; need to look like comfortable; and need to look like winners and not sound like whiners. Gordon Brown never looked comfortable and often sounded like an angry whiner. But David Cameron sounded all too comfortable but may be looked like a winner without the winning ingredient. He only half-won an election he should have walked.
Obama may be lucky in his opponent – as Mrs Thatcher found to her advantage victory can be based less upon who you are and what you’ve done and more or who your opponent is and what he or she may do.
Romney thought his credentials as a man who knows about business would resonate with a US electorate disappointed by Obama and the lack of recovery. But Romney may find that this time those politics are as bankrupt as the banks and knowledge of business is no longer the business with voters. In this new world the old orthodoxies of Reganomics may no longer work their magic on the electorate. They may want to kick the ass of those who made money in the goods times and now expect everyone else to pay for their good times to continue. Under the surface the electorates are angry and disillusioned. As dear old Brutus says in Julius Caesar:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Of course the irony – not lost on Shakespeare – in the play is that it is Brutus who acutely makes this observation but that he is the one who is about to miss the tide and miss the boat….
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