Obama has a “path to 270.” Republicans hope he makes it even farther.

Nov 29, 2011
WSJ

By JAMES TARANTO

Back in 2002, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published a book titled “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” in which they argued that demographic trends were the Democrats’ friends–specifically, that the donks were fated to benefit from rising numbers of “minority voters, including blacks, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans; women voters, especially single, working and highly educated women; and professionals,” while “the ranks of white working-class voters will not grow over the next decade,” spelling trouble for the GOP.

If history had stopped in 2009, they would have been able to claim vindication. Republicans made modest congressional gains in the 2002 and 2004 elections, and George W. Bush was re-elected decisively though not resoundingly. But 2006 wiped out the GOP’s congressional majorities, and 2008 bolstered those of the Democrats. Barack Obama achieved the biggest popular-vote majority of any president in 20 years and of any Democrat in 44 years–that is, since before Kevin Phillips published “The Emerging Republican Majority” (1969) to which the Judis-Teixeira tome was a rejoinder.

But then in 2010, the tide shifted back. Republicans more than made up for their 2006-08 House losses and won 24 of 37 Senate contests. The Democrats held their Senate majority, but largely because 40 of their seats, won in 2006 or 2008, would not be contested until 2012 or 2014.

As 2012 approaches, Teixeira has dusted off his decade-old thesis. He and John Halpin have produced a report for the left-liberal Center for American Progress titled “The Path to 270: Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election.” The argument is that “demographics” are on President Obama’s side, while “economics” are not. (One might summarize the latter point this way: “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”)

Unlike in 2002, Teixeira and Halpin are describing a receding Democratic majority, not an emerging one. Two hundred seventy, of course, is a bare majority of the Electoral College. Obama’s path there is a path from 365, his electoral-vote total from 2008. If Obama is going in the direction Teixeira and Halpin assume, Republicans are hoping he makes it beyond 270–preferably at least to 268, which would mean (assuming a normal two-candidate race) a Republican victory.

“The 2012 battleground,” according to the authors, consists of a dozen states, all of which Obama carried in 2008. In addition, they cede 12 electoral votes (11 from Indiana, 1 from Nebraska) that Obama won the first time around. They seem to assume the president will carry New Hampshire (4), although according to a table in their report, his approval rating is lower there than in any other state he carried. (On the other hand, Granite State unemployment is only 5.4%, quite low by Obama-era standards.)

Writing for the New York Times website, Thomas Edsall sums up the bottom line:

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment–professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists–and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics.

What this means is mostly ceding Midwestern states with large “white working-class” populations like Ohio (18) and Pennsylvania (20), and concentrating on Southern and Western ones, such as Colorado (9), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13). But he needs some Midwestern states, too: Were he to lose Iowa (6), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10) and Wisconsin (10) along with Ohio and Pennsylvania, that would leave him with only 267 electoral votes.

That assumes he carries Florida (29). And as Teixeira and Halpin concede: “The difficult economic situations in North Carolina and above all Florida could . . . undercut the minority vote, even as it alienates white college-graduate voters and moves white working-class voters closer to the GOP.”

There are two problems with Teixeira and Halpin’s “economics vs. demographics” analysis–one economic and one demographic. For the first, consider Edsall’s list of “voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment”: “professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists.”

Notice anything missing? This list excludes not only blue-collar workers but also most private-sector businessmen and white-collar employees. The only group here that comes mostly from corporate America is “human resources managers”–people whose job consists largely of complying with government employment regulations.

In other words, the economic group that is most pro-Obama consists of those who make their living, directly or indirectly, off government. To some extent, this group’s interests are at odds with those of Republican-leaning private-sector workers. But only to some extent. When government gets so big and intrusive that it suppresses economic growth, it hurts the public sector too. The worst thing a parasite can do is to kill its host.

Demography-is-destiny arguments, meanwhile, nearly always end up oversimplifying matters. One may be able to predict with some accuracy how population patterns will shift in the coming decades. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the voting patterns of population subgroups will remain the same. The “white working class,” after all, was once strongly Democratic. It no longer was by 2002, but to the extent that the once-emerging Democratic majority is now receding, it is because that group has proved even more Republican than Judis and Teixeira anticipated a decade ago.

Neither party is immune from the lure of these sorts of arguments. Last week Michael Medved wrote a column for The Daily Beast titled “Why Demographic Shifts on Religion and Marriage Could Doom the Democratic Party”:

Between June and August 2011, Gallup interviewed more than 78,000 adults, evenly divided between the two parties. Among Democrats, 52 percent say they “seldom” or “never” attend religious services; among Republicans, 61 percent go to church or synagogue once a month or more.

Even more surprisingly, 54 percent of Democrats say today they are single; up sharply from the 48 percent of the donkey party who counted as unmarried before Obama’s election. For the GOP, on the other hand, the great bulk of its support (62 percent) continues to come from married adults.

As a party overwhelmingly comprised of churchgoers and married people, the Republicans not only mirror the nation at large (where solid majorities are currently married and attend religious services at least monthly), but, more important, connect to nearly universal American aspirations.

The real question is not whether “solid majorities are currently married and attend religious services at least monthly,” but whether those majorities are growing or shrinking. If the latter, then the trends Medved cites are good for Democrats, not Republicans. On the other hand, Medved argues:

A fresh push among black and particularly Hispanic voters should portray the GOP as the natural home for those who want their kids to grow up to lasting marriages and lifelong religious commitments–chipping away at that near-monolithic minority support that sustains Obama’s increasingly forlorn hopes for reelection.

It could happen–and if it does, that would disprove Teixeira’s assumption that minorities are permanently in the Democratic camp. At the same time, Medved concedes that “President Obama has spoken frequently to encourage religiosity . . . and passionately makes the case for responsible fatherhood and stable families.”

That sums up the problem with these sorts of demographic arguments: Politicians of both parties have the capacity to shift their ideas and presentation to attract marginal voters. That’s why when partisans on either side declare that they have achieved or are about to achieve a permanent majority, they’re usually proved wrong within a few election cycles.

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