The Facts On Liberals and Obama

Chris Bowers at Open Left has the data to back up the warning to the White House that it punches hippies at its peril:

If the White House really doesn't think it has any problems among self-identified liberals or progressives, and that all the complaints are coming from a grasstop elite, it needs to look at the data again. From 2008 to 2010, President Obama has suffered far more erosion of support among self-identified liberals than among self-identified moderates or conservatives:

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So, according to Gallup, disapproval among self-identified liberals accounts for the majority of President Obama's approval rating underperformance compared to his 2008 vote share (from the perspective that the smaller decline among moderates is partially canceled out by the small gain among conservatives). If it were not for President Obama's decline among liberals, there would be virtually no difference between his 2010 approval rating and 2008 voter performance.

Maybe the White House knows that its problem among self-identified liberals is not confined to the grasstops. Maybe it is "reaching out" to liberals in this insulting manner because it figures that while it has lost more support among liberals than among any other group, those liberals are still going to vote Democratic anyway.

If that is what Gibbs is thinking here, he is quite foolish. Self-identified liberals are a large swing voter group, and their vote for Democrats is neither static nor guaranteed:

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So, according to exit polls, Democrats actually gained more from 2004 to 2008 among self-identified liberals than among self-identified moderates.

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Swing voters from 2004 to 2008 were spread fairly evenly across the ideological spectrum, with liberals, moderates and conservatives all making up significant portions. Although it is within the margin for rounding error, exit polling actually suggests that liberals were the largest swing voting block of all.

The size of the liberal vote for Democrats is not static. It never was static. Why anyone ever thought that the exact same number of self-identified liberals turn out to vote for Democrats in every single election is pretty mystifying. Of course the percentage of self-identified liberals within the electorate changes from election to election, and of course the percentage of self-identified liberals voting for Democrats changes from election to election. Liberals are swing voters, too. If you want to perform well among these swing voters, you need to tend to them. If high-level Democratic operatives don't understand this, then their ignorance is a massive disservice to the Democratic cause.

Still, the insulting and dismissive attitude that Robert Gibbs takes in this interview is hardly surprising. For one thing, many establishment media types go fishing for caricatured "left vs Obama" stories like this.

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Secondly, and more sadly, reaching out to the left by hating on it has a long, established tradition in Democratic politics. Many Democratic elected officials feel that reaching out to moderates and conservatives means bending over backward to show those voters that they share their views. However, many of those same elected officials consider left-wing outreach to be telling progressives to shut the fuck up and get in line. With outreach like that, it is probably no wonder that President Obama's main problem with his approval rating right now is among self-identified liberals.

Read the whole thing.