The Method To Their Madness
by digby
From Public Policy Polling:
The media’s spent a lot of energy the last couple weeks on the specter of a challenge to Barack Obama from the left for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2012. Here’s a curveball- there are actually more Democratic primary voters in Ohio and Wisconsin who would like a more conservative nominee than Obama in 2012 than there are ones who would like someone more liberal.
Mind you there aren’t many Democrats who want Obama deposed anyway- 70% in Wisconsin and 67% in Ohio would like him to be the nominee for a second term. But most of those who would like a different face want one to Obama’s right- in Ohio 15% would like a more conservative nominee to only 7% who want someone more liberal and in Wisconsin 14% would like a more conservative nominee to 9% who want someone more liberal.
Even if liberal Democrats are unhappy with Obama on the tax deal- and our polls earlier this week in these states showed they are- it’s not having too big an impact on their overall reviews of him. 93% in Wisconsin approve of the job Obama’s doing compared to 80% of moderate Democrats and 63% of conservative ones. Ohio liberals are more unhappy with Obama- his approval with them is 76%, lower than his 78% with moderate ones. His standing with conservative Democrats in Ohio is all the way down at 43%.
Conservative Democrats are ultimately a bigger threat to Obama’s reelection prospects than liberal ones. They don’t necessarily make a lot of noise about it when they’re unhappy- they just go out and vote for Republicans. Liberals on the other hand really have nowhere to go- they can stay at home or vote for Ralph Nader but ultimately that’s just going to get them someone who makes them a lot more unhappy than Obama. It’s not a pleasant reality, but in our two party system that’s just the way it goes- conservatives definitely have more leverage than liberals within the Democratic coalition and that’s why they so often get their way despite their smaller numbers.
One would think the opposite would be true as well, no? Don’t the Republicans have to worry about defectors if they go too far? Apparently they don’t think so since they’ve purged the party even of liberals and moderates and are in the process of purging it of insufficiently doctrinaire conservatives. So at what point do these “conservative Democrats” (and the vaunted Indies, of course) who are willing to quietly walk away, find the GOP a bridge too far? What will finally make voting GOP unacceptable so that they too have “nowhere else to go?” A Great Depression? Internment camps?
I suspect that we may be heading for one of those periods when third parties spring up, (unfortunately leaving the corporatists in both ruling parties alone to run the country even further into the ground.)But it seems almost inevitable that those desperate for “somewhere else to go” will eventually decide there’s no point in being part of a coalition that is rigged against them. I had some hope that the Teabaggers would catch on to the game, which would make the Right be the first to pull away. But it’s not looking good for that at the moment. The Republicans seem to be very confident that they can appease the extremists and not any of the others. Indeed, they seem to think they can cater to the far right and even attract these “conservative Democrats” over to their side.
Bob Corker, speaking softly to Olivier Knox, casually says that the START treaty won’t pass if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or the DREAM Act get a vote tomorrow.
Corker voted against bringing up START in the first place. Nevertheless, you can’t totally dismiss this threat. Even though Corker voted against the treaty on the motion to proceed, he’s probably just the messenger here. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal is on a glide path to passage. With Olympia Snowe joining Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowski as fully supportive of the standalone bill, at least 61 votes are in hand, and Harry Reid filled the amendment tree to minimize any possibility of amendments. It will clear cloture tomorrow.
This is why Corker is turning to a separate measure to try and derail the bill. The segregationists did this with civil rights bills all the time. They would just threaten to take down something more cherished and pit the two bills against one another. You can see the seeds of this strategy in the fact that Republicans have offered no amendments in two days of debate on new START on the floor of the Senate. They’re clearly slow-walking the bill so they can make this threat to kill it credible.
The administration has long been convinced that passing START was going to be seen as a huge liberal victory and the base would be ecstatic. (I know, I don’t get it either.) So at this point, if third parties are in the offing, I’m guessing it will be the left that peels off first. After all, it happened not that long ago.
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