How the President Can Reconcile Anger With Hopefulness
How the President Can Reconcile Anger With Hopefulness
Ruy Teixeira
May 2, 2012 | 12:00 am
Editors’ note: No Democratic president has won in recent decades on a platform of economic populism. But with the rhetoric of the 99 percent still in the air, and a proposal for a ‘Fair Share Tax’ at the center of his current platform, it seems President Obama might be attempting to do just that. We’ve asked a number of TNR writers to discuss whether it makes sense for Obama to run as a populist. Can a Democrat win on a populist message? Should Obama try?
Should Barack Obama run as a populist? From a strategic perspective, the answer is yes. In fact, current polling suggests that to not do so would be political malpractice. That doesn’t mean, though, that Obama is entirely on the right track with his campaign message. There are different strands of populism, some more politically effective than others. And if Obama wants to maximize his chances at re-election, he can’t just tap into people’s anger: He needs to channel the public’s hopes.
The reason that running as a populist is useful for Obama is that equal opportunity and fairness are fundamental American values, and the current workings of the economy contravene those values. People are highly aware at this point of runaway inequality in the United States, and they don’t approve of it. In a CBS News/New York Times poll last October, two-thirds thought the distribution of money and wealth in the country was unfair and should be made more even. And the public is certainly more than open to having the well-to-do pay more in taxes, for example, by applying the Buffet rule to those with incomes over a million a year. That idea received 72 percent support in an April CNN poll.
So Obama is on secure ground in pressing these issues. Even if his opponents pillory him for “class warfare,” his arguments are unlikely to be rejected by voters on those grounds. Indeed these arguments speak directly to the sentiments of the median voter, always a good place to be. And by introducing these issues, Obama is doing just what an incumbent should do when running in a poor economic situation: spreading the blame for what’s wrong with the economy and, in the process, boxing your opponent into holding unpopular positions—in this case, defending the tax privileges of the rich, while opposing measures that might create jobs. This is a vast improvement over Obama’s strategy in the first nine months of 2011, when he focused on the budget deficit to the detriment of jobs and growth. That conversation was toxic for him politically and highly unproductive in policy terms.
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http://www.tnr.com/article/ruy-teixeira/103058/obama-populism-symposium-election-democrats-voters