Politicians are not as dumb as we may think
WASHINGTON » Let’s posit three rules of political analysis. First, data are better than presuppositions. Second, actual votes cast can tell us more than the polls. Third, we’re all vulnerable to seeking confirmation of what we believed in the first place.
Thus, some widely accepted assumptions about our political moment can be seen as, at best, incomplete.
Democrats, it’s often said, are so obsessed with President Trump and the Russia scandal that they talk of nothing else. But those who listened to potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates speak at the liberal Center for American Progress’ Ideas Conference can testify that this is simply untrue.
Attacks on Trump were far less prominent than promises on economic justice and how the United States is falling behind globally. Trump came under fire only on health care, his tax cut and administration corruption outside the Russia inquiry.
You could hear behind many of Tuesday’s speeches echoes of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 slogan, “Let’s get America moving again.” The idea was that Trump and the GOP are ignoring the problems most voters care about, or are making them worse.
And as The Washington Post’s liberal blogger Greg Sargent has insisted, anyone who explores what Democratic candidates on the ground are campaigning on will notice how much they’re emphasizing bread-and-butter concerns.
Candidates — mostly — aren’t stupid. They know the top three issues to voters in battleground states and districts are gun policy (23 percent, according to polls), the economy and jobs (20 percent) and health care (also 20 percent). Politicians who want to win act accordingly.
And Democrats recognize that the relentless focus of the news media on the Russia scandal (and Trump’s own Twitter feed) will do a lot of the work of rousing their base in outrage.
Which leads to another popular assertion: that there has been an uptick in Trump’s popularity. His approval rating as of Wednesday stood at an anemic 43.2 percent.
And what’s unchanged is, as David Byler wrote in The Weekly Standard, that “Americans who don’t like Trump really don’t like him.” Those who strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance significantly outnumber those who strongly approve.
In a survey by The Economist/YouGov strong disap- provers outnumbered strong approvers, 39 percent to 25 percent. This will affect turnout to the Democrats’ advantage this fall.
But how much? The special elections held since Trump took office point to the strong possibility of a Democratic “blue wave” in November, but it is far from a certainty.
Turnout in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primaries tilted Democratic, but registered Democrats substantially outnumber registered Republicans in the state. In Ohio’s May 8 primaries Republicans outnumbered Democrats, although the GOP had a large registration advantage going in and Democrats could thus claim to have performed relatively well.
These big swing-state primaries suggest that Democrats enjoy an advantage this year, but its size is still in question.
Wednesday’s bipartisan conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton will keep the Russia story at the center of the news.
But understanding 2018 requires accepting that the news cycle is not the same as the campaign cycle and that all elections involve a mix of mobilization and persuasion. The intense dislike of Trump means that mobilization will play an especially large role this year. But few Democrats — in swing areas and among would-be presidents — are counting on animosity to the president to do all their work for them.