Being Puritanical About Palin

6 Responses to “Being Puritanical About Palin”

1. Maarja Krusten on November 29th, 2008 9:57 am

   Sullivan’s degrees reportedly are in history, public administration and government. I’m not taking a position on what he and you are writing about, it’s not my thing. But I can explain how most historians look at issues. It differs in some ways from the way many political bloggers approach things.

   When historians look back at the election, they will have to take a number of factors into account, including, of course, the historic economic crisis. They’ll have to look at other factors as well. The rise in Democratic registration is one, the issues that resonated with younger voters another, the way the suburbs and exurbs voted is another, the way education and income levels affected voting yet another.

   Based on what I know of how they work, I would think most historians would lay out the registration and candidate and issue polling numbers over time, address what was making the news, and point out when the debates occurred and how they affected viewers. (George Will believes that Obama was in a position as regards the debates which was similar to where Reagan found himself in 1980). They also will examine the exit polls, perhaps quote some of the varying views expressed by knowledgeable observers. I would think that rather than coming up with a single definitive answer as to what happened and why, historians would lay out what is known and let readers make of the numerical and anecdotal data what they will.

   The big Wall Street crash occurred on September 15. In the polls I most frequently looked at this fall (I looked at Daily Kos and Nate Silver), McCain’s, Obama’s and Biden’s favorable/unfavorable numbers showed little movement in the period right before the crash, in the three days between September 11 and September 14. Palin’s unfavorables started low (at 35) on September 11 but had gone up 7% between September 11 and September 14 (the day before the crash). Her favorables dropped 5% in the 3 days right before the crash.

   What about the trends from September 11, 2008 up to election eve? Obama improved from a 56% favorable and a 40% unfavorable on September 11 to a 64% favorable and 35% unfavorable on November 2. Those with no opinion (4%) on September 11 seemed to break favorable for him. In that same time period, Palin went from 35 unfavorable (with 13% no opinion) to 55 unfavorable (2% no opinion). Her favorables dropped from 52% to 43%. McCain’s favorables went down 9 points and his unfavorables went up 9 points. Biden’s favorable/unfavorable on November 2 (52/37) mirrored what Palin’s had been September 11 (52/35).

   For what they showed about the favorables/unfavorables, here are the numbers that Daily Kos reported. I haven’t had time to look at other polls but I dare say good, well-trained historians will consider and report on a number of such polls when they start looking into the way the campaigns played out.

   1. Polling data September 11, 2008

   CANDIDATE FAV UNFAV NO OPINION
   MCCAIN 55 44 1
   OBAMA 56 40 4
   BIDEN 51 30 19
   PALIN 52 35 13

   2. Polling data September 14, 2008

   CANDIDATE FAV UNFAV NO OPINION
   MCCAIN 53 44 3
   OBAMA 54 39 7
   BIDEN 49 33 18
   PALIN 47 42 11

   3. Polling data November 2, 2008

   CANDIDATE FAV UNFAV NO OPINION
   MCCAIN 46 53 1
   OBAMA 64 35 1
   BIDEN 52 37 11
   PALIN 43 55 2

2. John H. Taylor on November 29th, 2008 11:02 am

   I guess in a campaign all sorts of influences and dynamics are underway all the time. And yet it’s hard to imagine that in 20 years the textbooks won’t say: “In 2008, with one of the most unpopular Republican incumbents in history and a devastating economic crisis that began in mid-September, the Democrat won easily.”

3. Maarja Krusten on November 29th, 2008 11:35 am

   Who knows! I’m most comfortable with the style of writing history in which historians try to avoid making many unsupported statements. That includes use of the “the one hand, on the other hand” style when various dynamics affect something and you aren’t sure how precisely they played out. That style admittedly might not make for many page views, if I were a blogger. As more and more historians blog, it’ll be interesting to see how they reconcile their immediate reactions to events with what they later may cover as scholars. Some blog posts that I’ve seen from historians over the last couple of years have been a bit heated or overly reflective of personal reactions. Some get the balance right better than others. BTW, when I used the term mirrored above, I meant matched, rather than mirror image (reverse). Sorry I didn’t make that clearer!

4. Maarja Krusten on November 30th, 2008 7:31 am

   I think you’re right that historians will point to the economic crisis and GWB’s unpopularity but how they work that in to their narratives may vary. Part of the problem is that historians won’t know everything that lay behind the poll numbers that showed GWB’s performance ratings plummeting after Katrina. Given the fact that neither Republicans or Democrats make up a majority of voters, W won election in 2004 by garnering enough votes from Independents and even some who called themselves Democrats. Historians will have to try to unravel why shifted in 2008.

   Historians can point to an anti-Bush effect in the 2008 election but cannot always say what caused W’s numbers to fall. Bush shed support from the left, right and the middle. Blogs tend to attract right and left wing posters, the voice of the middle – the 44% of the voters who describe themselves as moderates — rarely is heard. The Daily Kossaks and the Freepers both criticized Bush over the last few years but for very different reasons, obviously. Many Freepers complained that Bush was too moderate, that he erred in trying to work with Democrats, and that he should have dealt with people of the other party more harshly. On the Washington Post’s message boards, some liberal posters took the opposite view, a few even expressing concern that Bush and Cheney were power hungry would-be dictators who planned to cancel the 2008 election.

   What we don’t have much data on is why some Republicans became Obamacans and why Independents (who according to the polls I was following had been leaning towards McCain slightly as of 9/11 ended up going narrowly for Obama on 11/4.).

   In my state, Virginia, news reports suggested that in February, some Republicans crossed over and voted for Obama in the open primary. Here’s what the Washington Post said:

   “Virginia appeared to be a nearly perfect state for Obama, the strategists said, with its African Americans, college-educated professionals, young voters, independents and disenchanted Republicans voting in the state’s open primary.

   Heidi Johannesen, 33, of Fairfax said she voted for Obama even though she has voted for George W. Bush. ‘I’m just looking for change,’ she said. ‘We are in desperate need of something different.’

   [Democratic Gov. Tim] Kaine appealed to the same groups when he was elected. He said Obama’s message of governing in a bipartisan way resonated. ’People have gotten so tired of the ‘I am right and if you disagree with me you’re either corrupt or an idiot’ style of politics,’ Kaine said. ‘Obama is very strong on that point; he doesn’t demonize people.’

   . . . . Obama beat Clinton for the first time among senior citizens. Swanee Busic, 65, of Reston voted twice for Bush but now sees herself as an independent. ‘I’m thinking Obama is really someone who’s new, who’s not so deep in politics,’ Busic said.”

   Professor Jeffrey Kimball has an article up on the History News Network which examines what happened in Ohio, where an unusually high percentage of white voters did not vote in the Presidential election. (He is not sure whether they stayed home or whether there was an unusually high number of undervotes.) Dr. Kimball wrote that “A whopping 45 percent of this no-show total was in the state of Ohio, where 538,000 fewer whites voted.” He noted that of the county where he votes

   “Butler contributed large majorities for H. W. Bush in 2004. The Bush/Cheney ticket received 109,866 votes for 65.87 percent of the total votes cast in the county. Kerry/Edwards received 56,234 for 33.71 percent. In 2008 McCain/Palin received 101,537 votes for 60.90 percent. Obama/Biden received 62,871 for 37.70 percent.”

   Kimball explains that more Republicans than Democrats seem to have stayed home in Butler County. “The consequence in Butler County was a 14,966 net gain of votes for Obama compared to Kerry–6,637 additional votes for the Democratic ticket and 8,329 fewer Republican votes for the Republican ticket. This net gain was 7.4 percent of Obama’s margin of victory over McCain in Ohio in 2008.”

   In Ohio, it appears Obama benefited from Republicans staying home and also from some voters who had previously voted for Bush voting for Obama in 2008. Kimball believed that Obama benefited from making personal appearances. “Familiarity bred acceptance. More white voters by a margin of 4 percent voted for Obama than Kerry. Two of these were a retired white labor union couple on Main Street in the Republican bastion of Hamilton, who had voted for George Wallace in 1968 and Bush in 2004 but were now coming back to the Democratic fold because they were unhappy with Bush’s policies across the board and thought of Obama as a decent, capable candidate with the right policies. They were willing to ‘stand in line all day if that’s what it took’ to register their vote on election day.”

   What we don’t know is why they were unhappy with Bush’s policies. Was it substance only? Or style also? Kathleen Parker noted in a column on Friday that “Jeff Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe, recently suggested: Obama is a weapon of mass attraction. That attractiveness isn’t just physical but a matter of style.” She noted, “Style isn’t only cosmetic but has to do with the way one enters and takes a room’s temperature. Style is the instinct to swagger — or not. Speaking recently at the Ethics and Public Policy Center about public diplomacy, Gedmin pointed out that George Bush’s ‘bring ‘em on’ cowboy style worked for about half the American people and about 5 percent of the globe. By comparison, he said, Obama’s style resonates with about 90 percent of the world.” Parker writes of Obama that he has more than just style and thus can be a good role model, “By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.”

   This suggests that historians will have to try to unravel issues both of style and substance to understand why GWB’s numbers fell starting in 2005, how that affected McCain, why voters assessed the candidates as they did in 2008, what impact the economy had, and why a message of change, with echoes of bring us together, prevailed on November 4.

5. Maarja Krusten on November 30th, 2008 8:28 am

   In his article on HNN, “What’s Going On in Ohio,” Dr. Kimball draws on a McClatchy article about people who cast no vote for President in 2008. He says that in Ohio, “Based on my and others’ experience canvassing suburban, rural, and x-urban areas around Oxford and Hamilton, the answer seems to be that a significant number of white voters were unexcited or unhappy with the Republican ticket but were also unwilling to vote for Obama, with ‘cultural’ issues and race being important determinants in their no-show decision. As one 83 year-old rural, pro-Obama, former minister told me, “the ‘religious’ people around here are unhappy with Bush but will not vote for Obama because he is black and is the anti-Christ.” Another prospective voter told me that though she was unhappy with Bush and McCain, she was not tilting toward Obama because “he was unpatriotic.” He notes a difference from years past, “The no-shows were not quite ready to vote for Obama, but at the same time they were not reflexively ready to vote for an unsatisfactory Republican ticket either.”

   However, Dr. Kimball does not explain what it is about the Republican ticket that some of the no-shows found unsatisfactory. It’s questions like this that make me believe that historians will point to the Bush administration’s performance (in substance and style), how that wore on voters in the long term; decisions made by officials in all branches of government, of both parties, in the years preceding the 2008 election; time lines of events, such as the Wall Street crash; and polling data, but will be unable to pinpoint exactly what happened, especially with those who had voted in past elections but sat out this one.

   Anecdotally, among people I know casually or well – all of these are people outside my family – voters were all over the place and difficult to pigeonhole, especially among seniors. One elderly gentleman liked McCain, thought Palin was unqualified to be VP, could not bring himself to vote for an African American, and sat out the election. Another elderly gentleman who leans progressive and said the day before the election that he would vote for Obama ended up casting his vote for McCain because he wanted to honor him as an old soldier who had served his country well. Among middle aged and younger voters I know, one family which had not only voted in the 2000 primary for but also campaigned hard for McCain early in 2000 ended up very enthusiastic Obama supporters in 2008. They said McCain had “changed.” A middle aged voter who took a voter preference survey during the primary season and was identified as matching up best with Obama on most positions domestic and foreign nevertheless voted for McCain due to being a one-issue voter (abortion). Other voters (still outside my family) whom I know were easier to label, being strongly for Obama or for McCain from the time they won their nominations and even before then.

   Given the makeup of the tickets and the varying ways voters reacted, while the outcome may seem easy to explain for some observers, there was a lot more going on under the surface than in some other years.

6. Maarja Krusten on November 30th, 2008 12:38 pm

   A rainy day in the Washington area so I have time to look around at numbers. I wrote above that Independents went narrowly for Obama but it looks as if it was not as narrow as I remembered. As it happens, a Daily Kos diarist looks at the numbers and includes the final breakdown for Democrats, Republicans and Independents, with percentage of self-identifying party members in parenthesis:

   Obama McCain Other

   Democrat (39%) 89% 10% 1%
   Republican (32%) 9% 90% 1%
   Independent (29%) 52% 44% 4%

   This suggests that among those who DID go to the polls, both parties held on to the same percentages of voters. The outcome depended on the increase among those who voted who identified themselves as Democrats and on Obama’s ability to win over Independents. The polls I saw showed Independents turning to Obama increasingly during September and October. The question for historians is, in assessing who turned out, who stayed home and how Independents voted, how much had to do with reactions to the Bush administration, how much reflected how people reacted to the Democratic and to the Republican ticket, and how much depended on the economic anxieties. Very interesting questions for historians but as I keep saying, while we’ll see some indicators, we’ll never be able to sort it all out definitively due to lack of knowledge about what drove some registered voters’ decisions to turn out or stay home.

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