Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

It’s a 50-50 Country

David Brooks:

Why isn’t Barack Obama doing better? Why, after all that has happened, does he have only a slim two- or three-point lead over John McCain, according to an average of the recent polls? Why is he basically tied with his opponent when his party is so far ahead?

His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren’t dismissive of Obama or hostile to him. Instead, they’re wary and uncertain.

Look, the answer is a lot simpler. The USA is still a 50-50 country. (Or, maybe more precisely, a 47-47 country.) The GOP brand name is in trouble these days, but the vast bulk of the people who voted for Bush 43 (twice), Dole, Bush 41 (twice), and Reagan (twice) aren’t likely to be swept off their feet by Obamamania. The plurality of American voters who still self-identify as conservative aren’t going to be an easy sell for a left-liberal product of the Chicago machine. The narrow swath of people who are really in play don’t produce landslides. (Remember that many self-identified “independent voters” are really “disguised partisans” who routinely vote for one party or the other.)

In sum, just because media elites, Manhattanites, and Hollywoodistas are swooning over Obama doesn’t mean he’s going to win the center-right heartland.

Update: Andrew Sullivan makes an interesting point:

The shift away from the GOP is pronounced everywhere (democracy hasn’t failed completely) and few doubt that the Dems could make big gains in both House and Senate this fall. So the threat of the kind of Republican agenda that propelled Bush from 2002 to 2006 is much diminished. McCain, moreover, is not so bad a figure to deal with a Democratic Congress from the perspective of many independent voters, especially since the Congress is pretty much reviled as well. So the choice becomes an all-Democratic government, headed by a senator whose newness is still one of the most striking things about him - or an old war horse who ticked off all the right Republicans at one point or other and who was more right about the sruge than Obama.

Many people believe divided government is a good thing. The question is whether the cohort of voters who are sophisticated enough to understand the potential benefits of divided government and believe those benefits outweigh the costs is large enough to tip the election. If I’m right that both sides started out with a base vote in the high 40s, the pro-divided government vote wouldn’t have to be very large to swing the election.