At PostPartisan, I have some fun at the expense of a Santorum campaign strategy memo. Over at Salon, I look at the results of the Nyhan et al. article about the effects of ACA on the presidential election, and argue that ACA won't have a similar effect on Barack Obama.
And at Greg's place, I argue that deteriorating support for the Afghanistan war effort works well for Barack Obama. Alex Massie today gave the crucial question for policy makers: "Do the unknown costs of leaving Afghanistan trump the known costs of staying in Afghanistan?" He's talking about policy costs, but politicians must (and I would argue should) consider electoral costs for themselves and their parties. As support for the war fades, and particularly as GOP support splinters (perhaps as a result of having a Democrat in the White House, perhaps just based on how things are going over there), the unknown costs in domestic politics surely decrease as well.
Monday, March 12, 2012
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Seems to me that the assumption that deteriorating support in Afghanistan helps Obama is not borne out by the WaPo/ABC poll. The argument is that Obama's slow withdrawal is not politically risky; however, question 19 in the poll notes that by a 54/43 split Americans favor leaving today vs. waiting until the Afghan forces are trained or Godot arrives or whatever we're still doing there.
ReplyDeleteThe next question reveals that by a 55/30 margin Americans believe that Afghanis don't support our efforts there. Note that both of these results are from Saturday, the day before the rampage. Updated numbers, incorporating Sunday's atrocity, must surely be worse for Obama.
In my humble opinion, the problem for Obama is that Afghanistan is increasingly deteriorating into a street fight, and the only way you win a street fight is if the other guy gives up and goes home. If, as we fear, things rapidly spiral out of control, 2014 will seem an eternity, and Obama will forthwith feel pressure to explain how he plans to achieve anything in Afghanistan in the next 2+ years.
How does one win a street fight when one's opponent is already at home?
I do actually think there's some truth to the claim that Romney will have more trouble than the other candidates campaigning against the more unpopular elements of Obamacare, notably the individual mandate, given that he supported such a bill with such a provision himself. This doesn't mean Romney is a weaker candidate than the other candidates overall. It doesn't even mean he's necessarily weaker with regard to the health-care issue (his authorship of the law probably enhances his moderate cred in the general election), but it does point to one aspect of the issue in which his rivals might have an advantage.
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