This week has seen the party in full catastrophe-avoidance mode. Bill Clinton and John Kerry were here to rally supporters on Friday, and Obama himself spoke at a campaign rally in west Boston two days ago. For the president, the stakes could hardly be higher: the seat is the Democrats’ 60th in the Senate, giving them a filibuster-blocking majority that will be vital if they’re to clear the final hurdle to healthcare reform.
Whichever way the vote falls, the closeness of the race is an embarrassment for Obama. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one in this state. Kennedy himself held the seat for 47 years. In reality, the failures here have been local: Democratic candidate Martha Coakley has run a lifeless and ill-planned campaign, whilst Republican Scott Brown has played the perfect insurgency ticket. Keeping big GOP names away, he has driven the state in his pickup truck, garnering the support of independents fed up with the Washington machine.
That may be true, but it won’t prevent the fallout from this race from reaching Obama. By addressing Coakley supporters on Sunday, he staked his personal credibility on victory. Worse, his poorly-delivered speech drew strong heckles from anti-abortion activists amongst an ill-behaved crowd, and strained smiles from a president not accustomed to stumbling. All of that is useful material for Republican storytellers, who have worked relentlessly in recent weeks to dictate their narrative for Obama’s first year. They are seizing on the MA senate race as yet more evidence of unease among a public uncomfortable with the way the first term is going.
Currently the most salient point in that argument is the fact that Obama’s approval ratings are lower at this point in the first term than those of any other post-war president except Reagan. One year in, 49% of the public approved of Reagan’s presidency; at the same point, Clinton stood at 54%; Bush senior was at 71%. Obama today is tied with Reagan on 49%, down from 64% on inauguration day last January.
As a snapshot, that may be worrying stuff, but it’s worth stepping back a little if we want to draw broader conclusions. This excellent graphic produced by William Couch and colleagues at CBS suggests that, with presidential approval ratings as with investment funds, past performance is a poor indicator of future performance. Several post-war presidents took substantial early hits to their approval ratings, and went on to secure a second term. Clinton’s fell from 58% to 37% in his first six months; before September 11, Bush junior’s first year high of 63% had fallen to 51%.
So Obama’s ratings today may tell us less about the story of his presidency, and more about which chapter we are in. Taking on an early battle over healthcare was a calculated decision, aimed at capitalising on the momentum of the election, and leaving time to rebuild political capital before second term elections. Unsurprisingly, Obama’s approval ratings took their biggest hit from May to September last year, when talk of death camps filled the airwaves here, and billions were poured into ads by insurance companies. Since then, support for reform has increased (up from 43% to 49% since November), and Obama’s overall approval ratings have been broadly flat.
The bigger, and more stubborn, worry may turn out to be the breakdown of those figures by party affiliation. For a president whose pitch was one of inclusion and bipartisanship, support for Obama is astoundingly divided. The gap between Democrat and Republican approval ratings is currently twice as high as that for Richard Nixon at the height of the Vietnam war. That may become a problem when stood alongside the lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base. Currently more than three-quarters of Republicans and independents say they are extremely likely to vote, and less than two-thirds of Democrats. That raises difficult questions about whether Obama’s efforts to mend wounds are being wasted, and could be better spent re-energising his base.
Keep an eye out here for our post-result update later today.