I wanted to extend and revise my remarks from the other day about the enthusiasm for the Obama campaign at the Netroots Nation Conference in Austin. I would maintain that there is somewhat less gusto for Obama than there might have been a couple of months ago. But there is an alternate explanation for this, apart from the notion that people are dissatisfied with the nominee: confidence -- perhaps overconfidence -- about Obama's electoral prospects in November. Everyone I spoke with this weekend expects Obama to win, to a degree that somewhat exceeds the relatively tight standing in the polling.
While such confidence might seem natural coming from the liberal/progressive base, it has not always been that way in the past. Liberals can sometimes be a pessimistic bunch, and John Kerry's defeat in 2004 had left many people feeling especially bitter. By contrast, it would be hard to overstate the importance of the 2006 election in terms of buoying and reinforcing activism, particularly in the online sphere. If the Democrats had not won back both chambers of Congress in 2006, one imagines that there would have been much less comfort in Barack Obama's business model, and that Hillary Clinton would have received a larger fraction of support from thought leaders both in the netroots and in the party establishment.
Are there dangers to Obama in all of this? Certainly there are some. Turnout is going to be high almost no matter what, but if people have concluded that the presidential race is fairly safe, they may begin to donate their time and money to Senate, House and local candidates rather than the Presidential effort; their attention already seems to be somewhat directed that way. Obama's July fundraising number -- which will serve as a baseline in a relatively newsless month -- is going to be worth paying particular attention to.
p.s. Also somewhat contrary to my earlier reporting, the Obama campaign did have some presence here. Deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand spoke on a panel yesterday, and Obama addressed the conference by means of a video message.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Obama and Austin, Take II
-- Nate Silver at 12:59 PM
Labels: obama, organizing
33 comments
We have a term for this kind of post: The Back-peddle.
Isn't it interesting that when a Dem posts ANYTHING that isn't 100% sunshine and kisses for Obama, The Back-peddle is coming.
*snicker*
Nate,
And as well they should be nervous. Barack ( The middle name that shall not be spoken) Obama has steadily lost ground for the month of July. According to the Tracking Polls, the most accurate of the 2004 elections, show an almost dead heat.
First Gallup showed a tie race, and now Rasmussen is showing a tie. The support for Obama is slipping.
The slippage can all be traced back to his monumental flips and flops on many, many issues. As I have said before, these flips have angered his left wing base, the right wing does not believe him, and the center, which will decide this race, are left in a quandary about what to believe.
Is he for gun control or against gun control, is he for fisa or against fisa.
Is he for withdrawing from Iraq or against withdrawing from Iraq.
All of this in July, and the Republicans have yet to hit him on his preacher problem and his terrorist problem. Not to mention his "No Drill Policy."
By the way did anybody see Nancy Pelosio on CNN this morning. She is a certified idiot, and just cost Obama about one million votes.
Her absolutely saying the house will not vote on drilling offshore has just doomed a lot of Democrats to the ash heap of history.
75% of Americans want offshore drilling, but he Wicked Witch of the West says no, keep paying $4 plus for a gallon of gas. There will hell to pay in November and Obama is going down with her.
But I digress, Hillary still has a shot at the nomination and she should seriously consider wresting control from Obama.
Any other Democratic Presidential candidate would be 10 points ahead, Obama is essentially tied. Yes, I am very worried, and Obama has done nothing to allievate my concern.
anon at 12:10
I saw Pelosio on Cnn and she was an idiot. My God, how did she become the Speaker of the House? The congressional approval ratings are in the toilet and she blamed it on Bush and the Senate.
How does taxing th oil companies reduce the cost of a gallon of gasoline or diesel?
It just shocked me to listen to her ignorance of simple economics. The depth and breadth of her ignorance is just appalling.
On the one hand she says she will not allow drilling anywhere else, but she wants to release oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve, to bring down the cost of a barrel of oil.
Which leads me to believe she does understand supply and demand, but refuses to allow for America to increase their own supply.
She is defiantly wedded to the altar of environmental extremism. I had at one time voted democrat, but with gasoline being $4 a gallon I can no longer afford the Democratic party.
Overconfidence, if it leads to inaction, is a real danger of course, but the netroots crowd can be perhaps be forgiven for their aplomb this weekend in particular in light of the comments from Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki backing Barack Obama's Iraq withdrawal plan. It remains to be seen how effectively the Republicans will be able to spin and denigrate the Prime Minister's remarks, but if the media picks up on this as being as big a debate changer as it is, it effectively undermines the entire rationale for McCain's candidacy.
The Obamanation needs to address one historical fact and that is that they are getting destroyed in the number one indicator of electoral success.
Since 1968, the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana have voted AGAINST the eventual Republican vs Democrat loser in the presidential race.
These 6 contiguous states have been right on NIXON vs Humphrey, NIXON vs McGovern, CARTER vs Ford, REAGAN vs Carter, REAGAN vs Mondale, GHW BUSH vs Dukakis, CLINTON vs GHW Bush, CLINTON vs Dole, GW BUSH vs Gore and GW Bus vs Kerry.
They voted sitting Presidents out of office twice (Ford and Carter), and voted a President in and then back out within 8 years.
These 6 states all border either the Ohio or Mississippi rivers, and encompasse the birthplaces of such politically diverse philosophies as James Carville (LA), Bill Clinton (AR), Rush Limbaugh (MO), Harold Ford Jr. and Al Gore (TN).
Currently, McCain has huge leads in 4 of the states, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, and is leading in Missouri, while being deadlocked in Ohio.
This race is far from over.
Dear Argonaut boy: It seems to me that environment is in extreme trouble from the melting ice cap of the Artic to the crashing penguin populations of Antartica and everything in between including dying coral and vast droughts. The only way to be an environmental extremist is to deny the obvious and villify progrssives. Certainly Pelosi can do very little in the way of progressive let alone extreme legislation until Bush is gone. Eight years of waste we did not have to lose.
Funny, how the anonymous posters try to judge the situation from the outside, as if the netroots didn´t know by themselves how they are feeling...
Calling Nancy Pelosi "the wicked witch of the west", oh please... you are not a democrat. No wonder you would like to see Hillary "wresting control from Obama", that would make things a lot easier for republicans.
As if drilling would change anything about the current high gas prices... it´s 10 years at least until that increases the supply. Where is the short-term relief? Global demand will not be smaller in 10 years than today (thanks to China and India) except we find alternative sources of energy and get rid of oil as much as possible.
Perhaps someone could show us a graph of the point in the past week where we crossed the threshold of the comments section becoming not worth the trouble of reading at all.
Judging from the comments this weekend, I'm guessing that most of our regular substantive commenters must be at NN... ;-)
For what it's worth, Nate, I think the netroots have worked hard to focus on the broader picture -- Congress and state races + the presidential, as opposed to the presidential alone. Certainly the sessions with the presidential candidates were a highlight of last year's YearlyKos, but not the main focus. This is a contrast to the more general pool of activists and volunteers, who are more likely to get involved only in a presidential campaign (and there's certainly no shortage of enthusiasm there, judging from the streams of volunteers we have in our Obama offices here in VA.)
Nate, what hypocrisy.
Aren't you the #1 person feeding this overconfidence with your projections of this site?
Don't a lot of progressives follow this site regularly as a drug and come here to see Obama leading in the mythical "projections"?
I posted here months ago asking you to take into account the abnormally huge number of undecideds in these polls which you are totally ignoring and not a peep so far.
i surrender,
A chart would be interesting, but the rule of thumb is that process oriented threads (polling reports, political strategy issues, methodology discussions) have a much higher signal to noise ratio.
More "political" threads (discussions of "gaffes," political gatherings, etc.) will have very little of substance in the comments. But they do produce more amusing comments. Unfortunately, they also produce hate speech, personal attacks and other nonsense.
On the substance of Nate's post, I expect that NN, like those who are not political junkies, have moved their focus from the Presidential race until after Labor Day.
During the fall, I suspect that NN will re-focus on the extent to which winning the Presidency is important to setting the federal agenda.
The Presidency is first and foremost about the mundane process of appointing the management of the federal bureaucracy, a fact which determines the direction of more policy agendas than anything the legislative branch can hope to achieve. This fact escapes every political junkie from time to time.
However, when NN and other activists re-focus on the overall power of the Presidency, they will again be motivated to work to further Obama's chances.
1:15,
You aren't keeping up. The tracking polls aren't more accurate but even they both now show Obama at +3 and +2. Most election sites are showing the Democrat winning and usually by a wider margin than 538.
The reasons for overconfidence in the congressional elections is even more apparent. The average for the polling here is Democrats +11.6. Pelosi will have to say many very stupid things for any significant turnaround here.
If I were you, I would be so pessimistic as things stand that I wouldn't vote at all.
Hmmm.... time to allow troll-rating of comments? (Often necessary once a blog reaches a certain critical mass. Congrats on the well-deserved meteoric rise!)
Agreeing with acujimmy. But also, I'm finding the psychology of the anonymous comments (rantings?) to be interesting - a clear example of shoot the messenger.
For those who are concerned about McCain's numbers on this site - it might help to realize that most of Nate's numbers reflect polls conducted by others - so far as I can tell - Nate isn't polling anyone himself. I'm sure the pollsters are calculating undecideds, but if not - perhaps it would be best for you to go troll their sites and get them to do better?
Nate:
When are you planning on updating your projections of the senate races? There have been some recent polls in Minnesota and Oregon, for example, that could effect your projections.