Can the Obama GOTV machine be repeated for Democrats in 2016?

[pbrower2a]

How much enthusiasm was there in 2012?  It seemed a lot like a normal election year as far as excitement was concerned.  I wouldn't be surprised if what we saw in 2012 is the new normal.

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The GOP and GOP front groups did their best to dampen any excitement through outright propaganda. It was ineffective for the cost.  Even deep-pocket interests get the message. Nobody likes to waste money on something neither fun nor effective.

Could Americans have learned that midterm elections matter too? The Hard Right would have lost the House of Representatives had the state legislatures not been so effective in gerrymandering  so many House districts to the point that Democrats could win as much as 55% of the vote in overall votes in House elections in a state yet Republicans keep large majorities in Congressional delegations from the state. 

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...in response to a deep-pocket campaign that forced President Obama to have a laser focus on winning key states instead of a nationwide appeal. The Hard Right campaign failed. It will have to find new ways to win lest it lose.  It used Machiavellian techniques in 2010 and gave America results that proved unpopular in 2012. The electorate is now much more like that of 2008 than like 2010.

Obama voters are not stupid. They may have been wet behind the ears in 2008, but they have learned the hard way that Congress and State legislatures matter. Because of decisions made by reactionary State legislatures the House of Representatives is grossly unrepresentative perhaps 2022, the next election in which reapportionment based on the 2020 Census happens. The House of Representatives is now for all practical purpose the House of Corporate Lobbyists and has a veto over anything that does not confirm the will of American oligarchs -- unless voting behavior changes within districts or state legislatures reapportion districts.   

Increasing age of a group of voters usually has increasing sophistication about the electoral  process until about age 50. The Tea Party pols who vote as if they were members of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy in about 1930 -- and that will get tiresome very fast. Note well that people in R+5 districts may find pols who vote as if they represent R+30 districts, can find their popularity wearing thin.

The Tea Party stands for economic fascism if not the personal terror.

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But President Barack Obama forced major reforms which have since proved popular enough to withstand well-funded smear campaigns. The Republicans so far have little to offer than an ideology that holds that 'he who owns the gold makes the rules' and appeals to pre-modern superstitions and bigotry that cannot grow.   

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But the pattern is not true for Registering First Time voters.  Obama has relied exclusively on registering First Time voters in 2012 and 2008. 

Once voters hit the age of 30, they start trending more Republican, so for the "Obama model" to be successful, the Dems need to keep up the Under-30 youth vote for future elections. 

One of Obama's assets is that he is 45-ish and can relate to college kids. 

Other politicians over 55 can't excite college students.

Also, Black voters won't be as excited voted for a white woman, so that will depress Black turnout.

Barack Obama turned 51 in 2012. He is no longer young. He has gray hair. Except for golfers there are no professional athletes older than he. Politicians in their fifties, sixties, and seventies can still excite youth. Think of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern in the 1960s and 1970s. What may be more significant is that the Hard Right is alienating more voters who want more pragmatism and less ideology. The Tea Party pols have taken over the GOP and have ensured that it has no succession among younger adults who fail to share the ideology. I have met many people who used to consider themselves Republicans who have no use for the anti-feminism, the pandering to pseudo-scientific drivel, and the craven obedience to corrupt elites, and the Machiavellian techniques of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist within the GOP.  Does anyone believe that creationism in any way enhances American education?

People tend to go increasingly conservative when they get more of a stake in the system. In a time of limited economic mobility, such may not be possible. Someone struggling for economic survival at age 22 who still struggles for economic survival at age 52 is not going to have new cause to show solidarity with economic elites. Educated young voters are often deep in debt for student loans and will probably be so into their thirties. Debtors have traditionally been on the Left and creditors on the Right. Debtors as a rule want to debt relief and more opportunities to pay off debt easily through inflation and and more and better-paying jobs. Large-scale creditors want debtors to be their near-serfs as long as possible -- underpaid and overworked.

Advancing age tends to entrench people more in their economic interests, which might not be toward political conservatism. They may become more involved in unions and tend even more firmly to the Left. The only conservative trend that I can predict among Obama voters will occur when if and when their kids become unruly, iconoclastic teens -- something unlikely in an age of economic privations for all but economic elites.

What may be more significant is that Barack Obama failed to get votes from poor white people who used to vote for pols like Carter (in 1976) and Clinton. Poor whites in cr@ppy jobs see blacks and Hispanics as competitors instead of possible allies. The Hard right has found ways to appeal to the culture of poor whites in the Mountain and Deep South through religious fundamentalism.  Someone other than Barack Obama can reach them on economic issues while posing no threat as a cosmopolitan egghead.       

[pbrower2a]

A good preview of this will be in the 2013 offyear elections and of course, the 2014 elections. 

Midterms have almost no bearing.  We all saw how Democrats got massacred in 2010, and they didn't utilize Obama's GOTV machine.  Its a personality based voter outreach.  The 2010 massacre gave the GOP hope that the Obama machine was done for, and that voter levels would be similar to 2004 than 2008. 

President Obama has shown how to campaign. He appeals to the best in human nature and gets it. He recognizes that the low-information voters cannot be swayed his way, so he works on the rest. He rightly sees Suburbia as legitimately urban instead of the 'concentrated rurality' of its origins. 

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FDR won a landslide in 1936. Unemployment under Barack Obama parallels that of Reagan between 1981 and 1984, and we did not get President Mondale.

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Democrats will almost certainly keep their Senate majority. There will be some brittle targets in the House -- low-achievers and extremists who didn't face meaningful challenges in 2012 but might be vulnerable.