Looking for President Goodbar

It’s hard not to be depressed these days when a manic Texas Governor can still get applause for giving a speech while sounding like he’s on something and an entire group of voters puts a serial sexual harasser that has no idea that China has had nukes for decades as the leader of a pack of serious bunch of no nothings. An NBC poll shows exactly how out of alignment the political class is with the American people.   The current political races shows how unable our current two party system is when it comes to actually delivering worthwhile candidates.  While the country needs jobs and economic growth, a committee of congressional power brokers looks to be as connected to both political donors and ideological fundamentalists as any of its predecessors.  What this country needs is a leader.  There appears to be none in sight.  Do we really have to embrace more of the same?

Heading into 2012, America is looking for a populist. According to the poll, a whopping 76% agree with the statement that the current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country. However, another 53% of respondents agree with the statement that the national debt must be cut significantly by reducing spending and the size of government. By the way, nearly 40% of all those surveyed agree with BOTH statements about the unfairness of the economic system and the size of government issue. Also, half of all respondents in the poll identify with either the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Tea Party (and 4% of all respondents identify with both). There’s an angry electorate out there, ideologically spread across the political spectrum. If the major party nominees are Obama and Romney, can either be seen as a convincing populist that will fill this void? Or are we headed for a multi-candidate field with 3rd and 4th party candidates for the general?

My guess is that both parties feel they can continue to eek out elections by positioning their people to independents as the lesser of evils or as change from the current evil.  Is that a real choice?  How about these confusing results from the party faithful that provide idiots to general elections including their last one that is arguably one of the worst presidents ever.

Beyond the big headlines from our new NBC/WSJ poll (the public’s pessimism, President Obama’s upside-down approval rating, Romney and Cain leading the GOP race and the president’s surprising leads over his potential GOP foes given the pessimistic views of his presidency), there are three important storylines you shouldn’t miss. The first: Rick Perry’s candidacy is in serious trouble and he might not be able to recover. In our first survey after the sexual-harassment allegations against Herman Cain surfaced, it’s Perry that actually lost ground in the Republican horserace (from 16% in October to 10% now) — while Mitt Romney (from 23% to 28%) and Newt Gingrich (from 8% to 13%) gained ground, and Cain actually stayed steady (from 27% to 27%). In addition, in a hypothetical two-way GOP race, Romney leads Perry by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, 62%-33%. (By comparison, Romney runs neck-and-neck against Cain in a similar two-way race, 49%-48%.) And Perry’s fav/unfav among REPUBLICAN primary voters is a pedestrian 33%-23%, versus Cain’s 52%-19% and Romney’s 46%-17%. Re-read those last set of numbers: Perry has HIGHER negative ratings than either Cain or Romney (at least before yesterday’s new Cain allegation).

It’s hard to feel sorry for Republicans whose southern strategy brought racists, religious whackos, and old style plantation economics supporters into their fold.  I’m just waiting for a pro-slavery plank to come out of their next platform at the convention.  But, it’s hard to see a good side of this craziness in a democracy that relies on two parties.   The policy of divide and conquer must be working for the parties some how; even if it’s not working for the American people.  Identity politics still can move an election and we won’t change anything until that changes.

While some Beltway chatter and commentary has suggested that the president is losing support with these voters, our NBC/WSJ poll — which included an oversample of 400 black respondents — paints a very different picture. According to the survey, 91% of them approve of Obama’s job (versus 44% among all poll respondents); 49% of them believe the country is headed in the right direction (versus 19% of all respondents); 92% would vote for Obama over Romney (versus 49%); 93% would vote for Obama over Cain (versus 53%); and 59% of them say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting in 2012. If Obama wins re-election next year, he can thank this support from African Americans and (to a lesser extent) Latino voters. By the way, the president doesn’t lose any African-American support even in the hypothetical three-way matchups with Ron Paul or Michael Bloomberg. The president does NOT have a problem with African-Americans; folks should stop wasting news ink and bandwidth on that topic. Beyond one or two grumpy members of the Congressional Black Caucus, there’s no ACTUAL evidence in the community at-large.

It seems that Rick Perry’s God really didn’t send his wife that message after all and the black community is going to stand by their man despite record unemployment, foreclosure rates, and numerous state-based voter suppression activities.   So, it’s looking more and more like will have a yawn inducing presidential race between Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama.  These are two men that couldn’t find a side of an issue they couldn’t support at one time or another if it helped them with the right demographic.  Both are clearly not the populists the American populace seeks.

Frankly, I’ll stay home and miss my first presidential election ever over that choice.  I will however, go out and vote for Obama if the Republicans do manage to send their whackiest of the whackies to the big show.  Isn’t this just ducky?  The economy is still waffling, the Iranians are working on weaponized nukes and the Israelis have a trigger finger itchy PM, the Eurozone is in crisis, and the best we can come up with is Obama and Perry?  Well, at least I’ll get my nap on,  come the debate season.  It’s at least a change from the evil clown horror show that’s been the Republican Presidential Primary.