The midterms not only dealt a big shock to Democrats but also sent a message to President Barack Obama. According to the new POLITICO Power and the People poll, only 26 percent of the public believes he will be reelected as president in 2012.This difference in expectations could mislead the president if he is listening to the Beltway chatter — right here in D.C. he may just find a lot of comfort in this assessment by insiders , and that may lead to actions that don’t fully adjust for the sea change that has occurred among the general public. (See also: Poll: D.C. sees midterms differently)
This big difference can partially be explained by the different ways that the two groups see the economy and the world today. Seventy percent of D.C. elites admit that they have been affected less than the average citizen when it comes to the economic downturn. The elites see the Tea Party as purely a fad (70 percent). In contrast, those who say that the President will not be re-elected see the country as headed in the wrong direction by 82 percent, the economy in the wrong direction by 81 percent and overwhelmingly want repeal of healthcare at the top of the agenda. Among the quarter of the public that sees his re-election as probable, they see the economy turning around by nearly 3 to 1. They are the outliers of the electorate, suggesting that the President has a lot more work to do to get back on track for a second term.
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In 1994, President Clinton heard the message loud and clear – he was facing both houses in the hands of the Republican Party, so he moved aggressively to the center and remade his White House and his policies. But not every president is willing to take that kind of aggressive action to change course.
The discontent of the electorate has been pretty clear since the Scott Brown election when Massachusetts filled Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat with an upset Republican victory. The administration depicted that as an isolated event based on a supposedly weak Democratic campaign and candidate. And so all the way up to the mid-terms the president made few policy or personnel changes.
It should be clear now that the public believes it sent a very clear message to the president that they want new policies – particularly when it comes to government spending and healthcare. They want him to move back to the center and focus on the economy.
D.C. elites can of course, sometimes be right over the public. But in this case the administration has the electoral carnage of the midterms as proof that the public is fully prepared to vote in the Republicans unless they see more changes than they saw in the months since Scott Brown was elected. There will be a tempting comfort to the president to stay the course; the poll shows that might be quite a perilous course.
Mark Penn is President and CEO of Penn Schoen Berland, the internationally recognized market research firm which conducted this poll for POLITICO.
