Pew documents the anti-Obama bias of elderly whites

During the past week I've been mildly amused at the consternation expressed by so many pundits that the public overwhelmingly and quickly identified Obama as the winner of the first presidential debate.

As the conservative Ross Douthat complained yesterday:

I saw the debate as an evening in which the policy differences between the two men were muted, and McCain was able to steer the conversation around, again and again, to his experience and record, which on paper is easily his biggest advantage over Obama. If this election were being decided on the candidates' resumes alone, independent of ideological considerations or the state of the country, McCain would win in a walk, and so a debate in which he kept Obama on the defensive and flaunted his experience at every turn seemed, to me at least, like a best-case scenario for the McCain campaign.

It continues to amaze me how poorly some high-profile political commentators understand politics. The electorate doesn't vote for presidents based on their resumes, as a few moments reflection on recent history would show. Nor do voters necessarily reward candidates who keep attacking their rivals or who return repeatedly to the same talking points.

How is it possible for anybody following this election closely to have failed to notice that McCain himself has cast it as a referendum on Barack Obama's suitability? That McCain sought to paint Obama in extreme terms as naive, ignorant, and lacking any relevant experience? So by McCain's choice it was going to come down to whether or not Obama appeared to be those things when voters got a good look at him during these debates. It would have taken really extreme ineptitude on Obama's part to make McCain's caricature seem credible. Instead, Obama demonstrated within the first few minutes of the first debate that, far from being a nitwit, he's actually well informed and competent. It didn't really matter what McCain had to say at that stage about particular issues. He'd gambled everything on his ability to trivialize the national debate and now lost badly.

The denouement to McCain's risky strategy has been in the cards for at least 4 months. How could anybody fail to see that Obama would gain by rising above McCain's highly exaggerated charges?

All that is by way of introduction to a result of the debate that I did not entirely expect. The latest Pew survey has a wealth of interesting demographic information about voter attitudes toward McCain, Obama, and their running mates. I commented earlier today about one trend that continues as expected: voters are increasingly underwhelmed with Sarah Palin's readiness. Around half of voters, and half of Independents, now say she's unqualified to be president. Her unfavorable ratings are way up during the last two weeks among nearly every demographic except Republicans...and voters over 65 of age.

Which brings me to the results that I find most striking in the Pew survey. Obama lost ground during the last two weeks almost alone among older voters, especially older white voters. The debate had almost no effect on their attitudes toward Obama even though nearly every other demographic was impressed with his performance.

How impressed? His 2% lead over McCain in mid-September grew to 7% by Sept. 29. Obama made significant gains in a range of positive attributes voters associate with him as well as in assessments of his leadership on various issues.

Much of this has to be attributed to the debate. Obama made essentially no gains in his ratings since mid-September on these issues among voters who did not watch the debate. But among those who did see the debate, he made considerable gains across the board. McCain, by contrast, made no gains among debate-watchers.

However there's a glaring demographic distinction to be made. When debate-watchers were asked whether the two candidates did an excellent/good job, younger voters gave Obama double-digit leads. But voters over 65 gave Obama only a 1% lead over McCain.

That's reflected in their voting intentions. Obama made gains during the last two weeks among nearly every other demographic (including Republicans), or at least just about held steady. However he lost a very significant 6% of his already small support among elderly whites (now 28% for Obama, 54% for McCain). There's no other comparable group where Obama lost this much ground during the last two weeks – except among people earning less than $30K per year. But the latter still support Obama overwhelmingly.

I'd be interested to know what others think is going on. More than two-thirds of the elderly watched the debate. What if anything about the debate left older whites so much less impressed with Obama, especially given the untenable caricature of him that McCain has been peddling all summer? And why, if they thought Obama and McCain performed about as well in the debate, did Obama lose so much ground among them?

This could be a question of different voters caring more about different issues, though the numbers are so far outside the mainstream that it looks more like a case of voters seeing developments through a rigid filter – such as the white evangelical voters who, unlike nearly everybody else, still believe overwhelmingly that Sarah Palin is "well qualified" to be president.

As for the counter-intuitive attitudes of elderly whites, it's hard to avoid the inference that racism played a role. But perhaps religious beliefs were involved. This group also was singular in another respect – Sarah Palin's favorable/unfavorable numbers actually improved for her during this period among voters over 65. Given how badly she's stumbled in public, that's pretty counter-intuitive as well.

crossposted at unbossed.com

The first question for tonight's presidential debate

Here's the first question that ought to be asked at tonight's presidential debate:

"Senator McCain, what are you doing here?"

McCain has used the Wall Street crisis to justify a series of perverse stunts since Wednesday in which he "suspended" his campaign and tried to postpone tonight's debate as well as next week's vice-presidential debate. As recently as last night he said he would take part in today's debate only if Congress had reached an agreement about legislation to bail out the offending companies. No agreement has been reached, but this morning after a quick trip to Capitol Hill McCain announced that he was leaving for the debate in Mississippi anyhow.

So what was all of this grandstanding about?

The "suspension" of the campaign was bizarre from the outset. McCain cancelled an appearance on the David Letterman Show on Wednesday afternoon saying he had to rush back to Washington, DC to fix the financial crisis. Evidently nobody in DC could legislate without his presence – though McCain hasn't been present on Capitol Hill since April 9. Yet this new-found urgency evaporated the moment McCain discovered it. He remained in New York on Wednesday and instead taped an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. In fact, McCain stayed on in New York until the next day, attending a conference organized by Bill Clinton before flying back into Washington on Thursday afternoon.

There, McCain spent more time in his Senate office meeting with presidential campaign advisers than with Congressional leaders working on the bailout agreement. His vaunted search for a bipartisan deal involved talking to no Democrats. Later at the White House meeting that McCain and Bush had foisted on Barack Obama and Democratic leaders, John Boehner (one of the few negotiators McCain had bothered to talk with) raised a series of new proposals out of the blue. Thus the one intervention of McCain into the negotiations actually scuttled an agreement that had been announced earlier that afternoon.

McCain also promised on Wednesday to take his TV ads down during this "suspension", but did not. He promised to refrain from partisanship while a bailout agreement was being brokered, but he hasn't done so. Instead, his surrogates immediately fanned out to do TV interviews and criticized Obama's actions with regard to the crisis. McCain also used the occasion to make multiple (free) TV appearances last night in which he talked, vaguely, about the negotiations (which he'd barely taken any part in).

During these interviews McCain repeated his earlier statements that he wouldn't take part in Friday's debate unless Congress had reached an agreement. Here he was on ABC:

GIBSON: Do we have a debate tomorrow night?

MCCAIN: Well I'm hopeful, very hopeful that we can. I believe that it's very possible that we can get an agreement so that -- in time for me to fly to Mississippi. I understand that there is a lot of attention on this but I also wish Senator Obama had agreed to ten or more town hall meetings that I had asked him to attend with me. Wouldn't be quite that much urgency if he agreed to do that, instead he refused to do it.

GIBSON: What is the practical deadline? There would have to be an agreement -- a bill that could be signed off, bipartisan, bicameral by tomorrow morning, by tomorrow noon?

MCCAIN: I don't know exactly, Charlie. But again I'm hopeful we can get the outlines and the specifics that a lot of people want to see and get it done quickly...

For what it's worth, last month McCain used the same complaint, that Obama refused to do joint appearances with him this summer, to justify the tone of his (often misleading) attacks on Obama. So that appears to be an all-purpose excuse for objectionable campaign tactics.

Anyhow, this morning McCain made a 90 minute trip to Capitol Hill, talked to a handful of Republicans, and left for home. About an hour later, with no agreement completed, McCain did another about-face and announced that he's leaving for the debate after all. And in the spirit of bipartisanship McCain says he values, the announcement sought to score points against Obama and trashed Democrats:

His campaign issued a statement Friday morning saying he was now “optimistic” that a bipartisan bailout agreement would be reached soon, citing “significant progress” in the talks.

The statement was sharply critical of Mr. Obama, who, like Mr. McCain, returned to Washington on Thursday to take part in the bailout talks. The statement portrayed Mr. Obama as unduly partisan and insufficiently concerned with protecting taxpayer interests in the bailout negotiations, while Mr. McCain was framed as the leader of House and Senate Republicans seeking to reach a compromise agreement.

“The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands,” said the McCain campaign statement.
“John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.”

The announcement gives the distinct impression that McCain is nearly alone in rising above partisanship and in looking out for American taxpayers:

John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis.

In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.

So what happened to McCain's "country first" stunt of scuttling the debate while Congress negotiates?

McCain had previously said that he would suspend his campaign—and so would not attend the debate—until an agreement was reached on the administration's $700 billion mortgage proposal.

No such agreement has been reached, but Republicans said the standoff was hurting McCain's campaign and that he would look terrible if he didn't attend the nationally televised, eagerly anticipated debate, while Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was ready to go on stage.

I'm sure that John McCain has a ready explanation about what high-minded principles lie behind his sudden decision this week to fake-suspend his campaign, fake-rush back to Washington, fake-work on a bipartisan bailout agreement, and fake-postpone the presidential debate. Jim Lehrer should give him a chance immediately to explain.

crossposted from unbossed.com