Apropos of President Obama's decision to claim credit for the recent budget deal, which traded $38 billion in cuts for averting a government shutdown, The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny explains the White House's political calculus:
The president's advisers argued that the broad coalition of supporters who gave Mr. Obama 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes in 2008 never completely matched up with the traditional Democratic base. Heading into his re-election campaign and big legislative battles centering on the 2012 budget and the need to raise the federal debt ceiling, he is now well positioned to appeal to the political center even as his allies make the case that the current Republican Party is so extreme that liberals will ultimately get behind him as the best alternative. [Emphasis]
The president's advisers are wrong, to say the least. The broad coalition of voters who gave Mr. Obama 53 percent of the popular vote were the same broad coalition of voters who gave John Kerry 48.3 percent of the vote in 2004: African Americans, Latinos, young people, and lower-income workers. Likewise, the voters who re-elected George W. Bush in 2004 were mostly the same voters who supported John McCain in 2008: whites (particularly older whites and men) and high-income workers.
In other words, 2008 had less to do with Barack Obama's ability to assemble a unique coalition and more about his ability to generate massive turnout among existing Democratic voters. Yes, Obama made small gains among white voters (43 percent compared to Kerry's 41 percent), but this wasn't the deciding factor in his victory.
Obama's turn toward centrism isn't likely to hurt him in next year's presidential election, but I'm not sure that it will matter much either. Obama's success depends on his ability to mobilize core Democratic constituencies, and centrist rhetoric is mostly irrelevant to that challenge.
