Kevin Drum looks at the
political ideology polling and concludes that it is much harder for the Left to craft political strategy that appeals to its base than it is for the Right.
I'll repeat a point I made a few weeks ago: this is baked into the cake of modern American politics. Every local race has its own dynamics, but it's still worth taking a look at the
Gallup chart above to get a sense of the broad national hole that liberals are in. About 40% of the electorate self-identifies as conservative and getting their votes is critical for any conservative politician. If you piss off a few moderates in the process, that's life. After all, if you win the conservative base convincingly, then on average you only need to hold on to the most conservative 10% of moderates to win an election.
But only 20% of the electorate self-IDs as liberal. So the math is exactly the opposite: you need to win nearly all the moderates in order to win an election. If you piss off centrists by playing too hard to the base, you'll lose.
This is a bummer, but it's reality, and lefties really need to suck it up and get less annoyed by the fact that politicians react to the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Like it or not, most pols just can't afford to give the liberal base too much rhetorical lip service until and unless it gets a lot bigger than it is today.
Still, there's a mystery here. Not why Obama feels the need to market himself the way he does, but why he lately seems so clumsy at it. As Krugman implies, dog whistling can be subtle but still clear. So where's the subtlety in the Obama White House these days?
