PrintSeptember 4, 2010
Angry voters want to take it out on Democrats at record levels
Wasn't Barack Obama supposed to unite us? Wasn't his speech at the Democratic National Convention a declaration that he did not see us as a "Blue America" or a "Red America" but as the United States of America? Fine words..but in the end just words as Obama might phrase it.
Now he and other Democrats will have to live with his handiwork: an enraged citizenry eager to take out their justifiable anger on those who led us into this morass: the Democrats.
From the folks at Gallup:
The 44% of Republican voters who say they are voting more against the Democratic candidate exceeds the level of negative voting against the incumbent party that Gallup measured in the 1994 and 2006 elections, when party control shifted (from the Democrats to the Republicans after the 1994 elections and from the Republicans to the Democrats after the 2006 elections).
In the fall of 1994, just prior to that year's elections, 34% of Republican voters said they were voting against the Democratic candidate rather than for the Republican candidate. There was a slightly higher proportion of negative voting in 2006, when 38% of Democratic voters said they were casting a ballot against the Republican candidate. ...
On a comparative basis, there is much less negative voting among Democratic voters this year than among Republican voters. Sixty-one percent of Democratic voters say they are voting to support their preferred party, while 32% are voting Democratic to reject the Republican Party.
These attitudes among Democrats are typical of what Gallup has found in past elections; the trailing/incumbent party's supporters have been much less likely to engage in negative voting than the leading/opposition party's supporters.
Some of us saw this coming.
Everything about Barack Obama's history showed him to be a person who scored political points in dividing people -- divide and conquer. He is ideologically driven to identity politics. He is a harsh political partisan (if they bring a knife to a fight, I bring a gun - what fine rhetoric. If only he had the same attitude towards America's enemies) and had the most liberal voting record of anyone in the Senate. The record was there to be considered before voting for him - but the media and Obama' shills cosseted and protected him.
So what sort of feeling has he created among Americans, along with such polarizing figures as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? Well, one in which voters are voting against the party in power (that would be the Democrats) at record levels (as opposed to voting for the Republicans). In other words, Obama and Company have split us and made us miserably angry and disillusioned at the same time.
Heckuva job , Barack.
