Election and polling analyst Harry Enten has been writing
some excellent blog posts for The Guardian. This one is on the difference between today's polling on government
shutdowns and the polling on the confrontation between Newt Gingrich
and Bill Clinton in 1995-96. Enten points out that in 1995-96 many
more voters said they would blame congressional Republicans than Democratic
presidents; today the numbers are about equal. My interpretation: Voters are
quietly picking up on the fact that Barack Obama
doesn't do policy very well, certainly not nearly as well as Clinton did.
Voters' predictions of their response to future
hypotheticals are not always accurate, however, Enten looks at what happened
after the shutdowns of 1995-96. Clinton's and congressional Republicans'
numbers both dropped at first; similarly, Obama's and congressional
Republicans' numbers dropped when the grand bargain negotiations failed in
August 2011. But Clinton's numbers then shot up and so did those of
congressional Republicans. Clinton won re-election, and Republicans lost only
two seats in the House compared to 1994.
I still don't think it's a good idea for Republicans to
provoke a shutdown by demanding the defunding of
Obamacare. Their goal should be policy success, and in current
circumstances they can only achieve incremental success, not the ending of
Obamacare. But the shutdown numbers are not as dire as some suppose. ...This Appeared Here.....
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