"The Right has done a fine job convincing lots of Americans that Democrats are a party for the undeserving poor. The Left, meanwhile, has successfully portrayed Republicans as a party for the heartless rich"

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Zero-sum politics 
Voters think both parties are telling the truth about how awful the other lot are
February 8, 2014

“GOODBYE.” Just hearing Barack Obama say the word has the power to startle, almost three years before his term in office ends. It slipped out during a speech to Wisconsin factory workers on January 30th, during a four-state tour intended to show off a president still fizzing with ideas for fixing the economy.

During that tour Mr Obama stressed his eagerness to work with Congress on an ambitious goal: a wholesale effort to restore the promise that, in America, responsible folk who work hard have a fair shot at a middle-class life.

If members of Congress would not help, he would press on without them, Mr Obama added bullishly. Yet he could not conceal a wistful note as he contemplated how much remains undone. Restoring economic opportunity is the defining project of this generation, he said in Wisconsin, flanked by gleaming, flag-bedecked hunks of machinery. That task has driven his presidency, he pledged, and “will drive me until I wave goodbye.” Once uttered, the image of his departure seemed to hang in the air.

None of this means that Mr Obama is already a lame duck. Three years is a political eternity. Mr Obama has hefty executive powers, both formal and exhortatory (“I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” as he likes to say). And though the president’s job-approval ratings are grim, other indicators are more promising.

For one thing, the economy is at last picking up. For another, most Americans still think the president cares about people like them: a measure that may sound woolly, but which has proved powerful in the past among swing voters. The president has not lost his touch with a crowd, Lexington can report after watching him in Wisconsin. It was a tough gig, involving lots of middle-aged men in overalls, brawny arms folded sceptically as they listened. Waukesha is a conservative corner of a swing state: so much so that the plant is home to specimens of a rare breed, sternly Republican union members. Several shared their dislike for Mr Obama beforehand. Even his willingness to use executive orders divided the crowd into partisan camps. Democrats cheered: “His hands are tied by Congress,” said Tom Jenkins, a maintenance manager. Chuck Griffith, a machinist, growled disagreement: a president who flouts Congress is “a dictator”.

After Mr Obama’s speech, several expressed happy surprise. The crowd roared approval when he urged parents to let children learn skilled trades (it pays better than an art history degree, Mr Obama noted, to jeers). Several said how much they liked a passage in which Mr Obama hailed the “blue-collar” values of his parents-in-law. Michelle Obama’s parents never envied success or worried about the Ferrari-driving, fur-wearing rich, he said. They cared about a simpler, all-American principle: that people who worked hard should be able to support a family.

As a rough-and-ready focus group, the Waukesha factory workers are interesting. The state twice voted to send Mr Obama to the White House. But Wisconsin voters also elected a Republican governor, Scott Walker, and stood by him when he picked a big fight with public-sector unions. The plant chosen for the presidential visit has seen worldwide sales surge after inventing a clever engine for use in oilfields. Its workers and apprentices—highly skilled and well treated—represent a sort of heroic ideal for both Republicans and Democrats, as they debate how to revive the American Dream.

Alas, the crowd’s warmish response to Mr Obama does not translate into much love for either party. It is one thing for voters to believe that Mr Obama cares about people like them, it turns out. It is another to trust that his party as a whole—or his opponents’ party, for that matter—has their economic interests at heart.

Keith Grace, a machine repairman, was one of many at the Waukesha event to deride the Democrats as a party that hands “free stuff” to the idle. At the same time he calls the Republicans a party that looks out for big business, not workers. A self-styled independent, he did not vote for Mr Obama in 2008 or 2012, yet after his speech marvelled: “He hit home today, he’s real.” Mr Grace summed up the world-view of millions of disgruntled independents in a pithy, two-part sentence: “People ought to get off their duffs and get a job, but I’d like it to be a job that pays well.” He trusts neither party to deliver this package in its entirety.

Harland Altreuter, a snowy-haired machine operator, was chosen to meet the president during a factory tour. He found Mr Obama a “genuine, really nice person”. He voted for him in 2008, but not in 2012. Most workers at the plant have great health insurance, he explained, but what if they are forced on to Obamacare? The president’s health law is intended for those with nothing to lose, suggested Mr Altreuter: folk without any insurance, or those with long-term illnesses. Workers like him have a lot to lose.

Reds for the heartless rich; Blues for the idle poor
There seemed no end to the zero-sum calculations. Women deserve equal pay for equal work, Mr Obama said at one point. Female workers whooped, while many men stayed stony-faced. Job growth in suburban Waukesha does little to help the former industrial hub of Milwaukee, protested Earl Ingram, a school mentor from that nearby city, now blighted by jobless rates, notably among black men, that he called “a crime, a tragedy”.

If Waukesha’s workers are any guide, the Right has done a fine job convincing lots of Americans that Democrats are a party for the undeserving poor. The Left, meanwhile, has successfully portrayed Republicans as a party for the heartless rich. Neither party has done nearly as well at making a positive case for itself.

In person, in the right setting, Mr Obama is slightly less loathed than the two-party system. But voter disillusion traps him too. Waukesha workers wondered, almost as one, whether Mr Obama’s ideas for boosting the middle classes would change very much, even if they liked the sound of some of them. His presidency is not over. But the bully pulpit is not what it was.
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