Republicans Say Hillary Clinton Is Running for Obama’s Third Term. Yes, Please.
By Jonathan Chait
One of the phrases that keeps cropping up in Republican election rhetoric is that Hillary Clinton is “running for Obama’s third term.” Oftentimes it is used as though the distastefulness of such a scenario is self-evident. “POTUS making no bones about it: Hillary running for Obama’s third term,” gloated Republican senator John Cornyn during Obama’s convention speech. Republican strategist Scott Reed argues that GOP members of Congress may have abandoned their nominee 20 years ago, but “Dole was running in ’96 against an incumbent with a 4.5 percent growing economy and world peace. Clinton is now running for Obama’s third term.” This is a bizarre line of reasoning to use against a popular, historically successful president. A third Obama term sounds awfully good, and not just in comparison to the unthinkable alternative.
A couple of years ago, the key piece of evidence for Obama’s failure was his approval ratings. In the wake of the failed launch of healthcare.gov, the president’s ratings sagged into the 40s and remained depressed, prompting gleeful Republicans to compare his standing with that of George W. Bush. (The comparison gave Republicans an imagined double victory, impugning the current occupant of the Oval Office while excusing the failures of the previous one.) But the polling depression was short-lived. Obama’s approval ratings have climbed into the 50s, registering 58 percent in the most recent Washington Post poll.
Critics have instead fixated on a different statistic to illustrate the public’s alleged discontent: the right-track-wrong-track number. The overwhelming majority of voters say the country is on the wrong track, and as Obama’s approval has risen, Republicans have used this figure to bolster their claim that the public is a seething mass of discontent, a claim that has bled into the news coverage. “The electorate is restless and wants change,” asserts Politico. Clinton is “running for Obama’s third term at a perilous time,” write conventional wisdom barometers Steve and Cokie Roberts. “The president’s personal popularity is healthy, but two-thirds of Americans say the country is headed down the wrong track.”
But the right-track-wrong-track figure is not historically indicative of a public desire to change party control. It instead reflects longstanding public discontent with a wide range of institutions, public and private, since Vietnam and Watergate. In recent years, it especially reflects the conviction held by Democrats and Republicans alike that their own party is losing. Republicans think the country is on the wrong track because Obama is ruining it. Democrats think it’s on the wrong track because Republicans are preventing Obama from moving forward.
-snip-
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/clinton-is-running-for-obamas-third-term-yes-please.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
