One point of concern among the pundits and politicians is the political impact of the shutdown on upcoming elections. In a sense, this involves looking at the handling of the shutdown as moves in the larger game of political maneuvering. In the specific scenario of the shutdown, there seem to be four main goals. The first is to achieve specific objectives (for example, defunding or delaying Obamacare). The second is to keep the other side from achieving its specific objectives. The third is to score positive political points for one’s side. The fourth is to make the other side accumulate negative points.
While achieving the first two goals can impact the second two goals, there is actually no need to achieve or prevent the achievement of actual objectives (such as delaying Obamacare). After all, positive and negative points can be gained or inflicted by the means of various rhetorical devices as well as the classic tactic of simply lying about the facts.
The Republicans apparently initially set out to defund or delay Obamacare and have been using the shutdown and threat of default to try to force the Democrats to yield to their demands. Interestingly, the Republicans do not seem to actually know what they want, which makes achieving these unknown goals rather problematic. However, they do seem clear in one goal: they want to shut down the government. Some Republicans, such as Michelle Bachmann, seem to think that the shutdown was itself a desirable goal. If so, that could be considered a “win” for her and people who think that way.
The Democrats do seem to be clear about what they want-they want the Republicans to accept the legal reality of the situation: Obamacare is a law and it has been ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. They also want the shutdown to end, but refuse to yield to the Republican threats and coercion. Naturally, the Republicans have tried to spin the story so that the Democrats are to blame for not negotiating the matter.
On the face of it, the Republicans certainly seem to deserve the blame. To use an analogy to baseball, it is as if the game has been legitimately won by the Red Sox, but the Yankees want to negotiate the matter. When the Red Sox refuse, the Yankees say they will burn down the stadium unless the Red Sox negotiate. True to their word, the Yankees then start burning things, all the while blaming the Red Sox for the fire. In the case of the shutdown, Obamacare won-it was passed, ruled constitutional and set to go into effect. The Republicans then decided they did not like the result and set out to burn things down, all the while blaming the Democrats. That said, politics is mostly about perception and not so much about the reality. So, a rather important matter is how the voters perceive the situation.
Not surprisingly, no one is looking particularly good to the voters. Congress started off with an abysmal approval rating, so it is hardly a shock they still look bad to the voters. However, the shutdown has also spilled over onto the parties and the president.
As of October 14, 2013 74% of Americans disapprove of the manner in which the Republicans in Congress are handling the situation. To be honest, I am somewhat surprised that the number is that low-I would expect a higher disapproval given that congress seems to be handling the matter exceptionally poorly. Last week it was 70% and at the start of the shutdown it was 63%, thus indicating that the longer the shutdown continues, the more disgruntled Americans will become. This does give the Republicans some reason to end the shutdown, assuming they are concerned about public opinion.
While the Democrats are suffering from a 61% disapproval rating, they are still better off than the Republicans. Also, the Democrats seem to be suffering less of an impact: at the start of the shutdown they had a 56% disapproval rating. As such, the Democrats are “winning” in terms of being perceived as somewhat less bad than the Republicans. While this might not seem like much of an advantage, the fact that we have what amounts to a two party lock on politics, the side that is doing less bad is thus the winner.
An obvious counter is that given the clever gerrymandering of congressional districts, the parties do not need to worry as much about disapproval. After all, if a district is rigged to be mostly Democratic or Republican, the dominate party is all but assured of victory. However, the once unified Republicans (who followed Reagan’s eleventh commandment) have become divided into factions, thanks to the Tea Party Republicans.
The Tea Party members have shown considerable willingness to go after their fellow Republicans for not being “conservative” (or, apparently, crazy) enough and this has created a situation in which moderate Republicans face the greatest challenge from their own Tea Party faction and not from the Democrats. This has played a significant role in the shutdown, which seems to have been largely orchestrated by the Tea Party faction. In contrast, the moderate Republicans would seem to prefer to have avoided the shutdown. Of course, how this plays out depends a great deal on what the voters think about the situation.
As it stands, 47% of Republican voters approve of the way their party is handling the matter, while 47% disapprove. In terms of how this will impact upcoming elections, much depends on the approval or disapproval of the voters in those cleverly gerrymandered districts. If the majority of Republican voters in a specific district favor what has happened, then this will bode well for the incumbent. It seems likely that Tea Party voters would tend to approve of this situation, thus it seems unlikely that the Tea Party incumbents will not be re-elected. However, the more moderate Republicans who have more moderate Republican constituents could run into problems-they might end up losing to a Democrat as punishment for riding the Tea Party tiger too far. Alternatively, if a moderate Republican decides to jump off the tiger, they might be punished by the Tea Party members in their district and end up being defeated in the primary. Then again, the voters might forget about all this by the time the elections come around.
The Democrats are doing better internally: about 60% of Democrats approve of how the Democrats are handling the situation. Not surprisingly, the Democrats are hoping to cash in on this division in the Republican party in the next election cycle. If the Tea Party comes off looking bad to the general population of voters and the once moderate Republicans continue to ride the Tea Party tiger, then the Democrats might come out ahead. This might see the beginning of the decline of the influence of the Tea Party and the more moderate Republicans might decide to abandon their more radical fellows. After all, if people get that the Tea Party folks are fine with shutting down the government and taking us to the brink of ruin, people might start rethinking the matter. However, the Tea Party folks might rather like what grows from what they have sown and their influence might grow stronger. Much depends on whether the voters can see the Tea Party for what it is-and whether or not they like what they see.
As a final point, Obama is doing the best of the lot: his disapproval in this matter is at 53%. His disapproval rating increased by three points since the start of the shutdown. As such, Obama seems to be winning in approval in that he is losing the least.
