President Barack Obama traveled to Richmond, Virginia on Friday to aggressively promote the $447 billion jobs stimulus he announced at Thursday’s rare joint session of Congress.
He delivered the pitch with more passion, and generated more enthusiasm, with an audience of supporters. Yet there’s little or no agreement about whether his plan will increase long-term support among critical, swing-voting independents. Two Thursday night focus groups, one in Richmond and one in Atlanta, Ga., produced sharply different reactions to the president’s jobs plan.
“We’ve got to give [Republicans] a little help to do the right thing, so I’m asking you all to lift up their voices … call [them], email, I want to tweet, to fax, to visit, Facebook, send a carrier pigeon,” a fired-up Obama told the Richmond crowd.
Friday’s speech included Obama’s frequent stump-speech claim that GOP legislators are unpatriotic, and should be punished at the ballot box for stopping the economic recovery promised by his policies. The economy “has stalled,” he said, and recovery “will only happen if they set politics aside to deal with America’s problems.”
The crowd was largely made up of Obama supporters. Many in the audience were professionals or students at the private university where attendance costs $52,000 a year, and most of the people sitting immediately behind the president were African-American women. One woman shouted “We love you Barack!” prompting him to respond, “I love you back!”
But Friday’s enthusiasm won’t travel far from the university grounds or Obama’s base, and any beneficial poll results created among independents by the speech will fade quickly, warn Republican and Democratic consultants.
Swing-voters “are tuning him out, because the daily reality is so overwhelming,” warned Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant based in New York. Obama’s joint session speech was intended to “excite the base…. [but] the partisanship turns off the independents,” Sheinkopf said.
Obama began his presidency “by captivating people who would tune into his speeches… [but] the combination of his failed policies and his overexposure at presidential speeches has made millions of people tune him out,” said Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush.
Obama’s rhetorical style hinders the needed outreach to swing-voters, he said. “It is built into Barack Obama’s speech style that he lectures [audiences] and has a powerful air of sanctimoniousness [that] hinders his ability to build bridges to others,” especially to independents, Fleischer said. “When you’re in as much [polling] trouble as Barack Obama … you need an overwhelming slice of them,” he said.
Because they’re fair-minded, Sheinkopf said, independents will give him time to implement his plan. Unless there’s an economic turnaround, they’ll walk away from him in late 2012, he said.
However, a Democratic advocacy group said the speech moved a group of Virginia swing-voters to back the president. (RELATED: Confrontational Obama presents jobs bill, leaves Republicans underwhelmed)
The group of 32 independent voters was assembled by a Democratic polling firm, Hart Research Associates, for Priorities USA Action. “These swing voters liked the President’s proposals …. and came away from the speech persuaded and encouraged that Obama has good ideas for improving America’s economy,” according to a Hart memo released by the advocacy group. “The speech produced major jumps in the proportion of respondents describing Obama as ‘a strong leader’ and as being ‘honest and realistic in addressing the country’s challenges,’” said the memo.
That’s a good sign for Obama, because swing-voters place more value on leadership, and less on ideological principles, than do base voters. Virginia is a swing-state, and its voters could tip the 2012 election towards or away from Obama.
Still, Obama high-profile speech to Congress didn’t move the group much, even without a response from GOP advocates. “Fewer than half of the respondents felt that Obama had the better approach to jobs than the Republicans in Congress” before the speech, said the memo.
The second focus group was conducted in Atlanta by Frank Luntz for Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. Half of the members voted for Obama in 2008, but most of the group’s members described Obama’s jobs plan as a reelection ploy, and none spoke up in Obama’s defense.
“The President has exhausted his supply of speeches,” concluded Fleischer. “The only thing that will bail him out now is economic results.”
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