This is a GOTV Diary. Obama leads Romney by 52-40 among all adults in a recent poll. That's right. A twelve-point lead. But that includes a large fraction of those surveyed who are not registered to vote, or are registered but do not plan on voting in November.
The poll was conducted a few weeks ago by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post, and discussed on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog at the NYT.
Aug. 18: Obama Leads Big — Among Those Least Likely to Vote
The Obama campaign is doing its job on candidates and issues, as are the DCCC for House candidates and the DSCC for Senate candidates. We already knew that the rest was up to us. Now we know that we could totally smoke the Republicans if we could just get our people to the polls.
Memo to all naysayers, handwringers, and Obama-bashers: Just shut up until November. We have work to do. Better still, join in the work, and prove the naysayers and handwringers wrong. And especially, prove the Republicans wrong when they prate about what "the American People" want. I suspect that you will feel better about yourself and the country.
Oh, sure, we know that they mean Sarah Palin's "Real American People", not counting the young, the old, the Black, the Brown, women, Muslims—anybody but the base of old rich White pseudo-Christian males and their hangers-on, including the racists, the bigots, and the kleptocrats. All of them want to destroy the American Dream and the American Promise, to go back to the Golden Age of White Bread America, when they were firmly in charge, gays were firmly in the closet, and even most teenagers knew their place and didn't give them any lip. Back when the US actually was #1 in something other than guns and prisons. Or further, back to the Original Constitution as written by the Glorious (slaveowning) Founders, when only rich White men could vote, only rich White Christian men could run for office (well, maybe Jews), and slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person.
We can be #1 again in something that matters. We can be #1 in caring for our people, in giving everybody the rights we have so long promised, in Liberty and Justice for all. We can put an end to poverty and powerlessness as we know it. We can very likely put an end to the already-imploding Republican Party. Well, not Kossacks, not Progressives, not directly. The people who can really put an end to the Republican Party are the children of Republicans, by coming over from the Dark Side. But the rest of us can make Republicans irrelevant.
Twelve points.
Another poll that Nate notes is more specific about the problem.
Another poll this week, conducted by Suffolk University and USA Today, tried to get at that question. It surveyed 800 adults who either weren’t registered to vote, or who were registered but said they weren’t likely to turn out.
Among these adults, 43 percent said they preferred Mr. Obama while 17 percent backed Mr. Romney. Since quite a few Americans fit into this category — about 4 in 10 American adults will not vote in November — it is easy to see how Mr. Obama could have a double-digit when they are added back into the total, like in the Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
Yes. A
26-point spread. Two-thirds of these non-voters say they are registered to vote.
It isn't just President Obama, it's the entire ticket. You know, if we could tap into that 43-17 demographic of current non-voters, and we were winning elections by twelve points on average nationwide, we would have a much more Progressive Congress. We could be pushing President Obama to do much more of what we want, and much less of what he does to fend off Republican challenges. Maybe we could get somewhere on helping those with underwater mortgages, not just banks. Maybe we could have gotten out of Afghanistan by now. For sure, without Republicans howling for blood, we could have closed Guantanamo and either tried or released the inmates. We could have had single payer. A real stimulus, one not larded with tax cuts. We could have raised taxes and the minimum wage, balanced the budget, invested in our future, and fixed Social Security and Medicare without so many of these obstructionists in the way.
Similarly for state legislatures and Governors, who would be doing far less union bashing, warring on women, and voter suppression. Among other things.
We just have to get off our duffs, stop whining, and go do it, not just until November, but until it is done. And then when we have as many of us voting as there are of them, there are a few other tasks we could take up. Hey, we could make Election Day a national holiday, make voting mandatory, update the Voting Rights Act, and fix the voting machines so they can't be used to fix elections.
And, of course, we have to tell everybody else. Go forth, and go viral.