Barone’s Lesson From Georgia: Without Obama On The Ticket, Dems May Have Trouble in 2010

Michael Barone compares turnout numbers on November 4 with the turnout in Tuesday's Georgia Senate Runoff. It seems that The One has rapidly diminishing coattails. His bottom line on turnout among blacks.

"The Obama campaign did a magnificent job of turning out black voters in rural and small-town counties in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia for the November 4 election. But it was not able to replicate those results in the Georgia runoff. . . . As the analysts at NBC News suggest, Obama coattails that were helpful to many newly elected Democrats in the South in November 2008 may not be so helpful to them in 2010 and any special elections that occur between now and then. That suggests another hypothesis: that the Obama turnout effort among blacks may not be replicable. You can only vote to elect the first black president once."

Blacks got their Reagan this year. And like Reagan Conservatives, there will always be a measure of letdown and dissatisfaction for them after Obamamania has run its course. All future Democrat presidential candidates will be compared to the Obama Standard. Typical poll responses will be (largely about white presidential candidates), "Yeah, I support our candidate, but he's no Barack." The difference between Obama and Reagan, however, is that blacks voted for Obama because he was black, while Conservatives voted for Reagan because of his ideas. Any candidate can share ideas, but you can't become black if you are not (unless you are Bill Clinton, of course).

As for white turnout.

"In contrast, Republicans were able to produce good turnout in affluent suburban Atlanta counties, both those with few blacks and those with growing black populations. This is a countertrend to Obama's good showings in affluent suburban counties in November—showings often far better than any previous Democrat has done since 1964. This occurred even despite Obama's relatively moderate choices for top economic policy positions and his hints that he won't seek tax increases on high earners anytime soon. . . . But the results here do suggest that other Democrats will have a hard time duplicating Obama's percentages in affluent suburban counties. Note that this runoff took place when opinion is very favorable to Obama and when he has been getting credit for bipartisan or at least nonpartisan appointments (Robert Gates, Timothy Geithner)."

Therein lie the shortcomings of identity politics and cults of personality. When the identified cultish personality is gone, so is all the political support.