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Holly Bailey

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Posted Tuesday, November 03, 2009 11:17 PM

Va. and N.J. Elections: Obama World Stayed Home

Howard Fineman
This election was as much about who didn't show up as who did. Obama World took the day off. As a result, the races in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York were largely left to the old school—older white folks—and they yanked the results back in their own (generally conservative) direction.

If this was a rebellion we were watching, as some Republicans suggested, it was a rebellion of an antique  America—in both the literal and figurative sense—against the dawn of a demographically and perhaps philosophically new country.

I don't have much exit-poll data in hand (they are very tight with such things over here at NBC, where I am camped out), but from what I can glean, the minority turnout in Virginia and New Jersey was relatively light—certainly compared with the tsunami of 2008. (There are few persons of color in the North Country of New York state, where a House special election also drew attention.)

It's also clear that the electorate this November skewed old, certainly compared with last year's Obama-inspired crowd. In Virginia, for example, 22 percent of all voters last year were under the age of 30. This year, only 10 percent were that young. Conversely, only 11 percent of the electorate was over 65 in 2008; this year 21 percent were seniors.

Like everyone else in America, older, tradition-minded Americans care about jobs and the economy. But they were also far more likely—according to other recent polls—to be rather skeptical of the health-care-reform plans put forward by Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

The AARP notwithstanding, many older Americans view health-care reform as a threat to what they hold most dear: Medicare. And while legislators insist that they want to protect the popular program from long-term bankruptcy, seniors aren't living in the long term. When they hear that reform would mean $500 billion in cuts in Medicare spending over 10 years, they freak out.

Extending medical care to tens of millions of Americans who don't have it—many of them younger and Hispanic and living in the South and West—is not the top priority of the older folks living in the suburbs of Richmond and New York.

On the other side of the street, the president and his allies have yet to deliver to younger and less-well-off voters who supported him and them last year. The "stimulus package" hasn't delivered many jobs (except to teachers and bureaucrats); billions have gone to preserve welfare and unemployment benefits that already existed (and so Obama doesn't get much credit for preserving them); the ranks of industrial jobs continue to shrink; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on.

This was an election at low tide, but Obama—surfer dude that he is—needs to remember that there is a beach beneath the waves, and it can cause you pain if you are not careful.

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Member Comments

Posted By: gfab (November 4, 2009 at 12:32 PM)

The writing is on the wall.  Obama is next!

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Posted By: marbee (November 4, 2009 at 12:07 PM)

This is what I hope happens to all anti-smoker candidates, YOU WILL LOSE!  There are millions of smokers and business owners losing their constitutional rights based on big pharma's BIG LIE false science and we have all had enough.  So listen up candidates, the smokers and business owner population is strong and we WILL show it at the voting booth!

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Posted By: Pia81 (November 4, 2009 at 10:16 AM)

Congratulation to Chris Christie! Thank you!

As for you Mr.Corzine, well... nothing needs to be said..your pathetic record as gov. speaks for you. Now Mr. Corzine, you can go join your good friend (as you have referred to him many times) former Gov.Jim McGreevy at the beach and the both of you can do absolutely nothing but lounge around again as you both did during the combined 8 years in power.

PS You attacked Chris Christie's family. Deplorable. The man has four young children.

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