I’ve posted more narrowly about politics than I like to lately, but I can’t resist responding to Paul Krugman’s piece entitled “He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For.” Krugman writes, “Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. … But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.”

1. Obama never said he was the one we were waiting for. He said (quoting a line from the Civil Rights Movement): “We’re the one’s we’ve been waiting for.” This was in the context of explicitly arguing that change does not come from the top down, but from the bottom up. The lack of bottom-up pressure for health reform is a major reason why the bill is being dropped. No major progressive organizations or movements really fought for a bill that could pass Congress, and you can’t win a legislative battle without grassroots support.

2. Krugman has been giving up on Barack Obama every few weeks since before the Iowa Caucuses. Krugman certainly wasn’t waiting for Obama; he was predicting his failure. The President gets under Krugman’s skin because he won’t say what Krugman believes–for example, that Republicans are evil. We would all like to hear the President of the United States say what we happen to think, and it is frustrating when he says something different. But expressing Krugman’s thoughts would be lousy politics, not to mention that Obama doesn’t agree with them.

3. The diagnosis that this is all Obama’s fault seems crazy to me. What about the chair of the House Progressive Caucus, Raul Grijalva, rejecting the Senate bill and proposing, out of sheer spite, that the Senate should vote on each element of the House bill, one at a time? Or what about the anti-abortion caucus in the House? Or Evan Bayh? Or Nancy Pelosi declaring that the bill is dead? Or Barney Frank?

Krugman’s myopic focus on the White House makes sense only if he holds a Great Man Theory of History–and Obama is not great enough for him–or if the President just fundamentally bugs him by being too publicly polite to Republicans.

CIRCLE’s press release just went out:

Massachusetts Senate Election: Youth Turnout Was Just 15%, Compared to 57% for Older Citizens; Young Voters Favored Coakley

Tisch College, Medford/Somerville, Mass – In the special election for Massachusetts Senator, young voters (age 18-29) preferred Democrat Martha Coakley over Republican Scott Brown by 58%-40% (with 2% for other candidates), according to a survey of 1,000 voters conducted on January 19, by Rasmussen Reports.

About 15% of Massachusetts citizens between the ages of 18-29 turned out to vote.* For citizens age 30 and older, turnout was about 57%.

For comparison: 25% of young citizens (age 18-29) voted in the 2008 Massachusetts presidential primaries, and 47.8% of young Massachusetts citizens voted in the 2008 presidential elections, according to CIRCLE’s analysis. Seventy-eight percent of under-30 voters in Massachusetts chose Barack Obama in the 2008 general election; 20% chose John McCain.

While national youth turnout was very strong in 2008 (when 52% of young American citizens voted), youth turnout in the 2009 Virginia and New Jersey Gubernatorial races was poor (17% and 19%, respectively), and even lower in Massachusetts this Tuesday. “Three state elections do not necessarily make a national trend, but there is clearly an issue right now with youth turnout and enthusiasm,” said CIRCLE director Peter Levine. “It will be interesting to see the turnout of young voters in November’s mid-term elections.”

According to the Rasmussen survey, most young people who did vote were enthusiastic about Coakley: 89% of her young supporters said they voted for her, not against Scott Brown; and 43% were “very favorable” toward her. Their most important issue was the economy, whereas for voters overall, the number one issue was health care.

Of those Massachusetts voters who said that health care was the most important issue in the Senate campaign (56%), 86% opposed the Democrats’ plan. That was probably one contributor to Scott Brown’s victory. But young voters favored the health care plan, 55%-40%.

Young voters were less likely to be “strong” supporters of President Obama than Massachusetts voters overall (30% of youth versus 35% of all voters), but they were more likely to support him at least “somewhat.” (Sixty-seven percent support the president somewhat or strongly).

* To estimate the turnout of young people who voted in the 2010 Massachusetts Senate Special Election, CIRCLE used the following data sources: (1) the number of ballots cast in the Sentate Special Election according to the New York Times (2) the youth share of those who voted, as reported by Rasmussen’s survey of people who said that they voted, and (3) the estimated number of 18-29 year old citizens taken from the 2009 Census Current Population Survey, December File.

Q. Why are the Democrats losing popularity in national surveys?

A. The answer to that one seems pretty straightforward. There is an eerily close correlation between unemployment and presidential approval during recessions. John Judis provides the graphs for Reagan and Clinton; Obama’s pattern is just the same so far:

Q. What should the Democrats do about unemployment?

They should do whatever they can, mainly because losing your job is a terrible thing, but also because the Democrats’ political fate is tied to the unemployment rate. What they have done so far is the stimulus package, the auto bailout, and extending unemployment benefits. It’s clear that the public doesn’t give them credit for these steps–understandably, since unemployment is still at 10%. Probably the stimulus should have been bigger, but I have my doubts that the federal government could have spent more money faster without making major mistakes.

Q. What about the narrative?

Paul Krugman, E.J. Dionne, and Kevin Drum all agree that the Democrats’ problem is not declining popularity. That’s inevitable, given the economic picture. Their problem is a failure to control the interpretation, the public’s grand “narrative” about what is going on. Dionne writes:

Liberals and Obama … have failed so far to dent the right’s narrative, especially among those moderates and independents with no strong commitments to either side in this fight.

The president’s supporters comfort themselves that Obama’s numbers will improve as the economy gets better. This is a form of intellectual complacency. Ronald Reagan’s numbers went down during a slump, too. But even when he was in the doldrums, Reagan was laying the groundwork for a critique of liberalism that held sway in American politics long after he left office.

Progressives will never reach their own Morning in America unless they use the Gipper’s method to offer their own critique of the conservatism he helped make dominant.

Narratives do not determine electoral results, which can be forecast precisely based on economic indicators. Narratives do influence which policies the governing party attempts. Bill Clinton felt much more constrained than L.B.J. because the national storyline had shifted between 1964 and 1992–in part due to Ronald Reagan.

But I am not at all sure that Reagan controlled the narrative better in 1980-1982 than Obama is today. While Reagan’s popularity was sinking toward 40%, I don’t think most Americans were buying his claim that liberals had wrecked the economy with their taxes and spending, and he was saving it with his tax cuts (and spending). They were more likely to think that a mean Republican was putting people out of work. Reagan won the narrative in 1984 for a simple reason: the economy had recovered strongly, and he was the president at the time. Obama is making the progressive case today, much as Reagan argued for conservatism. People don’t believe Obama, because unemployment is 10%. I don’t think they believed Reagan when the situation was equally dire in 1981-2. Once again, everything depends on recovery.

Q. What about the left’s revolt against Obama?

It certainly does not surprise me that people to the left of Barack Obama are dissatisfied with his record so far–that was to be expected, given their expectations. I do think their level of anger is surprising and damages their own cause. Here, in the academia-dominated, liberal, affluent Western suburbs of Boston, I hear constant griping about the president, and some of the reasons seem to me downright mistaken. For example, the public option in the health care bill was almost pure symbolism; using it as a bargaining chip was smart–not a betrayal. The national decline in the president’s overall popularity is a function of economic conditions. For the Democrats to lose steam in Cambridge and Brookline seems unnecessary and harmful. I blame my neighbors for that, not the White House.