Bill Keller, who used to be Editor in Chief of a local New York daily, has an op-ed today claiming that Obama's populism is a turn off with swing voters. Obama needs to become more centrist, Keller argues, just not in a centrist-y way:

Centrism is easily mocked and not much fun to defend...The politics of the center — including the professional centrists and trans-partisans of groups like Third Way and Americans Elect — do not quicken the pulse. White bread, elevator music, No Labels, meh.

Elevator music? Did the paper Keller used to work for have elevator music? Why?

The middle matters, though, even if in these hyperpolarized times it doesn’t get much respect. It has been a truism of modern politics, at least since “The Real Majority” was published in 1970, that elections are usually decided by voters who are not wedded to either party, who don’t stay in any ideological lane.

Here we must wonder if Keller's former publication covered politics. The middle doesn't get much respect? Keller must have sat out the 2004 presidential race. And the 2000 presidential race. And the 1996 presidential race. And the 1992 presidential race. What does Keller think Bill Clinton was going all those years if not appealing to the middle? Clinton's successful reelection is the entire reason we have the term triangulation. Swing voters, swing states, undecideds, and independents have been the catchwords of general elections ever since. 

Sorry, Bill, you were saying?

Be warned: political science is an inexact science, if not an outright oxymoron.

Ha! Oxymoron. S'funny.

The middle is not the home of bland, split-the-difference politics, or a cult that worships bipartisan process for its own sake. Swing voters have views; they are just not views that all come from any one party’s menu. Researchers at Third Way, a Clintonian think tank, have assembled a pretty plausible composite profile of these up-for-grabs voters.

Oh, no. As noted in PoliticOlogy last week, Third Way's recent survey suspiciously supports to Third Way's stated goal of centrist deficit reduction (note the term Clintonian in Keller's description). Keller, as a former Editor in Chief, is certainly not going to play impressario for an organization pushing skewed results as independent data, is he? Yup:

Swing voters tend to be fiscal conservatives, meaning they are profoundly worried about deficits and debt.

Yes, in the abstract. "However," Jonathan Bernstein points out,

the more abstract the questions are, the less they are easily interpreted. So, for example, Third Way’s conclusion that "Swing Independents think we should fix the deficit over reducing income inequality" promises a lot more than it can deliver. After all, most people have no idea what "fix the deficit" really means, other than it’s generally thought to be a Good Thing. Which is, in fact, all that the survey is telling us. Whether any actual votes would switch if Barack Obama talked more about the deficit, let alone actually proposed something that would slash the deficit (which, of course, requires either raising taxes or cutting popular spending programs or both), is another story altogether.

What else are they?

They are aspirational — that is, they have nothing against the rich — but they don’t oppose tax increases.

Nope. Here's Greg Sargeant, eviscerating the point so I don't have to:

The polling can be found in Keller’s own paper. A recent New York Times poll found that 52 percent of Americans, and 55 percent of independents, think capital gains and dividends should be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. It also found that 55 percent of Americans, including 58 percent of independents, think the wealthy pay less than their fair share in taxes. In other words, the "middle" agrees that the tax system is unfair.

Indeed, a recent Post poll found that a majority (52-37) sees the unfairness of the economic system as a bigger problem in this country than overregulation, a regular Romney target. Independents agree, 50-39; moderates, 57-36. That’s a bit surprising, given that Romney is supposedly more attuned than Obama to the "middle." Meanwhile, moderates and independents support raising taxes on the rich in poll after poll after poll after poll after poll.

But enough of who Bill Keller thinks swing voters are. What does he think they want?

Swing voters, I think, are looking not for a checklist of promises but for a type of leader — a problem-solver, a competent steward, someone who understands them and has a convincing optimism. We don’t know exactly how they identify that candidate, but it is some mix of past performance (especially for the incumbent), campaign messaging and chemistry.

So...a politician? Swing voters want someone with no specific policy proposals, who can play the part of a leader, give good speeches, and hire the right campaign staff? This is, depending on who you are, a description of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. Hey, if you're not looking for a checklist of promises, Romney is a pretty good place to start. All in all, Keller's description sounds like a spineless politician willing to say anything to get a vote. Who was it that was just saying "the middle is not the home of bland, split-the-difference politics?"

But ignore Keller's advice at your own cost. As he thankfully informs his readership, it is possible to lose elections by not getting enough votes:

It is always tempting to focus on the easier pickings of the base rather than woo the skeptical, show-me middle. But if this race tightens, as elections tend to do, neither candidate should plan on living by his base alone.

So, to be clear, the middle wants someone who has "a convincing optimism," because they are "skeptical," "show me" voters who will hold candidates accountable for the non-checklist of promises they don't want. Note, also, that Keller doesn't seem to understand the difference between "the middle" and the "swing voter." The middle is largely made up of moderates of either party, who tend to vote with their party in the end; swing voters, as Keller described them, have no party allegiance (and are probably a smaller group than we imagine, as voters tend to overexaggerate their independence to pollsters).

This difference between being moderate and being independent is the primary reason so few people are buying Third Way's recommendation that Obama moderate his populist election pitch. Third Way found that swing voters thought Romney was more ideologically attuned to them, and thus the organization recommended Obama reverse course before he lost these voters. But as the survey was taken at the tail end of a grueling GOP primary, Bernstein points out, "their group is likely to contain quite a few Republican voters who haven’t yet admitted, even to themselves, that they’ll wind up strongly supporting Romney in the fall."

In other words, many of the swing voters who feel ideologically inclined to Mitt Romney are likely just momentarily disenfranchised Republicans; they're not undecideds or independents who will actually vote against their party in November. But Obama's approval rating has increased following his tack to the left on issues like tax equity and combating income inequality. If Obama ditches the populist pitch that's finally gotten him above 50% approval, all to go after a small group of voters, many of whom are likely moderate Republicans anyway, he'll lose his popular advantage with electoral reward. Ed Kilgore has the best rundown of the devil's deal:

The advice offered in this paper really does live down to the negative reputation of Democratic "centrists" as people willing to make major concessions to conservative policy preferences in order to achieve very small advantages among very small groups of swing voters. It’s not worth it morally or politically.

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