Gyory: Remember why they voted for you

Bruce N. Gyory is a political consultant with Corning Place Communications and an adjunct professor of political science at the University at Albany.

The sharp shifts in partisan fortunes in recent years have a common denominator -- the failure of elected officials to follow a pragmatic rule.

The rule? When governing, remember why voters elected you. Elected officials substitute the reasons they wanted the office for why voters really voted for them at their own political peril.

President Barack Obama's fundamental problem has not been that enacting health care reform was unimportant. It's been that until this past winter, Americans saw their president as utterly preoccupied with that issue, rather than focused on the interlocking travail from the collapsed housing, credit and jobs markets. Those were the issues that got Obama elected in 2008. Their neglect, consequently, got the Democrats "shellacked" (to quote the president) in the 2010 elections.

Once Obama's focus shifted to a jobs bill with the extension of the payroll tax cut, the improving jobs data -- bolstered by the success of the auto bailout -- buoyed his poll ratings. Today, the president is on the precipice of holding that 50 percent approval rating that's the magic threshold for incumbents.

Now look at Republicans. Two short years ago, they ran brilliant congressional and statewide campaigns across the nation. They found their success by focusing on the twin themes of cutting the deficit to improve the economy.

In 2010, the GOP neither offended blue-collar workers nor triggered gender gap. In fact, according to 2010 exit polls, Republicans carried female voters 51 percent to 49 percent.

Yet instead of a laserlike focus on forging economic-growth policies, the GOP has indulged its own wants, rather than the electorate's desires. In Wisconsin and Ohio, Republican governors led assaults on collective bargaining rights. The result was a landslide referendum last November in Ohio humbling Gov. John Kasich by overturning his labor reforms -- and a recall election of Gov. Scott Walker set for Wisconsin in June.

In state after state, Republican legislatures also pushed anti-abortion laws. In Congress, the GOP launched a war on Planned Parenthood funding. And it ended up rescuing Obama from his original misstep on the contraception mandate for religious institutions by making the public debate about contraception itself instead of religious liberty.

So it's no surprise that recent polling is showing a renewed gender gap favoring the Democrats. The most recent Quinnipiac University polls in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania show Obama in the lead in each state, triggered by surging support from women.

But it is far too early for Democrats to celebrate. For there's another rule in politics worth remembering: The perceptions of voters are like soft clay, hardened only after they emerge from the kiln of Labor Day. So just as Obama appeared virtually unelectable six months ago, by the beginning of October -- in another six months' time -- the political wheel could turn again.

We know something else, too. Given who the ultimate swing voters for president and Congress in 2012 will likely be -- white Catholic women who are college educated but don't hold graduate degrees, and Hispanics living outside urban cores -- we know the suburbs are where this election will be decided. The majority of these swing voters will live in places like Long Island, Florida's Interstate 4 corridor and the so-called Inland Empire of California, as well as hundreds of suburban towns surrounding smaller metropolitan cores.

But to whoever wins the 2012 elections, a word to the wise: In this campaign, mean what you say and say what you mean. Then, when governing, remember why you won people's votes. In the end, the consent of the governed is not just blind idealism, it can be a bright lighthouse in often dark political waters.