At the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza makes an argument that although 2012 isn’t going to be anything like 2008, President Obama still has an edge over Mitt Romney in the swing states that will decide the election. While the numbers do give Obama a slight advantage, as RealClearPolitics’ Electoral College map indicates, the triumphalism about the president’s re-election we’ve been hearing lately from Democrats is more the product of bombast than insight. Stunts like the Democrats’ attempt to promote myths about the Republican “war on women” aren’t likely to change that map. More to the point is the fact that the states that will determine the winner are likely to be influenced heavily by an economy that few outside the administration and liberal editorial pages believe has been turned around.
There isn’t a lot of doubt about which states are up for grabs this November. Nor is there much uncertainty that the battle for the White House this year will more closely resemble 2000 and 2004 than President Obama’s romp four years ago. The outcome will, as Cillizza rightly understands, depend on whether the voting patterns of the last few elections will be re-written by dissatisfaction over the president’s uninspiring performance in office.
As Cillizza states, there is not much argument there are nine swing states that should be in play this fall: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin–comprising 110 electoral votes. He points out that Democrats would include Arizona, Indiana and Missouri, adding 32 votes to the total of those in doubt even though none of them have a history of abandoning the GOP. Republicans would include Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, adding 41 to the swing state total, but only New Mexico has gone for the GOP even once in the last generation.
If none of those flip this year, that leaves us with the nine swing states and because as Cillizza points out, Obama carried all nine in 2008, he must be considered to have an advantage.
The only problem with this reasoning is that a poor economy that can no longer be blamed on the Republicans leaves Romney an opening. Each state is a different story. In New Hampshire, Romney may have a regional edge. Virginia may revert to Republican form after deserting the GOP for the first time in decades last time around. Wisconsin may be influenced by the outcome of the Scott Walker recall effort that is itself a referendum on the 2010 Republican midterm victory. The point is there are still too many variables and far too much time until November to list any of these pure swing or semi-swing states in either column.
With the GOP contest now all but concluded, the general election is about to begin. President Obama enjoys the enormous advantage that comes with incumbency as well as Camelot-style press coverage that has largely eschewed the personal attacks that dogged the re-election efforts of all of his recent predecessors. But until we know whether the economic state of the union on September 1 is such to inspire confidence in an Obama rerun, coloring any of the states up for grabs any shade of blue or red is a mistake.
Democratic triumphalism? If anything, the Dems will promote the idea that the future of the Republic hangs on re-electing Obama and taking back Congress, not so much because they're so great but because the GOP is so evil: the Kochs and Scaifes and Adelsons and Friesses and corporate America, facilitated by a corrupt right-wing Supreme Court majority, and Southern Baptist preachers and bigots and gun nuts and greed-crazed geezers, and the treacherous Senate minority and the Tea Party and talk radio, not to mention the 20% estimated to be mentally ill. n nOf course that's a caricature, but make no mistake: the Dems will conjure it, as well as the very real possibility that the forces of evil will prevail. And the meanness and cannibalism on display in the GOP nominating season — where "moderate" became a pejorative — has lent credibility to the caricature. n nTriumphalism? Quite the opposite, I'd say. I think they want to horrify Americans at the prospect of a GOP triumph.
same playbook, same attacks….hasn't changed much in fifty years. (see Kerry, Carter, Mondale, Mc.Govern..) the major reason why Obama go elected was because of the basic fairness of the Americna people who thought it was time to give a black American the Presidency. period. And he spoke eloquently. That has changed. his speeches have indeed "turned into clay", nasty,condescending and radical and the American people will not be swayed by the scare campaigns. Will Romney win? maybe not, but it sure will nto be easy going for Obama.
The big objection I had to Obama was not so much Obama himself — he's a decent enough chap — as the motives behind his advancement. In a more prosperous, tranquil time, he might have been an innocuous choice. But midst the dire situation in which we found ourselves — domestically and strategically — in 2008, a vote for an affirmative action student and affirmative action scholar to be an affirmative action president was the ultimate gesture of fatuous narcissism. If 2008 was to be a Democratic year, then surely there was what David Brooks called a "generic Democrat" who would have been far better for the country than Obama. But questions about Obama's true job qualifications — as opposed to contrived academic encomia — were drowned out by the media's incessant blaring of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "We Shall Overcome".
I hope you're right. I do think that Romney should be able to bring Obama's record and lies into the discussion, just by the media being required to report something of what he says during the campaign. What I sense, though, looking at red and blue state maps (since 2000) is that it really does come down to only a few "swing" states, that Obama couldn't lose California if he did the most outrageous evil … or win Texas if God appeared and said O's my man! I just mean that it's scary to think that what a candidate says and does means so much less than the D or R. What's lost is accountability.