I do now, thank you very much. You will pay, Ludovic.
2008 was different in that the economy was turning to crap, and a lot of blame was directed at Bush, one of the most unpopular presidents ever. A lot of voters simply didn’t want to vote for a Republican again.
There are red states where Obama should compete: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina among them. But the suggestion that states like West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas are states that could be picked up is just… senseless. Obama didn’t crack 40% of the vote in three of those states, and scored no more than 43% in any of them. To think that an African-American president of middling popularity is suddenly going to pick up those states is at odds with reality.
I mean, seriously, get a grip.
This whole thread seems like asking “I just bought a lottery ticket; where should I spend my prize money?” Missouri’s gettable for Obama if he does similarly well this time as he did last time, I suppose. That’s really the only one that might be in play unless his national numbers are way up over 2008, which seems unlikely at this point. If Obama’s looking to get over 55% of the popular vote, we can talk about what states might swing. But if it’s looking like a 10+ point blowout, I can’t really see them caring which electoral votes make up the 350–400+ range. Just try for everywhere, and see if you can see how the map might be different in 2016, when maybe there’ll be a close election.
Because all six states you listed cannot optimally be picked up, one state, Tennessee, is the state that Obama goes after. That’s why there are different ways that Red State Strategy can be run.
Red State Strategy #5
Arizona and Texas and West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee and Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
-or-
Red State Strategy #6
Arizona and Texas and West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee and Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
Obama has the advantage as black and Latinos are not happy with Obama, well not as happy as they could be, but they would be worse off with any Republican. So the thing to think about is not who they’ll vote for, but if they will vote at all. In Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana black voters pushed those states to Democrats, if they sit out well there’s problems.
States still change, remember how NH went for George W Bush in 2000. It now is leaning to the Democrats. Had that happened earlier Bush would’ve lost even with Florida.
The best way to play this out is count all the solid Republican and solid Democrat states, for presidental elections, and then work on the toss up states.
My understanding is that Missouri has become a better state for Republicans over the years, at least in presidential campaigns. It used to be regarded as a bellwether state that always voted for the winning candidate, which it did in every election from at least 1972 to 2004, but I think the demographics have changed over the years to make it harder for Democrats to win there.
People who like to imagine electoral nailbiters have noted that Obama is targeting Omaha, Nebraska again as a potential tiebreaker in the 2012 election. Nebraska is one of the few states that does not award its electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, and Obama got one of its five EVs in 2008. So some people think that in some unlikely circumstances, Obama could get that vote again and win the electoral college 271-269. Maybe he can do that again, and I think he’ll compete hard again in Virginia and North Carolina for starters. They’ll go after some of these other states as a way of making Romney play defense, but I don’t think there’s any kind of a chance that Texas or Kentucky or Tennessee are going for Obama.
Stop that before someone’s hand comes out of your computer screen and strangles you. 
It’s not really fair to blame Bush when in reality a lot of voters simply didn’t trust McCain on the economy.
I think the most iconic moment was when he went out and boldly declared the fundamentals of the economy are strong just as the general public began to realize how serious the problems with our financial markets were.
Shortly after he awkwardly tried to claim (lie) that he meant “the American people” when he was talking about the “fundamentals” which was absurd on its face.
Next he erratically canceled his entire campaign because he wanted to go to DC to solve the economy.
Regardless of how good a job he would have done over a 4 year time span, at the time there was a sense of real urgency about the financial/economic crisis and he came off like a huge boob.
If Obama did decide to pursue a red-state strategy, what would the best course be for Romney? Go after purple states, or even more aggressively try to target blue states and insinuate Obama had forgotten his roots or whatever?
Maybe he should think outside the box and do all his campaigning in Canada.
They’ll both go after the states they think they could win, and make decisions about where to go on offense based on how the campaign is going, including polls and fundraising. In 2008 Obama was able to campaign aggressively in states like Virginia because he was more successful than McCain at raising money and the polls said he had an advantage.
If I were Romney, I would acknowledge that I am perforce playing a defensive game this year – i.e., if Obama focuses on the red states, I had damned well better do the same. Can’t win without 'em.
I wasn’t predicting anything. I was simply responding to the original OP that with a little extra push, Obama could win 455 electoral votes. All I meant was that with even less of a push from the opposite direction Obama doesn’t even get reelected.
Oh, it’s worth pointing out that while unemployment in general is falling, unemployment amonst black Americans is still higher than average and the rate of decline in unemployment is slower. So the voters that were enthused in the 2008 elections may be less inclined to vote this time around.
Most of the voters who were excited about Obama weren’t black.
There seems to be this conservative disinformation that African Americans are turning against Obama. Fact is that a poll this month shows that 91 percent of African-Americans approve of Obama.
Obama had a lot going for him in 2008 that he won’t have in 2012. So the election will be harder than the 2008. The 08 election was more or less a given, I think McCain’s managers were trying to figure out how to break that fact to him before the 3rd debate.
Follow 538, they usually have really good info a few weeks before the election.
But it won’t be a landslide. It’ll be a close race with 1 or 2 swing states determining it.
Oh, I’m sure there will still be overwhelming support for his presidency and approval, but I’m not sure it’ll translate as well as it did into votes as in 2008. I’m way to the (non-authoritarian) left of Obama, so I’d prefer to see someone like Bernie Sanders as president, but he’s a far better choice than any of the Republican candidates for the American people (I think Ron Paul may be better for American foreign policy until he slashes all foreign expenditure and the department of education). I looked up African American unemployment figures earlier to make a point in another forum about how something that is explicitly classist (wanting fewer poor people to vote) could be implicitly racist and thought that the trend in unemployment among African Americans may be salient for the election.
Interesting thing I’ve read: black people did turn out to vote for Obama, but black people are usually underrepresented in elections. So the increased turnout meant that the proportion of black voters was about equal to the proportion of black people in the U.S.
There is a disinformation campaign among fox saying that ‘everyone’ is turning against Obama. It is mostly crap. Liberals (like myself) are upset that he governs like an early 90s new england republican rather than a committed progressive (which he tried to portray himself as in the primaries, as someone to the left of Clinton). But that is a far far cry from wanting people like Palin, Romney and Santorum in charge instead.