Now, we’re talking about Obama’s Western strategy (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico) and Obama’s Southern strategy (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia).
With the Western strategy and the Southern strategy, I see Indiana and Ohio coming into play.
Consider:
The Democratic National Convention will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina. The President can campaign in Southern states, leading up to the Convention in the Southern state of North Carolina.
The President has been visiting Boeing plants which are producing the new Dreamliner. Boeing, of course, has a huge presence in Washington State.
Obama lost Arizona to McCain in 2008. McCain, obviously isn’t a factor in 2012. However, Gabrielle Giffords is.
Question to ask:
Could an Obama Southern strategy and an Obama Western strategy converge to turn Texas from red to blue?
I think it’s a fallacy that States have pre-set colors. Yes, California, Massachusetts and New York will almost always go for the national Democrat candidate. Texas and the deep south will almost always go for the Republican candidate (at least since the Civil Rights era.) But pretty much all of these aside from NY have enough exceptions that I don’t think it’s really required that any special “magic” happens to make one state go Republican or Democrat.
Very weak candidates from one party versus a strong candidate or strong incumbent from another can always result in massive EV victories. I think aside from DC it’s hard to say anything is totally out of play in any election. I mean who expected in 1978 that in the 1980 election a Republican was going to beat Carter in both California and Massachusetts? And that he’d win Massachusetts again four years later? (I didn’t think in '78 we’d see Reagan back on the primary scene due to his age, if I knew he was going to win the primary I wouldn’t have been surprised at him winning California since he was a former California Governor and native of the State.)
So Texas isn’t a color that needs turning, Texas is just a set of people who could go for a person from either party if the situation was right.
Well Martin, that was the point of linking to the map that shows all that purple. Still, there is some reality of where to invest. The concept being expressed is that some states will be won only as part of a blow-out, and will never be a state that was needed for the victory, so investing in them heavily only makes sense as part of forcing the other side to defend them (and thus be less able to go after those that you do need in order to win). That was the idea behind the Obama team’s 2008 “Fifty State Strategy”. And winning the usually Red Virginia was a big deal.
Now which usually going Red states are both particularly vulnerable and which if picked off and flipped to Blue without losing anything usually Red at the same time, will depend on the specifics of who ends up being the GOP nominee.
Clearly against what seems likely to be a weak candidate that will either be one that have low enthusiasm from the base (Romney) or one that will lose almost all swing voters (Santorum) Obama could both win all the states he won before and reasonably pick up Missouri (he lost it last time by less than 0.1%), Arizona and Montana. That would get him to 383. West Virginia is not out of reach against Romney although the fundamentalists there would make it hard to take from Santorum. That get’s to 388. Georgia was actually within 5 points last time … if the base stays home he could lose that too, easily. That would get to 404 even without imagining Texas going Blue.
Again, November is a long way. Lots can happen. The economic recovery is still fragile and could tank for any of a number of reasons and if so talk of a blow out could be coming from another direction. Romney could suddenly learn how to campaign with some message other than “I’ve got the money and organization and Obama is a failure.” But assuming continued gradual recovery and the Romney we know or Santorum as the other choice, 400 plus EV seems achievable.
WV is out of reach for the same reason Kentucky is–coal people HATE Obama.
The coal industry is in a sharp decline overall. There’s no question that actions taken by the Obama administration have led to fewer coal jobs than there might have been otherwise. But those actions were things like actually enforcing miner safety regulations (in the wake of Upper Big Branch) and turning down permits for environmentally devastating operations. But the propaganda campaigns by the coal companies have everybody believing that there would be plenty of jobs and money for everybody if it weren’t for that damned Obama.
The actual votes from the “coal-huggers” (a term a friend of mine coined) don’t really matter that much in the long run, but the coal business has the state governments in both states by the balls. So the Democratic apparatus is not going to be out in force for Obama. Our Governor here in KY, a Democrat, won’t be seen with Obama and calls him out every chance he gets. It’s hard to win a tough state when the top dogs of your party in that state can’t get excited about you.
So don’t let our Democratic registration advantage (3:2 in KY) fool you–KY and WV are by no means in play.
The “red versus blue” division is key for guessing where to spend resources. Your own post contains the reason why: If Massachusetts or California votes Republican it’s because there’s a national landslide. Setting aside “coattails for Congress” (though that can be important) if a Republican carries California it means he didn’t need California – electoral votes from the swing states were enough for victory; any “blue” states are just gravy.
Stated differently, voting is strongly correlated across the nation.
There may be two main reasons why the relative reddish-blueishness of two states might change from one election to the next:
[ul][li] Demographic changes within a state.[/li][li] Relative appeal of particular candidates or issues.[/li][/ul]
Of these, demographic change is more important: it’s thought that Virginia voted Blue in 2008 because of an influx of Yuppies, not because Obama ia black.
Here’s an interesting graphic, though I’m not sure whether it helps to confirm or to refute the point I make. :dubious:
I presume that the words “one of the” have been omitted, and even that’s with deep rose tinting. I’m not sure that it’d be the standout amongst USA candidates in the past quarter century or so.
I don’t think anyone contests that, but none of us here are running Obama’s reeelection campaign (I wouldn’t vote for a guy like Obama but if he wants to pay me some percentage of his ad buy as campaign manager I’d do it, my total lack of qualifications or political aptitude would probably seriously hurt his efforts, though–but it’d drastically enrich me.)
The only point I’m making is the tired “red/blue” state thing (and now people are saying purple as well) is just stupid. Hell, it’s entirely based on a trend the national news media used to visually depict which states were being won by which candidate on election night. For anyone from my generation you may remember that for a long time one of the major networks (don’t remember which) actually used blue/yellow as their two colors, and one of the other major networks used red and blue but the colors were reversed versus their current usage.
I just don’t like this concept that Obama is going to be able to “turn states blue.” I think Obama can win many states Democrats traditionally do not win, but if you actually look at history there are enough exceptions that it’s honestly kind of dumb to even call states “red or blue.” I guess it’s just a personal pet peeve of mine…being from Virginia Democrats were all piss their pants happy that they won this “red state.” Being a life long Virginian I never felt I lived in a “red” or “blue” State, we’ve had many Statewide elections go to the Democrat (and I don’t just mean during the 1960s when the Dems owned the South, I mean in the last 20 years consistently Democrats have won many State elections.) Just because a string of Presidential candidates didn’t appeal to most Virginians and those candidates happened to be in the same party doesn’t mean we were ever a “red” State. (Hell, in the early 90s we elected a black Democrat Governor, the first State in the old Confederacy to do so.)
I grew up in Virginia’s coal country and have enough relatives in WV I’ve always kept aware of WV political issues. I’ve always thought it extremely fortunate Virginia is a big enough State that our coal industry doesn’t dominate our legislature. I’m a right wing, pro-business guy but the State of WV has essentially been raped by coal companies for 100 years and not only do their elected representatives do nothing for the actual people working in the mines or who work in jobs created by the mining industry, anyone who tries to reign in the worst abuses of the coal industry is instantly labeled a tree hugging job killer and ran out of town.
This is a State where one of the elected State Supreme Court Justices was vacationing in a French villa with the CEO of Massey Energy (Don Blankenship) and who then the next year ruled on an important case involving said company. It created a minor bit of political upheaval but nothing serious.
Statistically WV has a very high rate of certain types of cancers and birth defects because of the effects coal runoff and such can have on local populations. Additionally if you read about Upper Big Branch, Massey was essentially not following 100+ year old safety precautions. It’s been known for over 100 years that an accumulation of coal dust in a mine creates a situation in which a spark can cause an ignition and massive explosion. To handle this, since the 19th century miners have sprinkled rock dust around the mine to dilute the coal dust and prevent this sort of thing. Massey did not do this, the CEO was a micromanager and required something like hourly updates on the current operations of each of his mines (and Massey had many), and his mine foremen were keeping two different log books (one real and one fabricated) so they could hide their flagrant mining safety violations. So eventually the expected happens and an explosion occurs and kills a bunch of miners.
There was some outrage directed at Massey over this, sure, and support for the families getting money. (I think the $3m/each of them got is extremely low considering the extreme negligence involved this is one case where I think massive punitive damages should have been pursued.) However, even after that the people of WV essentially think of the MSHA as the worst thing ever just designed to make life hard for miners and mine operators.
What I find interesting is WV has this slavish devotion to the coal industry even though it is a minor part of the employment profile of the State in the year 2011-2012. I believe mining now directly employs fewer people in the State than the chemical industry, natural gas industry, and the tourism industry (which is mostly lower income jobs but is the State’s largest industry in terms of total employment IIRC.)
Implicitly, you, and other posters, are asking the President to concentrate on winning the electoral college rather than the popular vote.
I would concentrate on the popular vote. First, the electoral college almost always follows the popular vote. Second, if you win the electoral college and lose the popular vote, you will have won by so little as to have no congressional coattails. And Obama can’t govern well without more Democrats in Congress. And third, winning the electoral college and losing the popular vote means you don’t have a mandate to implement your policies.
You can say that GW Bush was able to govern without such a mandate, but he had a 9/11 to, for a few years, and obviously with partisans exempted, bring the country together. Under normal conditions, it is important to win the popular vote (and to gain Congressional seats).
In order for Obama to win Texas, he has to win all the states literally above Texas (Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota). In order for Obama to win the South (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia) he has to win the two states (Indiana, Ohio) that are literally above the South.
So a hybrid electorial vote/popular vote strategy.
The trashing means nothing. Hillary and Obama trashed each other till the end.
With the economy gaining so much steam, Obama would have to screw up big time to lose. I think Santorum realizes this and is praying he loses to Mitt. That way Mitt goes down big time and when 2016 Santorum can try again, against a weaker field of Democrats
Not the same. Obama and Clinton had policy differences, but they were not racing to the left to prove which one was more liberal. There is a fundamental split in the GOP between the mainstream party who wants to win the general election, and the extreme right wing, who wants to nominate the most conservative candidate.
Again, Idaho and Wyoming are not in any way part of any strategy of Obama’s: He has essentially no chance of winning them, and even in the remarkable situation where he does, he won’t need them. Likewise, Washington and Oregon aren’t really part of his strategy, either, since he’s very likely to win them no matter what he does, and if he loses them, it’s probably because he doesn’t stand a chance regardless. Now, Montana, yes, can be described as part of Obama’s strategy, since it could plausibly go either way, though I’m not sure his strategy is really divided up geographically.
The states immediately north are much more solidly Republican. Oklahoma was a 30 point McCain margin in 2008. (65 to 35%) Kansas 15 points. Nebraska 15. All more than the margin McCain won Texas by.
Different demographics. The joker in the deck for Texas is the Hispanic vote, 38% of the Texan population. So far Texan Hispanics have disproportionately not come out to the polls come election day. And the Texas GOP has been trying to reach out to them, so even if they suddenly come out the right GOP candidate might get a fair portion of their votes. But if there is a circumstance in which one candidate does things like refer to the Hispanic vote as the illegal vote and takes positions very anathema to the POVs of many Hispanic voters, then they may come out against him, even if he is Catholic. (Romney might also trigger something of a Hispanic backlash.) Staes north of Texas do not have that factor in play.
I am not predicting Texas will end up in Obama’s column … just stating that you can bet some statements made during the debates will get into lots of commercials in Hispanic markets in Texas before election day, and that it is not as impossible of a win as some may think it is. (Although it is true that it is likely that any circumstance in which Obama wins Texas is also likely one in which he did not need to win Texas.)
Obama should go after both Texas and California, and all states in between except Utah. That’s Obama’s Southwest strategy. Then it’s the states in the Pacific West (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming). Then it’s the states in Middle America (North Dakota, Minnesota, South Datoka, Iowa, Nebraska, Misouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana). Then it’s the states in the Midwest (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio).
I’m predicting that Obama will have a Southwest strategy.
Why would Obama divide up his strategy geographically like that? The things he’d have to do to win California are completely different to the things he’d have to do to win Arizona, or the things he’d have to do to win Texas. To win California, all he has to do is not royally screw up: Strategically, California is in the same category for him as, say, New York or Illinois, despite those being in vastly different parts of the country. This isn’t like a war, where your troops have to push through one part of the map to get to the far side of the map: A political candidate can deploy his resources anywhere he wants to, without having to go through the places in between.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone putting Wyoming in the “Pacific West.” It’s usually grouped in the “Mountain West,” culturally and politically closest to Colorado, Utah, and eastern Montana. I surely also never heard or read anyone putting Wyoming in “the proximity of Oregon and Washington.” Take another look at that map, son. And take another look at the state-by-state popular votes in the past couple decades. Obama’s not winning Wyoming any sooner than he could win Idaho or Utah.
