This is the point I was referring to when I said “excellent point”.
I was only expressing surprise at kunilou’s mention of Obama losing Travis County. “Excellent point” was only directed at the point about large Military populations in States that otherwise “feel” to me like they should be Swing States.
Thanks for correcting (and citing) the data about Travis County. That’s more in step with what I’d have assumed.
That’s our goal- to turn Texas blue. . I don’t know when it will happen, but it will.
Obama only lost Georgia by 5 points in '08. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.
None of the other Southern states are going anywhere, though. They’re the new “Solid South”. The GOP will win even if they put David Duke on the ticket. Clinton may have won a few, but a lot has changed politically since then.
It may be that I just have lousy Google-fu, but I can’t find any population figures for New Orleans more recent than 2010. As if the U.S. Census is the only means of measuring a city population.
Sure, in most cases 2 years wouldn’t make a significant difference but in New Orleans there is still the ongoing slow trickle of return from Katrina exiles. There are specks of Blue throughout Louisiana, but without a heavy Blue anchor in Orleans Parish the State as a whole stays on the Red side of Purple.
Based on the last presidential election cycle, less than a million Democratic votes strategically distributed in teh right congressional districts would flip the house, the senate and provide a landslide for Obama. On the other hand it would take several million votes to put all three in the hands of the Republicans.
I apologize. Clearly I misread the data.
However, I stick by my original point. States like Texas, Virginia and Georgia have a large number of military and former military, and those states as a whole are conservative, despite the presence of places like Dallas, Atlanta, NoVa, etc.
Much as I hate to report it, Georgia has trended more and more Republican over the last 20 years. In that time, its legislature has flipped from Democratic to Republican, its Senators and governorship are now predictably Republican (whereas they used to be up for grabs) and there remains very little talent in the Democratic bullpen to challenge Republican hegemony at the state level.
I think partly this is demographic. A lot of members of the World War II generation were reliable Democratic voters. As they have died off over the last 20 years, the Democrats lost a lot of votes. The baby boomers in Georgia are VERY conservative on the whole, and as their generation has become predominant, Georgia has shifted hard to the right.
I really don’t foresee a shift back to the left until the Boomers start to kick off. Once that starts happening, I am hopeful that Georgia’s politics will become more competitive.
I fear that looking forward 2008 will have been a high water mark. 2008 presented a perfect storm, combining the economic disaster (which was blamed on Republicans) and an historic turnout of black voters energized by Obama’s candidacy. If Georgia didn’t go blue in 2008 it won’t again in the near future.
While I agree that a Southern candidate would tend to make the South more competitive in presidential elections, the problem is that there is very little Southern Democratic talent in the wings. It used to be that I could easily name a half-dozen good potential Democratic candidates from the South. They’re just not out there any more, and that’s because Southern Democrats are having a harder and harder time getting elected to the Senate and the governor’s mansion.
The perfect storm for each state varies with the state. But there are some common themes.
Texas would require a GOP candidate who the RR doesn’t bother to come out for, a Democratic incumbant presiding over an economy recovering enough that independents feel like staying the course, and both keeping the Hispanic vote Democratic and getting them out to vote, say because of ads playiing quips of things said during the primary debates. A good organization in the urban areas maximizing turn out would help too.
Georgia? Again, a GOP candidate who the RR dislikes with an economy in a good place, clearly recovering.
As far as the GOP increasingly becoming a regional party - well their region has enough electoral votes as to always keep them in contention, but their prmary system of awarding more primary delegates to states that went for them more in the last election seems designed to maximize the chances of picking a candidate who only appeals to the state they will have no problem winning … a regional candidate.
Mark Warner. Mike Beebee, maybe. If you count Maryland (upper, upper, upper South?), Martin O’Malley.
I live in Va (well, NoVa), but I see a hard road for Obama to keep Va blue. We’re very Conservative here, and trending more so. IMO it hinges on his “ground game”. He had offices in every county in Va last time - several in Fairfax County. If the economy stays tolerable, or improves, that and his extensive campaign organization might keep Va competitive.
The other thing that will help Obama this year is the extremism and lunacy of the Right. Our legislature passed two anti-abortion bills (one that amounted to state-sponsored rape), but did not pass a budget. That foolishness may energize the Left, even as the Right wonders if their nominee is a true Scotsman.
Military presence is relative. Texas has the most military personnel of any state but we’re still only talking about 131,548 people in a state with a population of 25,674,681. That’s about half of one percent.
To put it into comparison, the population of the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan statistical area is 6,371,773 and the Houston MSA is 5,946,800.
Yeah, I think this illustrates how little talent is out there.
I like Warner, but he’s not exactly a son of the South. Born in Indiana and raised in Illinois and Connecticut. Still, he’s proven himself electable as a Democrat in a Southern state so he gets props for that.
Beebee is 65, so not exactly the future of the party.
I like Martin O’Malley, and he is the sort of Democratic politician that might sell in the South, but you’d have a hard time convincing a Georgia voter that someone from Potomac, Maryland is a Southerner.
Those thinking (hoping) that Louisiana & Texas will join the ranks of blue states come November, I would encourage you to seek out professional help for your delusions. Not going to happen as long as Obama and the Progressives are running the Democrat party.
Far too much of the economy in both states are tied to the Oil & Gas production industries (both on and offshore). Add to that the Keystone Pipeline, NASA, Houston not receiving one of the retired shuttles, etc.
Even the Latino vote so sought after, that’s no guarantee either. Don’t forget most are predominately Catholic and pro-traditional family values.
Yes, you’ll always take Austin & Shelia Jackson Lee’s district, along with a couple of others - but the entire state? Not happening.
Polling amongst Latino voters show them in favor of Obama over Romney by a margin of 54 points (!).
Agree its silly to think the Dems will take Texas this cycle. But they will win the Latino vote by a better then two to one margin.
Oh, I doubt it will happen this election cycle, but soon. Much sooner than you expect, my friend.
BWAH-hahahahaha!
Cite?
The question was what would be the perfect storm … we all know that perfect storms are not probable events.
One of the difficulties for Texas, and Arizona too for that matter, is that some of what might work to get the Latino vote out might also excite the hard Right too, and the perfect storm requires the sitting out to some degree.
Speaking as a former Catholic, I think the Republican leadership has misread its support among Catholics. The anti-contraception platform has the full support of the Catholic Church - but that doesn’t necessarily translate into support by Catholics.
Polls show that a majority of American Catholics disagree with the Church’s positions on these issues. But it’s a quiet dissent because the Church has no means of enforcing its position on Catholics in this country - so Catholics are free to go ahead and do what they want regarding birth control while not upsetting their parish priest by talking about it openly. The last thing these Catholics want is to see the Church’s anti-contraception policies to be enacted into secular law and enforced by the government.
So in November there might be a split among Catholic voters with the Republicans getting the 100,000 leaders and the Democrats getting the 50,000,000 followers.
If only that were true.
To return a little to the OP’s question, here’s my thoughts on what perfect storm circumstances could flip Southern states like Georgia, which Obama didn’t win in 2008, won’t win in 2012, but aren’t total write-offs for the Democrats:
A Democratic candidate who’s a Southerner. I think that’s a big part of why Clinton took Louisiana; he’d been the governor of a neighboring state, and so he understood Southerners well enough to avoid inadvertently offending them, and he “spoke their language”, as it were. He didn’t flip the whole south, but he had a strong effect.
A strong Democratic year nationwide. 2008 was a pretty good example; the economy was crashing and the voters blamed it partly on Bush II, the Republican candidate was weak and the Democratic one was strong, the nation was embroiled in two unpopular wars and the Republican candidate was a strong hawk, and the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy brought out black voters nationwide.
Serious Republican missteps on policy positions. I think that the current insistence on fighting about contraception is a good example; the Republicans are currently picking a fight that’s a winner with their base but a loser with the electorate at large, and I think it will cost them. Same-sex marriage is not yet an electrifying or wedge issue for the country at large, but I think that it will be as useful a wedge issue for the Democrats in 2020 as it was for the Republicans in 2004. Public opinion is shifting fast on the issue, and as the Millennials reach an age category where they vote reliably I think that the Democrats are going to find that to be fertile ground.
Also, what’s up with Kozmik’s on lumping Oregon in with Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming? Thread after thread around here. It’s a reliably blue state, and the other three are reliably red.