Looking at the electoral map this cycle, the focus has mostly been on Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. But what about the Mountain West? The assumption is that Obama has a virtual lock on Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, but is this valid?
“We’re not looking at a guy who’s at 52 percent approval ratings,” said Floyd Ciruli, one of the state’s top independent pollsters, who in April found Obama’s approval ratings hovering at 45 percent among likely voters. “Even though the economy and unemployment is a little better than the national average, the level of anxiety is just about as high here as any place else. There’s general anxiety that [the economy] could turn south again.” …
“It’s as absolutely split as a state can be, which is why you can’t turn around without bumping into the president and his motorcade,” said Kenneth Bickers, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “Either candidate can win and either candidate can lose.”
There are two points worth noting about Colorado.
First, and contrary to conventional wisdom, Latinos did not swing the state from red to blue in 2008. According to exit polls, John McCain managed 38 percent of the Latino vote. In 2004, George W. Bush pulled in 30 percent. The real action was with white voters, who gave McCain just 48 percent of the vote compared to 57 percent for Bush. So, Colorado is really not an example of demography trumping all, as so many on the left implicitly argue. Instead, it was about white voters abandoning the GOP.
Second, the Republicans rebounded in Colorado in 2010 to some degree. The party suffered an epic meltdown in the Senate and gubernatorial races, which prompted some pundits to conclude that the Centennial State was slipping away from the Republicans. However, the GOP actually won a solid victory in the statewide House vote, 50 percent to 45 percent, which basically tracked the national average. Plus, the two sides are evenly divided in the state house (the Democrats control the state senate).
No doubt that Colorado is no longer the solid red state that it once was, and that the change has been rapid (Bill Clinton lost it to Bob Dole as recently as 1996). But it is now a purple state that should be hotly contested this fall. Mitt Romney has a real chance there.
There is dissension in the Democratic ranks on President Obama’s reelection strategy. His campaign team has decided to focus on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital – which ended over a decade ago – as an illustration of what a Romney presidency might look like. Loose-lipped Democrats like Harold Ford Jr., Ed Rendell, and even rising stars like Deval Patrick and Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, have publicly said they’re uncomfortable with this approach. And this echoes the sentiments of some off-the-record Democrats.
There is something very strange about the 2012 presidential race so far. The election comes at a time of extraordinary public unease, which clearly demands some response from the political system, and especially from the men running for the highest office in the land. But the two presidential candidates are both running campaigns oddly detached from what is rightly worrying voters.
By the time he took office in 2009, President Obama had fashioned a reputation as an idealist committed to reforming the way business is done in Washington. But as president, he’s allowed this reputation to fritter away. And what’s left of it is now being destroyed by his harsh and misguided campaign for reelection.
This issue of The Weekly Standard features advice from Yuval Levin and Jay Cost for Mitt Romney in his presidential race. A Romney victory is devoutly to be desired. But a truly grand victory requires worthy opponents. Barack Obama is one. With all due respect to our affable vice president, Joe Biden is not.
The Obama-Biden campaign made quite a splash recently when it released a new web ad called “The Life of Julia.” This unusual piece of campaign propaganda tracks the life of a fictional character named Julia and enumerates the benefits she would receive from the government at successive ages should Obama win reelection. Some examples:
The Washington Post's Mitt Romney was a teenage bully story has caused a lot of media thumbsucking today. However, questions about the story itself keep emerging. The Post acknowledges that one of the major sources for the story was an Obama campaign volunteer in 2008. Beyond that, the paper's been less than transparent. Here's the orginal version of the story:
“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident.”
The president has already admitted Biden 'got out a little bit over his skis,' on the issue. But Politico reports that the White House is fuming that Biden's errant remarks in support of gay marriage forced the president's hand.
I don't know why GOP candidates haven't made more out of the ongoing investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal, but it looks like Ted Cruz, who's running for a Senate seat in Texas, is looking to make an issue out of it:
Maureen Dowd weighs in today to decry the "Phony Mommy Wars" over Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen's attack on Ann Romney. I know what you're thinking: If anyone is qualified to call a cancer-survivor "phony" for her decision to stay at home and raise five boys—it's the author of Are Men Necessary? Aside from being nearly a week late weighing in on this controversy, the column seems to miss the mark about as badly as you might imagine:
Does President Obama have the foggiest idea how jobs are created in America? There’s not much evidence he does, beyond lip service to the helpfulness of the private sector.
I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong.
President Obama made another joke in a speech to newspaper editors about his hot mic moment last week with his Russian counterpart. "It is a pleasure to speak to all of you, and to have a microphone that I can see," Obama said. "Feel free to transmit any of this to Vladimir if you see him."
