Democrats' Rural Decline

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Steve Peoples at AP:

Barack Obama won 875 counties nationwide in his overwhelming 2008 victory. Twelve years later, Biden won only 527. The vast majority of those losses — 260 of the 348 counties — took place in rural counties, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.

The worst losses were concentrated in the Midwest: 21 rural counties in Michigan flipped from Obama in 2008 to Trump in 2020; Democrats lost 28 rural counties in Minnesota, 32 in Wisconsin and a whopping 45 in Iowa. At the same time, recent Republican voter registration gains in swing states like Florida and North Carolina were fueled disproportionately by rural voters.

Biden overcame rural losses to beat Trump in 2020 because of gains in more populous Democratic counties. Perhaps because of his victory, some Democratic officials worry that party leaders do not appreciate the severity of the threat.

Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, who recently announced he would not seek reelection to Congress this fall, warns that the party is facing extinction in small-town America.

“It’s hard to sink lower than we are right now. You’re almost automatically a pariah in rural areas if you have a D after your name,” Cooper told The Associated Press.

Even if Democrats continue to eke out victories by piling up urban and suburban votes, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota fears her party will have “unstable majorities” if they cannot stop the bleeding in rural areas.

“Democrats have the House, they have the Senate, the presidency, but it’s an unstable majority. By that, I mean, the narrowest kind, making it difficult to advance ideas and build coalitions,” said Heitkamp, who now heads the One Country Project, which is focused on engaging rural voters.

Upstairs, Downstairs, Democrats, and Data

Thomas Edsall writes at The New York Times about the changing economic makeup of the Democratic Party and the tension between its upstairs and downstairs.

At the same time that lifestyle and consumption habits of the affluent diverge from those of the middle and working class, wealthy voters are becoming increasingly Democratic, often motivated by their culturally liberal views. A comparison of exit poll data from 1984 and 1988 to data from the 2008 and 2012 elections reveals the changing partisan makeup of the top quintile.

In the 1980s, voters in the top ranks of the income ladder lined up in favor of Republican presidential candidates by 2-1. In 1988, for example, George H.W. Bush crushed Michael Dukakis among voters making $100,000 or more by an impressive 34 points, 67-33.
Move forward to 2008 and 2012. In 2008, voters from families making $100,000 to $200,000 split their votes 51-48 in favor of John McCain, while those making in excess of $200,000 cast a slight 52-46 majority for Barack Obama

In his first term, Obama raised taxes on the rich and criticized excessive C.E.O. pay. As a result, he lost ground among the well-to-do, but still performed far better than earlier Democrats had done, losing among voters making $100,000 or more by nine points, 45-54.

...

The “truly advantaged” wing of the Democratic Party — a phrase coined in this newspaper by Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard — has provided the Democratic Party with crucial margins of victory where its candidates have prevailed. These upscale Democrats have helped fill the gap left by the departure of white working class voters to the Republican Party.

At the same time, the priorities of the truly advantaged wing — voters with annual incomes in the top quintile, who now make up an estimated 26 percent of the Democratic general election vote — are focused on social and environmental issues: the protection and advancement of women’s rights, reproductive rights, gay and transgender rights and climate change, and less on redistributive economic issues.

...
Bernie Sanders has tried to capitalize on this built-in tension within the Democratic primary electorate, but Hillary Clinton has so far been able to skate over intraparty conflicts. In the New York primary, for example, she did better among voters making $100,000 or more than among the less affluent, while simultaneously carrying African-Americans and moderate Democrats of all races by decisive margins.

Will Recent Patterns Hold?

Michael Barone writes that recent elections have occurred within a very narrow range:

Some pollsters report an increasing percentage of voters identifying as independents. But fewer and fewer Americans vote that way. Straight-ticket voting, increasingly rare from the 1960s-1980s, has become more common today. In 2012, only 26 of the 435 House districts voted for a presidential candidate of one party and a House member of the other, the lowest number since 1920.

Presidential voting has become more predictable as well. Only three of the 50 states (Iowa, New Mexico and New Hampshire) voted for different parties' candidates in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Only two states (Indiana and North Carolina) voted for different parties' candidates in 2008 and 2012. You have to go back to the 1880s to find such partisan continuity.

A bigger swing in presidential voting occurred between 2004-08. But even then, only nine of the 50 states switched parties, and six of those had been carried only narrowly, with 50-52 percent of the vote, by George W. Bush. Of the other three, Indiana switched back to solidly Republican in 2012, North Carolina moved narrowly from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney and Virginia has, perhaps implausibly, become the national bellwether, with its percentages for the candidates matching national percentages more closely than any other state.

There is a big "however."

But what if the irresistible force scrambles the political map? This has always happened, sooner or later, in American politics. It has often been sparked by the rise of a disruptive candidate, running as an independent or as the nominee of a major party. Think Ross Perot, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Abraham Lincoln. A disruptive candidate raises new issues, breaks across old party lines, brings new voters into the electorate.

The United States of Republican Ambition

In his influential 1991 book, The United States of Ambition, Alan Ehrenhalt argued that Democrats had a fundamental advantage. Smart, ambitious Democrats tend to go into politics, he suggested, while smart, ambitious Republicans go into business. Therefore they have better candidates. As a prime example, he cited Democratic gains in Wisconsin, quoting a Democratic state senator: "The Republicans hate government. Why be here if you hate government? So they let us run it for them."

Lower offices are the farm clubs for higher offices.  If your side is short on state legislators, you will also be short on good candidates for the House.  And if you do not elect a lot of House members, you will be short on good candidates for the U.S. Senate.

Things seemed to change with the election of a GOP Congress in 1994.  But during the decade of GOP dominance that followed, Democrats retained considerable strength in state legislatures. And as we point out in After Hope and Change, GOP setbacks in 2006 and 2008 appeared to be putting American politics back on the path that Ehrenhalt described.

But now, after the 2010 and 2014 drubbings, it is the Democrats who have the underpopulated farm club.  

Alexander Burns writes at Politico:

At the start of the 2014 campaign, Democrats envisioned an election that would produce new national stars for the party in at least a few tough states – Georgia Sen. Michelle Nunn or Kentucky Sen. Alison Lundergan Grimes, for instance, or maybe even Texas Gov. Wendy Davis. Even if the party fell short in those “reach” states, Democrats hoped to produce new heavyweight blue-state Democrats – Maryland Gov. Anthony Brown, the country’s only black state executive; or Maine Gov. Mike Michaud, who would have been the first openly gay candidate elected governor.

Any of them could have landed on a vice presidential short list in 2016.

Instead, all of them lost.

Joining them were numerous down-ballot Democrats widely viewed as future contenders for high office: attorney general candidates in Nevada and Arizona who looked like future governors; aspiring state treasurers in Ohio and Colorado who could have gone on to bigger things; prized secretary of state candidates in Iowa and Kansas as well as countless congressional hopefuls around the country.

Dan Balz writes at The Washington Post:

When President Obama was elected in 2008, his victory signaled a generational change and the prospect of renewal for the Democratic Party. Instead, the opposite has occurred. Over the past six years, the party has been hollowed out.

The past two midterm elections have been cruel to Democrats, costing them control of the House and now the Senate, and producing a cumulative wipeout in the states. The 2010 and 2014 elections saw the defeat of younger politicians — some in office, others seeking it — who might have become national leaders.

 As the post-Obama era nears, the Democrats’ best-known leaders in Washington are almost entirely from an older generation, from the vice presidency to most of the major leadership offices in the House and Senate. The generation-in-waiting will have to wait longer.

...
The more serious problem for Democrats is the drubbing they’ve taken in the states, the breeding ground for future national talent and for policy experimentation. Republicans have unified control — the governorship and the legislature — in 23 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Democrats control just seven. Democrats hold 18 governorships, but only a handful are in the most populous states.

At Vox, Libby Nelson writes:

The next redistricting isn't until after the 2020 Census. But the overwhelming Republican control of state legislatures already matters for elections down the line in at least one key way: by weakening the Democrats' legislative bench.

Statehouses are fertile ground for candidates for higher office from both parties. Nearly half of all members of Congress started out in statehouses. Forty-three Senators were once state legislators, including 27 Democrats. So were 217 voting House members, the majority of them Republicans. And, of course, there's a former Democratic state senator from Illinois with a pretty important elected office right now.

There are still plenty of Democratic state legislators out there. But the fewer statehouses there are under Democratic control, the fewer opportunities those legislators have to make policy, become visible, and rise through the ranks. That's a loss with ramifications that could last a generation.

George H.W. Bush's 1988 Victory

Today is the 25th anniversary of George H.W. Bush's inauguration as president.

Often we forget how impressive his 1988 victory was.  (Declaration of interest:  I worked in the 1988 Bush campaign.)

In 1988, Bush got a higher share of both the popular vote and the electoral vote than any candidate since then, including Barack Obama in 2008:

	Bush 1988	Obama 2008
Popular Vote %	53.37%	52.86%
Electoral Vote%	79.20%	67.80%

Obama won under more favorable circumstances.  The other party had been in power for two terms and was presiding over the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Bush was the vice president of an administration that had been in power for eight years, so the "time for a change" mentality worked against him.  No sitting vice president had been won the White House since Martin Van Buren. The economy was growing and the Cold War was winding down, but Bush had to deal with the aftermath of the 1987 market meltdown and the Iran-Contra scandal.  For a long time, many thought that he would lose.

In May 1988, E.J. Dionne reported at The New York Times:

Michael S. Dukakis is capitalizing on deep public doubts about Vice President Bush and the Reagan Administration's handling of key issues and has emerged as the early favorite for the Presidential election in November, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Mr. Dukakis, the probable Democratic nominee, ran ahead of Mr. Bush, the almost certain Republican candidate, by 49 percent to 39 percent among 1,056 registered voters.

The survey, conducted May 9-12, represented a significant advance for Mr. Dukakis since a Times/CBS News Poll in March when Mr. Bush had 46 percent and Mr. Dukakis had 45 percent.

In the latest poll, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts led in all regions, but he ran especially well in the Northeast and Middle West. The poll found Mr. Dukakis with very substantial advantages over Mr. Bush among women, union members, Roman Catholics and blacks/

A couple of months later, the Times reported:

In the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, the party's nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, has expanded his lead among registered voters over Vice President Bush, the probable Republican nominee, according to a Gallup Poll.

This was among the findings of a national public opinion poll of 948 registered voters conducted late last week for Newsweek magazine by the Gallup Organization. The telephone interviews took place on July 21, which was the last night of the convention, and on the night after that.

Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred to see Mr. Bush win. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

In the end, however, Bush not only won comfortably, but he carried states that we today consider to be deep blue, including California, Illinois, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont.  

Inevitability?

Sean Trende pushes back against the notion that long-term demographic trends favor Democrats:

At the end of the day, I remember the aftermath of the 2004 elections, when almost everyone was convinced that Democrats had to reach out to white “values voters” to win elections. God, guns, and gays were killing the Democrats, so the argument went, as was opposition to the Iraq War. Howard Dean was urging the party to send staffers to Mississippi and to learn to talk with voters who had Confederate flags in the back of their pickup trucks. Demographic analysts were trumpeting the fact that Republicans had won 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties, and claimed that Democrats were in danger of becoming a regional party, concentrated on the coasts, if they didn’t quickly moderate their appeal.

How quickly things change. Democrats did focus on improving their vote share with working-class whites to some extent in 2006, with positive results. But the approach was largely abandoned in 2008 in favor of targeting the “coalition of the ascendant” we hear so much about today. The conventional wisdom about what Democrats had to do was completely, utterly wrong.

The thing is, it was wrong not because of its particulars. It was wrong in a more general sense: Parties always have an almost infinite number of coalitions they can target their pitch to and emerge successfully from elections if the overall environment is favorable to them. That hasn’t changed in the past 100 years, much less since 2004. Put differently, if Hillary Clinton had been the nominee in 2008, she probably would have done somewhat worse with young voters and African-Americans, but probably would have done better in Appalachia. Gordon Smith of Oregon might still be a senator, but Mitch McConnell might not be. As I’ve said here since 2009, there are no permanent majorities, because every action in politics tends to create an opposite one.

I suspect the current conventional wisdom will last only until the Republicans next encounter a favorable national environment, and win an election. (There actually hasn’t been an unambiguously favorable environment for them in a presidential year since 1988, so they’re due.) At that point, the conventional wisdom will likely shift, reflecting a belief that Democrats must undertake some major changes in their coalition if they are going to ever win another election. But that conventional wisdom will be badly flawed, just as the present conventional wisdom is badly flawed.

2008, 2012, and the Violence Against Women Act

Although most House Republicans represent Romney districts, some represent districts that went to Obama or were very close. National Journal reports that elections can have consequence for roll-call votes:

As the House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act Thursday, defusing a damaging political issue for the GOP even as most of the party stood opposed, a group of vulnerable Republicans had a unanimous message for observers: We're not like the rest of them.

Every single voting House Republican from a district President Obama won last November supported the bill, while nearly two-thirds of the whole Republican conference voted no. Rep.Gary Miller, R-Calif., was absent, but his other 15 colleagues from Obama territory all voted yes. GOP Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Peter King of New York, who represent the two districts Romney won most narrowly, also voted for the VAWA reauthorization.

A larger, overlapping group of 40 House Republicans represent districts Obama won in 2008 supported the bill at a high rate. Just nine members from 2008 Obama districts voted against Thursday's bill, while 29 voted for it. (Two members, Miller and Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., were absent.) Fully one-third of the GOP support for the measure came from the 17 percent of Republicans in districts Obama carried four years ago.

2004, 2008, and the House Elections of 2012

At National Journal, Josh Kraushaar writes that the GOP is in a strong position to hold the House:

With Mitt Romney running ahead of Obama nationally, 2004 is shaping up to be a much more instructive baseline for the upcoming elections than Obama’s historic win in 2008. Indeed, only eight House Republicans hold districts that John Kerry won in 2004. That, more than anything, explains how the Democratic expectation of being within striking distance of the majority is falling far short of reality. Call it the 2008 illusion.

He explains that the Illinois gerrymander is likely to fall short.  Pennsylvania will disappoint Dems, too.

It’s not just Illinois. This week, Democrats canceled costly ad reservations in the Philadelphia media market originally designed to use against suburban Philly GOP Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jon Runyan, R-N.J., districts that usually go Democratic in a good year for the party. The party and outside groups also withdrew attack ads against Rep. Scott Rigell, representing the one (Tidewater) bellwether district in the battleground state of Virginia. In Florida, even Democratic operatives are now sounding pessimistic about their prospects of defeating outspoken conservative Rep. Allen West, despite early predictions that he’d be one of the most vulnerable Republicans from the freshman class. These are all districts Obama carried in 2008.

If Democrats want to regain the majority, they’ll need to dominate in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas. The fact that Republicans are holding their own there isn’t a good sign for the party, or for the president.

Democrats are looking good in California and some other places, but...

The lasting legacy of the 2012 election could end up being the unexpected stability of the House Republican majority over the next decade, thanks to gerrymandering and key elements of the Obama coalition (minorities, college students) clustered into districts overwhelmingly favoring Democrats. Democrats continue to struggle in predominantly white districts, only contesting 14 of the 110 districts, according to an analysis from House Race Hotline Editor Scott Bland. The GOP wave ushered in 84 freshman House Republicans, but relatively few of them are in trouble.

Democrats have been crowing that polls show the GOP party brand is in the toilet, which makes it all the more significant that they are not in striking distance of taking the majority. But to understand why a promising environment isn’t translating into results, they’ll need to recognize that it’s not 2008 any more.

Why Obama Is Ahead

Four years ago, in the wake of the financial crisis, the economy was horrible.  For the past few years, it's been miserable.  As Woody Allen once explained, miserable is better than horrible:

The Partisan Shoreline

At The New Republic, William Galston looks at Gallup and Pew data.  Although he has noted differences between the current election and the one that gave Bush a second term, he does see a "partisan shoreline" that looks more like 2004 than 2008.

Not that much has changed for Republicans since then. Today, their favorable rating stands at 44 percent, and unfavorable at 50. The big shift has come for Democrats, whose edge over Republicans has completely disappeared. Only 43 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of the Democratic Party (down 13 points), while 52 percent have an unfavorable view (up 13 points). The erosion has been especially severe among men (15 points), whites (17 points), voters 35 to 54 years old (17 points), and Independents (12 points). Only nonwhite voters are more favorably inclined toward the Democratic Party than they were four years ago. And while a successful convention can provide a boost, history suggests that any such improvement in public perceptions of a political party is likely to disappear by Election Day.

On August 23, the Pew Research Center released a report entitled “A Closer Look at the Parties in 2012”, backed by more than 20 pages of detailed tables. Pew’s findings are consistent with Gallup’s. In 2008, Democrats plus Independents who lean Democratic constituted fully 51 percent of registered voters, versus only 39 percent for Republicans plus Independents who lean their way. But now, the 12-point Democratic edge of four years ago has shrunk to only 5 points, 48 to 43, statistically indistinguishable from the split in 2004. Among whites, the Republican edge has expanded from 2 points to 12; among white men, from 11 points to 22. While Democrats have lost ground in every age cohort, they still maintain an edge of 19 points among Millennials, down from 32 points in 2008.

Drilling down more deeply, Pew finds finer-grained trends. Republicans have made only modest gains among college-educated men, and none at all among college-educated women. But among men with less than a BA, Republicans have turned a 6-point deficit into a 3-point edge; among less educated women, the Democratic advantage has been pared from 20 points to 8. Relative to 2008, Republicans have made no gains among registered voters with household incomes of $75,000 or more, but they are doing much better among those making less than that. And all of these changes are more pronounced among white voters.

As Galston pointed out in November, the Republicans might have thrown away a potential victory by nominating an incompetent candidate.  But in spite of his many faults as a candidate, Romney easily clears the competence threshold.

Obama's Net Loss of 2008 Voters

Gallup reports:

Eighty-six percent of voters who say they voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are backing Obama again this year, a smaller proportion than the 92% of 2008 John McCain voters who are supporting 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Nine percent of 2008 Obama voters have switched to supporting Romney this year, while 5% of McCain voters have switched to Obama.

Portman and Debate Prep

Portman is high on the list of VP contenders because of his executive experience, his service in Congress, his mainstream conservative ideology, his location in a key swing state -- and his talent for debate prep.  Chris Moody writes at ABC:

For nearly 20 years, Republicans have turned to Portman, now a senator from Ohio and widely rumored to be near the top of Mitt Romney's list of preferred running mates, for help with debate preparation. The freshman senator has a natural talent for throwing himself into the role of the opposing candidate in mock debates. According to people who have seen Portman perform this feat, he nails it every time.

Since 1996, when Bob Dole tapped Portman to channel Lamar Alexander in a practice debate, Portman has played the role of Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, and most recently, Barack Obama.

"I don't try to imitate the president, per se," Portman told Yahoo News in an interview. "Just take the policy positions and some of the same rhetoric. It's a good way to learn what the other side is thinking and how they approach problems."

A Narrow Electoral College Path for Romney?

Is Romney's electoral college path so narrow?  At Salon, Steve Kornacki offers some sense:

Don’t believe the hype about the supposedly narrow path to 270 electoral votes that Mitt Romney faces. The idea, advanced in a Washington Post story today, is that the presumptive GOP nominee faces an extra burden this fall in the specific swing states that will ultimately decide the presidency.

The claim has been made by others recently, and there’s really nothing to it. At its core, it reflects a very simple fact: Barack Obama won the 2008 election. Just consider the opening line of today’s Post story:

Mitt Romney faces a narrow path to the presidency, one that requires winning back states that President Obama took from Republicans in 2008 and that has few apparent opportunities for Romney to steal away traditionally Democratic states.

The first part of that sentence, as Nick Baumann pointed out, is “literally true of every nominee for the party that lost the previous election.”

This speaks to the political world’s very human tendency to treat the patterns that defined the most recent election as more fixed than they are – which inevitably leads to wild overreactions when those patters are obliterated by the next election. Remember the “permanent Republican majority” that Bush and Rove put together in 2004? And how just two years later Democrats won back the House and the Senate? Or how Barack Obama put together a 40-year majority in 2008, only to watch Republicans score one of history’s most thorough midterm landslides in 2010?

Simply put, any candidate who wins more than 51 percent of the popular vote is extremely likely to win the electoral vote, and by a disproportionate margin.   As Al Gore learned, however, things get a lot trickier when the popular vote winner is ahead by less than a percentage point.

The Fundamental Things Apply...

Shortly after Friday's unemployment report, Jay Cost wrote:

Another terrible jobs report today: The establishment survey reported the economy added just 115,000 jobs. While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, according to the household survey, it was once again for the wrong reason. The unemployment rate is simply a ratio – the number of people counted as unemployed divided by the number of people in the labor force. The rate fell because of a notable drop in the latter, fewer folks are looking for work.

In fact, the household survey actually found 170,000 fewer jobs in the country this month. What’s more, the broadest measure of employment – the employment population ratio – isunchanged over the last year, despite a drop in headline unemployment from 9 percent to 8.1 percent. The employment population ratio is just 58.4 percent; a level that, prior to this recession, we had not seen in over a generation.

What does this mean for Obama’s reelection prospects, as well as the Romney campaign?
The economic picture is the bleakest for any president seeking reelection in a long time. As Sean Trende argued in late January, a composite view of the economic data suggests 2012 is a worse economic climate than 1968, 1976, 1992, and 2000 – in all those years, the incumbent party lost. It is comparable to 1960 (another losing year for the incumbent party) and only the disastrous cycles of 2008 and 1980 saw a worse economic climate for the incumbent party. In other words, no incumbent party has won reelection in a negative climate quite like this.

Bloomberg reports:

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index shows that Americans are still worried about their economic future. The index dropped last week to a two-month low as more Americans grew concerned about their personal finances. The index fell to minus 37.6 in the week ended April 29 from minus 35.8, surrendering gains that had lifted it to a four-year high last month.

While Americans remained pessimistic about the economy, their views did improve with the index rising to minus 64.3 from minus 66.4.

Real median household income in March was down $4,300 in since Obama took office in January 2009 and is down $2,900 since the recovery started in June 2009, according to an estimate from Sentier Research, an economic-consulting firm based in Annapolis, Maryland.

At Politico, Charles Mahtesian writes of House races:

There’s a curious disconnect between the widely-held opinion among the political class (that the Democrats probably can’t win back the majority this year) and the narrative that the media continues to report (that the GOP House majority is on a razor’s edge or the tide is turning in favor of the Democrats).

David Wasserman, the House analyst for the highly respected and non-partisan Cook Political Report, highlights that perception gap in a new report that looks at the House landscape.

Wasserman's view: “Democrats and DCCC Chair Rep. Steve Israel have done an impressive job pitching their overall prospects to donors and some members of the media.”

According to his own detailed assessment of the House map, Wasserman doesn’t see enough evidence at this point to suggest Democrats are poised to win back control.

He points to the party's “impressive ability to keep pace in the money chase at both the candidate and committee level,” but reports there’s no sign of a national wave that would throw the House GOP out of power.

Not only that, a dozen of the most vulnerable House Republicans saw their districts shored up in redistricting. Then there is the open seat issue: Democrats must defend 20 of them, compared to 16 for the GOP.
 

Obama's Two Choices

At The New Republic, William Galston lays out President Obama's two strategic choices for 2012:

The first option is to run a campaign that amounts to 2008 on steroids, mobilizing huge numbers of upscale professionals, unmarried women, young adults, and minorities—the coalition that reelected Colorado Senator Michael Bennet in 2010. This approach implies a focus on “new majority” states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina, or even Arizona and Georgia, which the Obama team reportedly regards as being within reach. Option two would focus on rebuilding support among Independents, which include large numbers of white working-class and middle-class families—an approach compatible with an all-out effort to win the heartland states stretching from Pennsylvania to Iowa that gave Obama one-third of the 365 electoral votes he ended up winning

For reasons that I’ve laid out at length in “One Year to Go: Barack Obama’s Uphill Battle for Reelection in 2012,” the latter is the course more likely to succeed in the end. Briefly: It won’t be possible to recreate the political context that permitted the extraordinary mobilization of young adults and Hispanics in 2008. And it’s no accident that no Democrat since JFK has won the presidency without carrying Ohio, which is a demographic, economic, and political microcosm of the country as a whole. Most Democrats remember that Obama’s share of the popular vote topped John Kerry’s by 5 percentage points. They are likely to forget, however that liberals contributed less than one point to that increase, while moderates contributed about two and a half points and conservatives, about one and a half. Reenergizing the party’s liberal base is a necessary but not sufficient condition for victory next year.

Obama is Losing Supporters

AP reports:

President Barack Obama has lost millions of dollars in support from former donors in Democratic strongholds and in districts that he won narrowly four years ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of the most recent federal campaign finance data.

Tens of thousands of supporters who gave him hundreds of dollars or more in the early stages of the 2008 campaign haven't offered him similar amounts of cash so far in this campaign. And in some cases, former Obama contributors gave to GOP candidates, such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Although only nine percent of self-identified Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, the media highlighted a small number of prominent Republicans and conservatives who supported him. Reuters reports that some are turning away from him.

"Spending levels and tax policy are probably the most important issues for me at the federal level and things have not gone in the direction that I would favor in those departments," ex-Massachusetts Governor William Weld told Reuters. "Governor Romney has a picture perfect textbook on those issues."

Weld, who backed Obama against Senator John McCain in 2008, said he would choose not just Romney over Obama in 2012 but some of the other Republican contenders as well if they won their party's nomination.

Support from influential moderate conservatives helped Obama win about 54 percent of the independent vote in 2008, according to exit polls, and he will need a strong showing among independents again next year to be re-elected. He was supported by 9 percent of Republicans in 2008.

"I am a Republican and only voted for one Democrat in my entire life, and that was very much an anti-McCain vote. I thought Obama was going to be better than he turned out to be," said Kenneth Adelman, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and adviser to a number of Republican presidents, including George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

Adelman is also backing Romney.

Obama and the Jewish Vote

An earlier post dealt with Jewish support for POTUS in light of the Turner victory in NY. A release from the American Jewish Committee:

Disappointment with President Obama’s handling of the economy and U.S.-Israel relations has caused a falloff in Jewish support for the administration, a just-completed national survey by AJC, a non-partisan advocacy organization, shows.

For the first time during Obama’s presidency, disapproval among Jewish voters exceeded approval of his performance. Jewish approval of Obama’s handling of his job as president declined to 45 percent, with another 48 percent disapproving and 7 percent undecided, according to the survey, conducted from September 6 to 21, 2011. In the last annual AJC survey, a year ago, 51 percent approved, and 44 percent disapproved.

“AJC annual surveys seek to provide timely information on the attitudes of Jews across our nation regarding the pressing issues confronting our community and the country,” said AJC Executive David Harris. “Just as in previous years, this year’s survey offers a treasure-trove of data – and, as always, a few surprises.” One of the most striking findings is the divergence of opinion between Orthodox Jews and the views of Conservative and Reform Jews.

The full 2011 survey, as well as previous AJC annual surveys, are available at www.ajc.org/surveys.

2012 Presidential Election Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, the AJC survey revealed that if the election were held today, Obama would still hold a considerable lead over potential Republican challengers among Jewish voters. But the margin differed significantly depending on which candidate the GOP fields.

Mitt Romney would get 32 percent of the Jewish vote, according to the poll, against Obama’s 50 percent. Another 16 percent of respondents said they wouldn’t vote for either of the two candidates, and 2 percent were undecided.

Rick Perry would get 25 percent of the vote against Obama’s 55 percent, with another 18 percent voting for neither, and 2 percent undecided.

Michele Bachmann would receive 19 percent of the vote against Obama’s 59 percent, with 21 percent voting for neither, and 1 percent undecided.

In 2008, Obama garnered 78 percent of the Jewish vote, compared to 22 percent for John McCain.

Exit polls have tracked the GOP share of the Jewish vote in presidential elections. Note the abrupt dropoff between 1988 and 1992, reflecting an aversion to the religious right:

1972..34%

1976..34%

1980..33%

1984..39%

1988..31%

1992..11%

1996..16%

2000..19%

2004..25%

2008..21%

Important New Book about Obama

From Rowman and Littlefield:

Transforming America: Barack Obama in the White House

Edited by Steven E. Schier

The presidency of Barack Obama seeks a major transformation of American politics and policy. This new collection, edited by Steven E. Schier, examines the unusual combination of risk and ambition in Obama's presidency concerning popular politics, Washington politics, and economic and foreign policy. It also places the Obama presidency in historical perspective, noting the unusual circumstances of his election and the similarities and differences between presidential politics today and those of previous eras. Transforming America: Barack Obama in the White House provides a guiding focus involving the successes and failures of the administration's transformative aspirations during Obama's initial years in the White House.

List of Contributors
John J. Coleman, James L. Guth, John F. Harris, James Hohmann, Bertram Johnson, Richard E. Matland, Nancy Maveety, James M. McCormick, John J. Pitney Jr., Nicol C. Rae, Steven E. Schier, Raymond Tatalovich, Andrea L. Walker, John K. White

About the Editor
Steven E. Schier is Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. He is the author or editor of eleven books, most recently Panorama of a Presidency: How George W. Bush Acquired and Spent His Political Capital and numerous scholarly and media articles.

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How 2008 Explains the Slow Start to 2012

At AP, Philip Elliott writes:

"It's a little sluggish. The major donor folks are sitting back a bit," said Rob Bickhart, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman helping ex-Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

"The major donor folks, I think, are a little slower getting started because the whole process was slower to get started," said Bickhart, who helped raise money for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney four years ago. "The last one started, it seemed, after World War I and folks were just exhausted."

...

All-but-certain candidates Romney and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty have lined up pieces of their fundraising teams; others are moving more slowly. None is eager to start spending cash.

They remember what happened in 2008.

Arizona Sen. John McCain spent heavily in the early days of his campaign and then went into the summer broke, relying on volunteers to shuttle him from town hall to town hall. It limited what his advisers could plan and resulted in a strategy overhaul, returning to a grassroots-focused effort that ultimately won him the nomination.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wasn't so lucky. He won the Iowa caucuses but was cash poor. Poised to harness that momentum, he found himself on the phone with supporters, asking for money instead of talking with voters.

That has left him skittish about jumping into the 2012 campaign and starting to spend. Instead, he's looking at a delayed entry, perhaps as late as fall.

"If you can concentrate it to fewer months, you have more money to air campaign ads and less money spent on overhead and office space," Huckabee said.

Sound Advice on Hiring Staff

Tevi Troy writes at Politico:

We’re already starting the next presidential campaign. Political insiders are making predictions about who will run and which campaigns are ahead in the all-important “staff primary”: the race for talented personnel who help shape the outcome.

The glitz and glamour of loud, well-known personalities are tempting, but history recommends caution. To win the staff primary, talent scouts from both parties should look to campaign aides with strong work ethics — and low profiles.

In 1937, the Brownlow Commission recommended to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that he needed White House aides with a “passion for anonymity.” This advice may be even more necessary when it comes to political campaigns.

If failed campaigns past teach anything, it’s that the higher the staffers’ profiles, the worse they do at achieving the goal: getting their candidate elected.

In 2008, for instance, the McCain campaign suffered greatly from loose-lipped aides who cared more about their own reputations than the candidate's fate.