Posted on 10/30/2012 5:48:33 PM PDT by markomalley
As the East Coast recoils from Hurricane Sandy, the political news is of new states suddenly inundated with presidential campaign ads. First Wisconsin, then Pennsylvania, more recently Minnesota. Ann Romney is campaigning in Michigan, Bill Clinton in Minnesota.
All these are states Barack Obama carried by 10 points or more in 2008. Why is the electoral map scrambled this year?
One reason, which I wrote about last week, is that Mitt Romney seems to be running better in affluent suburbs than other recent Republican nominees. That's one reason he made big gains after the first debate in Florida and Virginia, target states where most votes are cast in relatively affluent suburban counties.
The tightening race in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Obama carried by 16 and 10 points in 2008, seems to reflect a move toward Romney in the affluent suburbs surrounding Detroit and Philadelphia.
In contrast, Romney has been struggling in Ohio, where the Rasmussen poll released Monday is the first survey in three months that shows him ahead there.
Only one-eighth of Ohio's votes are cast in affluent suburbs. Traditional Republican strength there comes from small industrial counties where the barrage of Obama ads castigating Romney for opposing the auto bailout clearly had some impact.
Another significant shift from 2008 has come in what was once America's Northwest -- Wisconsin, Iowa and, perhaps, Minnesota.
These three states are part of what I call Germano-Scandinavian America, settled in large part by immigrants from Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
This region, which also includes the Dakotas and Nebraska, has always been the most pacifist, isolationist or dovish part of America.
Consider two elections 44 years apart. In 1944, both Iowa and Wisconsin voted for Thomas Dewey over Franklin Roosevelt. In 1988, both these states voted for Michael Dukakis over George H.W. Bush.
One time they were more Republican than the nation, the other time more Democratic. What links the two? Dewey's party was the more isolationist in the years leading up to World War II. Dukakis was one of the most dovish nominees of a party that has been dovish ever since Vietnam.
Obama had a big comparative advantage over John McCain on war and peace issues in this region in 2008. Obama was an early opponent of the Iraq war. McCain strongly supported it and urged the ultimately successful surge strategy before George W. Bush adopted it in late 2006.
Obama's comparative advantage on war and peace issues seems to be gone. His campaign and his convention boasted constantly of how he ordered the attack on Osama bin Laden.
The murder of our ambassador and three other Americans in Libya and the apparent failure to respond to cries for rescue undercuts the Obama narrative that the Muslim world is peaceful and friendly now that he is president. Turmoil and chaos abroad do not work in favor of an incumbent president.
On economic issues, Germano-Scandinavian America is not as liberal as many analysts think. Iowans like to boast that their state has the nation's lowest rate of credit card debt.
In Wisconsin, voters in June decisively rejected the public employee unions' all-out drive to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker. And Minnesotans in 2010 gave Republicans big gains in the state legislature and nearly elected as governor an inept Republican over a free-spending and well-known Democrat.
Previous presidents who have been re-elected have widened the electoral map by advancing policies that appealed to electoral blocs that they didn't carry before.
Ronald Reagan gathered in the votes of white Southerners and evangelical Protestants who went heavily for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and to a considerable extent stuck with him in 1980.
Bill Clinton appealed to the affluent suburbs by supporting welfare reform, talking up anti-crime legislation and proposing small but appealing initiatives like school uniforms.
Barack Obama and his campaign strategists did not take a similar course. The president did not change policies after his party was rebuked in the off-year elections, as Clinton did.
Obama campaign strategy has accordingly concentrated on holding states he carried in 2008, rather than seek new electoral ground.
Obama's strategists conceded Indiana early on and North Carolina more recently. Now, Florida, Virginia and Colorado seem headed to Romney, and Germano-Scandinavian America is up for grabs. Minnesota and Pennsylvania suddenly have come into play.
Team Obama gambled on reassembling his 2008 coalition despite the Republicans' strong showing in 2010. Maybe a losing bet.
I love it when a plan comes together ~~God
Obama is appealing to his base.
Romney is looking to broaden his winning coalition.
This explains why previously hard to win states are now being susceptible to his appeals.
And its probably the kind that Obama finds hard to match.
Based on the video on Breitbart a few days ago, of Blacks in Chicago complaining about Democrats and liberals, I kind of wish Romney would take a stab at campaigning there too.
Can’t imagine anyone could see Obama’s appeal outside the inner cities and union strongholds. And that was in 2008. Since then, they’ve had four years of Obama’s economic reality to bite them in the ass.
And we all know how much Germans hate starting wars...
Actually, it may be in part because so many of the Germans who hated starting wars moved here that the lot who stayed back in the Fatherland developed such a propensity for it in the latter part of the 19th century and first half of the 20th.
And since the Swedes got trounced at Poltava not much of the old warlike Viking spirit has been evident among the Nordic countries.
imho oregon and michigan are likely to go for romney. new mexico may be a surprise but i’m not so sure of that one.
The congressman who walked out on Obama's state of the union is one.
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