It's an uphill climb to get to 271 electoral votes if you have no hope whatsoever of winning: California (55), New York (29), all of New England except for NH (29), Illinois (20), Oregon and Washington (19), New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and D.C. (30) - that's 182 guaranteed electoral votes for Democrats, no matter who the G.O.P. nominates. That leaves the Dems only 89 votes short of victory.
At the same time, the number of electoral votes that the Republicans can truly bank on today is smaller: SC, MS, AL, KY, TN, TX, OK, KS, NE, SD, ND, WY, ID, MT, UT, and AK - 124 votes (and I'm perhaps begin generous by throwing in TN and KY). A number of formerly "solid" GOP states are now toss-ups: NC, GA, IN, IA, MO, CO, and AZ. Two others now clearly lean Democrat: NV and NM.
So, that's one quantifiable problem. Another is the huge monetary and organizational advantage enjoyed by Democrats. They will have well over a billion dollars in campaign funds - both directly and as funneled through public sector labor unions and "non-profit" advocacy organizations directly funded by left-wing foundations and indirectly by Spooky Dude himself, George Soros.
And then.... we have the influx of illegal aliens, a number of whom are clearly are voting, as organized by the aforementioned labor unions and their powerful "get-out-the-vote-whether-you're-eligible-or-not" efforts. This venture is particularly damaging to Republican prospects in key swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, and also in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, all of which have otherwise been slowly trending toward the GOP. Example: in 2008, Democrat victories in PA and OH were exclusively due to massive Democrat voter turnout in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (Cleveland) and in both Philadelphia's and Pittsburgh's center city precincts.
In order to counter such turnout efforts, the GOP needs to get its (more suburban and rural) voters to the polls in great numbers, too. And this is the final, and less numerically-oriented issue. The Republican Party's leadership is disorganized, unfocused and uncomfortable, to say the least, with its own base voters. Others (like me) might put the matter more bluntly: the D.C.-based GOP leadership is effectively at war with its own voters because that leadership is part of the Ruling Class and is actually more comfortable with Democrats in their own sphere of influence than they are with their own rank-and-file GOP voters out "in the districts".
The candidates who have so far arisen to challenge Obama seem to range from the lackluster to the lying to the ludicrous. I don't find any of the top candidates particularly inspirational - do you? And like it or not, that is a real problem. If Republican candidates cannot inspire Republicans, how are they going to inspire anyone else?
Long story, short: Obama is so truly awful in what he now unabashedly intends for America (endless class warfare and paternalistic state socialism) that he repels - frightens - a great number of decent Americans, and thus remains beatable. But you can't beat something with nothing. And right now - we got nothin'.
As long as we eat our own and third party runs divide our vote we are lost. O will get to finish “remaking America”.
We have to dump O or our country will not survive.
“......California (55), New York (29), all of New England except for NH (29), Illinois (20), Oregon and Washington (19), New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and D.C. (30) - that’s 182 guaranteed electoral votes for Democrats.......”
___________________________________________________________
I don’t think those states you mentioned are really guaranteed for the dems. I offer the following factors in 2012 that were not and issue in 2008: (1) The dems have lost the independents and will not get them back. (2) They are loosing large amounts of democrat voters such that many dem congressmen don’t want to be affiliated with Obama (they don’t even want him to stump for them). (3) Whenever Obama speaks now, his ratings go down. In 2008, he spoke of hope and change in platitudes. He does not have that now and people tired of hearing him. He will have to do a lot of talking in the upcoming campaign and this time it will only hurt him. (4) There will be many dem voters who will stay at home this time around. There is no enthusiasm in a lousy economy. (5) If Cain is chosen as the VP, he will definitely take a good percentage of the black vote.
While covention wisdom says that those states you listed will go dems, I don’t think it is a lock in 2012. They are going to have to work hard in some of those states just to keep them. The enthusiasm is gone and people are tired of Hussien. I would not be surprised if some of those states actually go to the GOP in 2012.