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Josh Kraushaar of National Journal with the first of three reports on the election. He says Obama is struggling in the battleground states.
President Obama’s reelection team has spun multiple pathways to an electoral vote majority, but a glance at his state-by-state approval ratings throughout 2011 suggests the campaign has been doing a lot of bluffing.
First, the good news for Team Obama: His political standing is in respectable shape in traditionally Democratic Midwestern battlegrounds, like Wisconsin, Michigan and the more Republican heartland state of Iowa (46 approval/46 disapproval). Obama’s numbers in Virginia are better than in other battleground states – 45 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove. And his numbers in North Carolina (44/49 approve/disapprove) and Florida (44/48 approve/disapprove) and even Georgia (45/48 approve/disapprove) aren’t good, but given his overall numbers, they are relatively decent.
The bad news: His job approval ratings in the other battleground states are solidly underwater and, in many states, worse than publicly perceived. …
Kraushaar’s second report is on Romney’s Bain record and the failure of Newt to gain traction with this line of campaigning.
President Obama’s re-election team has been focused on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital as a major part of its offensive against the former Massachusetts governor, hoping to portray him as a heartless capitalist who laid off workers while restructuring companies
Two new polls conducted over the last week — one nationally and one in Florida — raise questions on the potency of that message. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll, released today, finds that a narrow 40 percent plurality view Romney’s work “buying and restructuring companies” unfavorably, with 35 percent viewing it favorably. Among independents, it’s a near-even split: 35 percent view Romney’s work at Bain favorably, while 36 percent view it unfavorably.
In the battleground state of Florida, a Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Tampa Times and Miami Herald, showed favorable results for Romney. Nearly half (46 percent) of Florida voters viewed Romney’s business background positively, while just 30 percent negatively. …
The Third is on the disappearance of Obama’s fundraising advantage.
Every presidential election, there’s a new development that changes the nature of campaigns that one party, often the one out of power, takes advantage of. In 2008, it was the Obama team’s impressive use of social media to connect with new young voters and expand the electorate. In 2004, it was the Bush campaign’s savvy use of micro-targeting technologies to identify narrow slices of the electorate, and get them to show up and vote Republican.
This year, it’s the Republicans’ adept and aggressive use of super PACs to even the financial playing field, blunting the often-massive money advantages that an incumbent president has at his disposal. With the emergence of American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS and Restore Our Future, a well-stocked Romney super PAC, the Obama fundraising juggernaut no longer looks so imposing. If Romney is the Republican nominee, he won’t be overwhelmed with a wave of negative advertising, and will have the resources to fight back.
Take a look at the end-of-year numbers. …
Also from National Journal, Ron Brownstein looks at the numbers for the president.
… In the 2011 numbers, the situation looks much more difficult for Obama. From 2010 to 2011, Gallup found, his average approval ratings dropped in every state except Connecticut, Maine and (oddly enough) Wyoming. As a result, to reach 270 Electoral College votes based on the 2011 numbers, he would need to win 20 states plus the District of Columbia where his approval rating stands at 44.5 percent or more. Since one of the states above that line is Georgia, which is also a stretch for Obama in practice, to reach 270 he would more likely need to carry Oregon and North Carolina, where his approval ratings stood at 44.5 percent and 43.7 percent, respectively. (It’s worth filing away that the scenario based on either year’s numbers – Virginia and North Carolina stand right at the tipping point between victory and defeat for Obama.)
In sum then, Obama in 2010 could reach an Electoral College majority by carrying states where his approval rating stood at least at 46.6 percent, something that would be difficult but hardly impossible. To reach a majority based on the 2011 results, he’d need to carry states where his approval stood at 43.7 percent or above. That’s a much more daunting prospect. …
Think the GOP is having a bad time in the selection process, Frank Fleming says look what the Dems are stuck with.
It’s a crucial election year. As another global financial crisis looms and rogue states pursue nuclear weapons, the American people are desperately looking for a strong leader to show them the way to a brighter tomorrow.
So it’s unconscionable that the Democratic primaries have yet to produce a single serious candidate for president.
This election is a great opportunity for the Democrats. After the setbacks the party has suffered, the Tea Party is finally dying down, and people are getting fed up with the Republicans in Congress. If the Democrats could come up with a strong candidate for the White House, he or she would easily win the election.
Yet, for some reason, many of the most promising Democrats chose not to run in the primaries, and those who did run are not appealing candidates. Indeed, the front-runner who has swept the early primary states despite a lack of enthusiastic support, Barack Obama, is just not a viable candidate in the general election. …
Last week Ann Coulter was touting Romneycare. David Harsanyi is not as enthused.
… No doubt, the impending presidential debate will center on the state of the economy — and general election voters are far less ideologically motivated than primary voters. Yet grander themes can move people. Obama will continue to spin tales about a nation strangled by capitalistic excess and inequity. It is an arching theme that plays on the fears of many nervous Americans and is sure to animate grass-roots supporters in urban tent environments everywhere.
Republicans, in turn, have lost a genuine opportunity to point to the purest example of Obama’s aversion to economic and individual freedom. It’s the mandate that allows Obamacare to assault religious freedom. It’s the mandate, coupled with increasing regulatory burdens, that many people fear will limit consumer choice and competition.
The entire project falls apart without the mandate.
No doubt, Mitt or Newt will continue to promise to overturn the health care reform law — and, who knows, the winner may. Or perhaps the Supreme Court will save us all by deeming the mandate unconstitutional. But to think, after all the anger and frustration caused by Obamacare — not to mention its persisting unpopularity — one of the strongest arguments against it has been dulled before the GOP presidential nominee could even make it.
Walter Russell Mead posts on the decline in global warming.
As the world suffers through a mix of weather (warm winter temperatures) in the continental US and climate (cold weather) in Alaska and Europe, some interesting new numbers are starting to trickle in.
Preliminary reports from the Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Energy Outlook” (which will be fully published in April) suggest that any carbon crisis may not be quite as imminent as thought. Not so long ago, the EIA predicted carbon emissions levels would rise by 37 percent between 2005 and 2035. The EIA — get this – now thinks that global CO2 emissions in 2025 will be 6 percent lower than they were in 2005.
Check the report for yourself, but to Via Meadia and others this looks like a serious reduction in the forecast of carbon emissions over the next couple decades. There are likely numerous reasons for the change; easier access to cleaner fuel sources like shale gas, the rising price of oil and cheapening of solar and wind are but several.
And there is one other thing that is clear: the people who put these forecasts together have no idea what they are doing. This is one of the cases in which the use of the word forecast should be banned; these are guesses, not forecasts, and it’s a big deal. …
The Economist reports on satellite info that has forced China to be more forthcoming about pollution.
“PM2.5” seems an odd and wonky term for the blogosphere to take up, but that is precisely what has happened in China in recent weeks. It refers to the smallest solid particles in the atmosphere—those less than 2.5 microns across. Such dust can get deep into people’s lungs; far deeper than that rated as PM10. Yet until recently China’s authorities have revealed measurements only for PM10. When people realised this, an online revolt broke out. Such was the public pressure that authorities caved in, and PM2.5 data are now being published for Beijing and a handful of other cities.
What of the rest of China? At the moment, only PM10 data are available. But the government’s hand may soon be forced here, too. Though pollution data are best collected near the ground, a plausible estimate may be made from the vantage-point of a satellite by measuring how much light is blocked by particles, and estimating from those particles’ chemical composition the likely distribution of their sizes. And a report prepared for The Economist by a team led by Angel Hsu of Yale University does just that, drawing on data from American satellites to map out PM2.5 pollution across the entire country. …