I was fascinated by the prospect of an election between Barack Obama and Georgia favorite son Herman Cain (see “Crisis Averted“). A conservative African American heading the Republican ticket would have given the lie to the tired old Democrat fiction that conservatives are racists and it would have shattered the world view of a lot of Liberals.
Alas, it was not to be. That does not mean the election season is not proving to be entertaining, however.
Today, in Kentucky, President Obama came amazingly close to losing the Democrat primary to “Uncommitted” (I knew Uncommitted. Uncommitted was a friend of mine and you’re no…). The vote was 58% to 42% in favor of the sitting president. It was a squeaker but he pulled it out. If 9% had voted the other way, Obama would have lost the primary to, well, anybody else.
And neighboring West Virginia’s primary two weeks ago was interesting too, with an out-of-state, incarcerated convict getting 41% of the vote. I’m not sure which is worst: to almost lose to a candidate to be named later, or to an obvious late “April Fool’s” candidacy.
But he did no better in Oklahoma, garnering only 57% of the vote in the Democrat primary there. Next door, Arkansas had its primary today with John Wolf offering a direct and more credible challenge to Barack Obama. Wolf can’t win but is scoring strong as a protest candidate and this could be very embarrassing to the president.
Meanwhile, Arizona, whose governor has locked horns with the president on immigration policy and whose polarizing Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s official investigation into Obama’s birthplace has led the Attorney General to demand that Hawaii produce a credible birth certificate for the president or the state will not put Obama on the ballot AT ALL!
Well, you could say, these are “fly-over” states; not exactly the president’s cup of tea. They’re too red. However, the predictions of how the electoral votes will be distributed on election day keep moving the red states closer to the coasts. Recently a Gallup electoral map showed Oregon as a red state (Oregon!) as well as traditional swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. North Carolina, which went for Obama in 2008, appears out of reach this time.
Even Obama’s home state of Illinois looked lonely in blue against a sea of red, making it easy to assume that if you excluded Chicago, the rest of the state would be as red as Indiana and Missouri on its flanks.
Virginia is red again, according to Gallup; in fact the Southernmost blue state East of the Mississippi is Maryland. Which brings us to Florida. It’s usually a battleground state, but I tend to think the battle may be over before it starts there. Yes, I know the retirees care about Social Security and Medicare and usually vote for big government Democrats, but Obamacare raids Medicare and some of the seniors most likely believe the Death Panels will be a practical reality if not an official policy.
So in states where the president can barely muster a majority in an unopposed primary, he stands no chance when the energized “Anybody But Obama” Independents and Republicans are voting too. How many middle- and lower-population states can he afford to write off?
Meanwhile we’ve seen an amusing parade of trial balloons and flags run up the pole by the Obama Campaign. Embarrassments like Sandra Fluke, who objected to being called a bad name by Rush Limbaugh after she told Congress she needed $3,000 worth of free contraceptives. The ridiculous “War On Women” has now fallen flat, with recent a poll showing Obama has lost significant ground among married women.
And doesn’t the country just LOVE Occupy Wall Street?
Similarly, Obama’s tried and true Class Warfare, directed at Mitt Romney’s stint at Bain Capital, is ringing hollow, with more than one Democrat going off the reservation and objecting to the demonization of venture capital.
But the biggest problem that Obama has this go ’round that he didn’t have in 2008: He has a record and we’ve all seen it.
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