{"id":4874,"date":"2011-09-27T14:04:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T18:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4874"},"modified":"2011-09-29T09:20:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T13:20:27","slug":"why-its-still-obamas-to-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/09\/27\/why-its-still-obamas-to-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Why it’s still Obama’s to lose"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day when I blogged about the prolonged “silly season” in Republican primary politics, some comments poked at the notion floating out there that anybody can beat President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

The theory here is that he’s so unpopular that even a second tier conservative candidate would serve as a rallying point in an ABO scenario — that is, an Anybody But Obama election year.<\/p>\n

After all, the President’s approval numbers are floating in the high thirty-percent range, even in some of the states like Florida that he captured in 2008.\u00a0 Ready to topple, right?<\/p>\n

Let me say that there’s no doubt that Democrats will have to fight hard for this one, even if the GOP nominates a clunker, or a figure like Mitt Romney who doesn’t spark a lot of passion.<\/p>\n

But my read of the battle map going forward is that it’s still Mr. Obama’s race to lose.\u00a0 Here are the reasons why:<\/p>\n

First, the President is still faring fairly well in some key battleground states.\u00a0 In Pennsylvania, he’s at 44% approval compared with 47% disapproval, according to the most recent Magellan Strategies poll.<\/p>\n

Those aren’t great numbers, but they’re competitive, especially for an incumbent with a big war chest.<\/p>\n

Secondly, a lot of Mr. Obama’s “sag” over the last year has come among Democrats<\/a>, who’ve dropped from the low 80% approval range into the mid-70% range.<\/p>\n

A lot of those people will drift back, especially if there’s no Democratic primary — and really especially if Republicans nominate a true-blue conservative for president or vice president.<\/p>\n

(Another Sarah Palin run would really fire up the Democratic base, right?)<\/p>\n

Thirdly, Republicans have a lot of ground to make up.\u00a0 People forget that Mr. Obama won by a 365-173 margin in the electoral college over John McCain with Palin at his side.<\/p>\n

This go-round, the President can lose Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Iowa…all states he claimed in 2008…and STILL squeak by to win a second term.<\/p>\n

Finally, the GOP has to overcome all these obstacles against a sitting Commander In Chief with a huge campaign war chest and a unified party.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Carter, by contrast, was crippled first by a fierce primary challenge from Ted Kennedy and then by a third-party presidential candidate John Anderson, whose campaign attracted support from a lot of progressives.<\/p>\n

(And Carter, remember, was running against Ronald Reagan, one of the greatest on-the-stump politicians of the last century.)<\/p>\n

Does all this mean that President Barack Obama is guaranteed a second term?\u00a0 Heck, no.<\/p>\n

But despite what you hear in conservative echo chambers, he is still a sitting president with strong personal appeal in much of the country.<\/p>\n

Without the right candidate, denying President Obama another four years will be very, very difficult indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day when I blogged about the prolonged “silly season” in Republican primary politics, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6550,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4875,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874\/revisions\/4875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}