Michael Tomasky : Obama isn’t going to get his 2008 levels of the white vote. But he can’t quite absorb white-vote totals that look like 2010. - And he is going to have to fight hard, and smart, to keep them closer to the former than the latter

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Three Groups : White working-class voters, White college-educated voters and Minorities : almost all members of these three groups have something in common. They’re part of the less affluent 99 percent that should support popular government programs, and calls for a more equitable tax distribution.

Obama can absorb some White Working Class losses and still win the popular vote. But if the losses are too high he would lose the election in November 2012.

The Daily Beast

Michael Tomasky: How Obama Can Get to 270 Electoral Votes

Nov 22, 2011


Michael Tomasky: How Obama Can Get to 270 Electoral Votes


Some excerpts :

Well, now that it’s official that bipartisan compromise has no future in Washington, it’s time for President Obama to put aside once and for all the idea of playing patty-cake with these people and instead focus ruthlessly on getting to 270 electoral votes. The recent debate among pundits has been over the question of whether the path to 270 for Obama runs through Virginia and North Carolina and Colorado (and appeals to “new-economy voters”) or through Ohio and the Rust Belt (and more class-based appeals). 

It’s a silly debate. The answer is both. An important new paper by two leading electoral demographers on the progressive side of the fence makes the case and is well worth your time (it’s 68 pages), as it’s chockablock with fascinating information about changes in the electorate, both nationwide and in several key states—changes that may well decide the outcome next November.

The paper is “The Path to 270: Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Election” by Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress. You can probably figure out from the subtitle that the basic story is that demography favors Obama, while the likely underlying economic picture (i.e., still bleak) favors whoever is running against him. But the deeper story here is this: Obama isn’t going to get his 2008 levels of the white vote. But he can’t quite absorb white-vote totals that look like 2010. And he is going to have to fight hard, and smart, to keep them closer to the former than the latter.

Demographically, everything is moving Obama’s way. The study largely splits the electorate into three groups: minorities; white college-educated voters (WCEs); and the white-working class (WWC), which is defined here and usually as whites without a college degree, which for a range of reasons is the best way to identify that group for voting purposes. And the first thing to look at here is not how Obama does with each, but what share of the total electorate each makes up, because, as the man said, demography is destiny.

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Throw it all in the wash and what does it mean? It means first of all that if the economy stinks, none of this demography will matter and Obama will lose. But it also means that he is going to have to assemble different coalitions from battleground state to battleground state around a message that can rally segments of all three groups. For all their differences, there is one thing almost all members of those three groups have in common. They’re part of the 99 percent. The authors want to see “a sustained posture of defending the middle class, supporting popular government programs, and calling for a more equitable tax distribution.” Sounds good to me.

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