Dems' blues: States reverting to red
The electoral map candidate Barack Obama remade in 2008 appears to be retreating into its familiar patterns.
Obama broke the decisive role Ohio and Florida seemed to play in presidential elections, by moving from trench warfare engagement in the two states to a broader battlefield on which Republicans were placed on the defensive in states they’d once taken for granted. And his victories in places where Democrats had fared poorly in recent elections — Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, the interior West — seemed to validate his strategists’ claims that he had consigned the red state-blue state presidential dichotomy to the bookstore remainders bin.
But now some of the same unlikely states that Obama put in his party’s column 15 months ago feature Senate, House and governor’s races with Democratic candidates in grave danger of losing in what is quickly shaping up to be a toxic election cycle.
While off-year and down-ballot elections are inherently different than presidential contests, the rapid reversal in Democratic fortunes in the very places where Obama’s success brought so much attention suggests that predictions of a lasting realignment were premature.
And it’s raising the question of whether the president’s 2008 win was the result of a unique set of circumstances that will be difficult for him to replicate again and perhaps downright impossible for other Democrats on the ballot to reprise.
“They had wind at their back,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and a student of national politics, of Obama’s historic victory. “People were hungry for change, and the president was running against a 72-year-old guy who couldn’t use a computer.”
But, Davis added: “One election doesn’t make realignment.”
At the very least, it seems that Obama’s success proved that those conservative-leaning states must be viewed as highly competitive for both parties — a departure from an electoral past in which they were assumed to be GOP locks.
“They were red, but they’re competitive now,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.
In Indiana and Virginia, perhaps Obama’s most sought-after prizes and two states that had not supported a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964, Republicans are taking aim at a number of junior House Democrats who were either elected or reelected for the first time, in part by riding the Obama wave. Already in Virginia, the GOP swept the three statewide offices in November. And in Indiana, the stunning retirement of well-funded Sen. Evan Bayh has forced Democrats to scramble to find a replacement candidate.
Kaine didn’t bother masking his disappointment in Bayh’s decision, something that has infuriated top Democrats.
Other Democrats close to Obama say 2008 did not represent a realignment but nor was it a one-off, where Democrats flourished because of a perfect political storm.
“These states are now competitive but will tilt one way or another depending on the climate,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and the president’s former communications director. “Now that doesn’t mean that we can’t elect a Democratic senator in Indiana, but it’s going to be tough.”
Dunn, though, did make the case that their task would be made easier if former Sen. Dan Coats gets the nomination, noting his lobbyist background and out-of-state residence.
In Virginia, where as many as five House Democrats could face difficult races in November, Kaine noted that the political tectonic plates had been moving toward the Democrats in recent years and described Obama’s success there as the capstone of the state’s shift.
But he quickly added that the lesson was not that it had suddenly become a Democratic stronghold.
“It’s that neither party is going to take Virginia for granted for the next 25 years,” Kaine said. “These other states are in a similar spot.”
In North Carolina, which hadn’t gone for a Democratic president since 1976, hopes that first-term Republican Sen. Richard Burr could be defeated have waned and Gov. Bev Perdue and Sen. Kay Hagan, two Democrats elected on Obama’s coattails, have approval ratings hovering around 30 percent.
“There aren’t many Obamas,” said Gary Pearce, a longtime Tar Heel State Democratic consultant. “He’s not on the ballot, and I don’t know that [his appeal] transmits. He created an energy and enthusiasm that’s really rare in politics.”
In Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina, Democrats fret that the absence of Obama on the ticket will ensure that fewer young and black voters will come to the polls — that the very “surge voters” that propelled the president could ensure defeat for the party by staying home this fall.
“Obama is still fairly strong here — a lot better than anybody else in public life,” added Pearce. “What’s changed is the Democrats are in charge now, and they’re getting blamed for the economy being bad.”
Democrats may have been the most optimistic about the political shift in the Mountain West, where demographics — a rising Hispanic population and a flood of California transplants — had pushed voters away from the GOP.
“I don’t think it was ever a massive shift. I think it was an anomaly that came in good part because of the extraordinary financial effort that went into the voter registration,” said Sig Rogich, a Republican consultant and veteran observer of Nevada politics who supports Reid.
A dismal economy in Nevada, in particular, which ranks at the top of the nation in home foreclosures and is second in unemployment, has slowed the demographic trend — immigration — behind the Democratic rise.
“We’ve lost a good number of those who helped to change the numbers — with the job losses and so forth,” Rogich said.
The economy has also left local voters, perhaps even more deeply than elsewhere in the country, angry and eager for change.
“Even if you have a job, you’re worried about it. Almost everybody knows either family or friends who have lost their jobs and same with people who have lost homes,” said D. Taylor, the president of the Culinary Workers Union, which represents casino workers and backed Obama to the hilt in 2008. “It’s general angst about no quick answers, which we as Americans aren’t used to.”
And out West, the same cultural libertarianism and suspicion of authority that helped push big-spending and moralistic Republicans from office is now rebounding against Democrats. The unaffiliated voters who have taken flight from the Democratic Party in the three recent statewide races across the nation are an even larger force in the electorates of states like Colorado.
“The argument that Obama moves too fast, too much, too expensive has been very effective here,” said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based pollster.
The extent of Republican resurgence in the West won’t be clear, however, until November, and Democrats are still competitive in races ranging from Reid’s Senate seat to the open contest for the Colorado governorship, for which their candidate is popular Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
And there are Democratic bright spots that suggest, Colorado political consultant Mike Stratton said, that the West could resist a national wave. New Mexico Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is a strong candidate for the governorship. Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, is campaigning for reelection despite profound unpopularity and stiff primary opposition.
Democrats continue to put stock in voter registration numbers that, they hope, Obama changed for good.
“When you look at Washoe County, I don think that’s ever going to go back to being Republican,” said state Assemblyman Richard Segerblom, a Democrat, referring to the conservative-leaning population center of northern Nevada. “That was Republican for all our lives.”
To get those voters out this year, however, will be a challenge, party strategists acknowledge.
“Democrats who are running in 2010 need to give all those new voters a reason to turn out for them; they need to feel like there is something really at stake,” said Dunn. “Be clear about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and who you’re fighting for.”
Kaine pointed out, hopefully, that, “Nine months is a long time in politics. If the economy continues to improve — and we’ve seen signs it is — and we have action on health care, the dynamic is not going to be easy, but we can do quite well.”
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