SALON

Iowa

Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012 8:13 PM UTC

Obama takes his case to the swing states

The president retails his general election message in five key battlegrounds

By Running man

The day after delivering his “America built to last” State of the Union address, the president began his own three-day, five-state unofficial campaign tour in search of a second term. The selection of states for the trip—Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan—was anything but random. Four of the five will hold their Republican primaries or caucuses in February, and a fifth, Iowa, recently voted. At least four of the five are considered swing states, and a fifth, Michigan, could be competitive if native son Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee, as the White House has been anticipating for the past year. All five states feature key blocks of blue-collar white and Latino voters, and four of the five (save Colorado) elected or re-elected Republicans governors in 2010. Obama’s 2012 re-election bid is now underway.

As the White House’s list of SOTU talking points confirms, the not-so-secret theme for both the speech and companion trip is building a durable economy that rewards middle-class workers. The president will no doubt emphasize and empathize with the economic pain that residents of each state feel. According to “economic distress measures” published by the Kaiser Foundation’s statehealthfigures.org website, all five rank among the 18 states with the worst monthly employment losses between November 2010 and November 2011. Four of the five states rank among the top 11 nationally in mortgage foreclosure rates, and although the economy in the fifth, Iowa, is better than most, last year it ranked seventh nationally in food stamp dependency growth.

The Republican National Committee began criticizing the trip before Obama even left town, with Republican National Committee spokesman Ryan Mahoney issuing identical statements that merely substitute the name of each state’s residents. “Iowans [ditto Arizonans, Nevadans] need a president focused on their jobs, not a campaigner-in-chief solely focused on his own reelection,” said Mahoney. “Barack Obama should be more focused on getting Arizona’s economy back on track and putting the millions of unemployed Americans back to work, instead of constantly campaigning.”

A closer look at the five states on Obama’s itinerary shows what he hopes to achieve.

Iowa: Obama starts his re-election campaign today in the state that gave birth to his 2008 presidential victory with his first stop since July 2008 to Cedar Rapids, where he will visit Conveyor Engineering & Manufacturing, a 35-year-old company that makes “screw-type” farm conveyors. The theme of the stop will be manufacturing revival.

One of just two states (New Mexico) to flip from blue to red and back to blue again between 2000 and 2008, Iowa could again be a swing state despite Obama’s somewhat comfortable, 9.5-point victory there four years ago. Unlike the subsequent four stops on the trip, however, Iowa is different in two major ways. First, its non-white population is very small. And although political scientist Michael Lewis-Beck identified Iowa as the state most representative of the overall U.S. economy during the 2008 cycle, the second is that rising farm prices and the state’s relatively small number of foreclosures sheltered it from the economic crisis unlike the others. It’s current, 5.6 unemployment rate is among the lowest in the nation.

That said, because he cannot rely on a base of minority voters, among the five states Iowa is where Obama most needs to make his case to working-class white Americans that he has been and will continue to be the best steward of the nation’s slow, but steady recovery. According to a late November poll, he led the entire Republican field, but his margin over Romney was a mere seven points.

 Arizona: To complement to the traditional manufacturing stop in Iowa, the president stops in Chandler, a sprawling suburb southeast of Phoenix, for a tech-economy event at Intel’s Ocotillo Campus. Chandler’s Maricopa County is ground zero for the mortgage crisis. Although foreclosure rates there peaked in late 2009, foreclosure continues to be a problem; the county has a special hotline and webpage for residents facing foreclosure.

Arizona gained two electors from the 2010 Census, ranks fourth nationally in Latino population share and, along Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, represents the Democrats’ missing, fourth jewel in burgeoning Southwest. Obama lost Arizona in 2008 by about the same, 9-point margin he won Iowa, but in 2012 the GOP will not benefit from having native son John McCain atop the ballot. A late November statewide poll showed Obama with a 41 percent approval/54 percent disapproval split, but another poll two weeks ago showed him beating all Republicans challengers except Romney.

Immigration issues cut both ways for Obama, helping him among Latinos while hurting him among Minutemen-sympathizing voters who applauded Gov. Jan Brewer’s 2010 immigration law and subsequent lawsuit against the Obama Administration. As is so often Obama’s wont, in the SOTU he aimed for the voters in between, calling for a comprehensive reform bill while also making a veiled reference to his administration’s record levels of deportation. But at Intel, expect Obama to dodge the subject altogether in favor of sticking closely to his jobs-and-growth script.

Nevada: On Thursday, the president heads to southern Las Vegas to reiterate his blue collar—or in this case, brown collar—renaissance message with a stop at a UPS freight facility near McCarran Airport. It will be his second stop at a UPS facility in less than a year. Nevadans are really hurting: With foreclosures up and gambling-based tourism losses only recently rebounding, the state’s 12.6 unemployment rate is one of the country’s highest.

In 2008 Obama captured Nevada handily, by more than 12 points, after Bush twice won it. Obama led the Republican field in a pre-Christmas statewide poll, but only by single digits over Romney and Ron Paul. The Silver State gained one elector from the 2010 Census reapportionment. Like the stops in Arizona and Colorado sandwiched around it, Nevada has a significant Latino population. Like Obama’s final stop in Michigan, the union vote is essential for Obama to hold the state.

Colorado: Later on Thursday, Obama moves to Denver, site of his 2008 Democratic National Convention. He will address troops at Buckley Air Force Base, and his message will likely to shift to defense and security issues, as the president reiterates his SOTU.

Although Colorado experiences its own spate of foreclosures, the problem was less severe than it was nationally or in states like Arizona. But, similar to its other, fast-growing Southwest cohorts, Colorado features at least 100,000 age-eligible yet unregistered Latino voters. Like the Tucson-Phoenix corridor, the Boulder-Denver corridor is one of the pivotal, new-growth “ideopolises” identified by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira in their book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority.”

“We were also encouraged to hear the President talk so much about clean energy, as Colorado is leading the nation when it comes to renewable energy research and development,” Democrat Gov. John Hickenlooper said of the president’s Tuesday night speech. “Many of the new jobs the President talked for this industry will be created in Colorado – and we are ready.”

Obama cruised to victory in Colorado in 2008, and according to an early December statewide poll he led all Republicans challengers, if only by two points over Romney. Along with states like Montana, New Hampshire and Ohio, Colorado was one of the great stories of Democratic resurgence in the middle of last decade. The party has since lost back some of those gains in other states, and Hickenlooper’s 2010 gubernatorial victory was a notable exception. Obama needs Colorado—a state which derives its name from a bastardization of the Spanish “color rojo,” for its famed red rocks—to remain true blue this November.

Michigan: It’s not yet clear whether Michigan will be in play in 2012, even if Romney heads the GOP ticket. But a late November 2011 statewide poll did have Romney ahead of Obama by five points. Obama won it in a 16.5-point landslide four years ago. If Gingrich is the nominee, the White House can probably worry less about Michigan.

The details of the president’s Michigan event have not yet been released. Given his SOTU remarks touting the government’s role in saving General Motors and Chrysler from ruin, the location and theme is likely to be auto industry-related, even though the president recently completed such a Michigan victory lap in late-October. Still, it’s never bad politics for any Democrat to find an excuse to press the flesh with the folks who press bumpers.

For the past three months, political eyes have been focused squarely on the Republican White House contenders. But after his State of the Union speech, the commander-in-chief shifts himself into campaigner-in-chief mode, whether or not the GOP has settled on a candidate yet. There’s no point in Obama wasting a valuable head start on the general election he didn’t enjoy four years ago.

Before he left for the five-state swing, Obama’s White House released an eight-page companion document  for the speech entitled, “Blueprint for An America Built to Last.” With 48 combined electoral votes to be cast this November by this quintet of states, as President Obama begins his quest to amass at least 270 electors to win a second term the “blue” part of blueprint takes on special meaning.

 

Thomas F. Schaller is professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the author of "Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South." Follow him @schaller67. More Thomas Schaller.

Saturday, Dec 31, 2011 3:54 PM UTC

Occupy Des Moines is the Democrats’ problem

Former Obama fans now see the party as part of the system they seek 'to undo

By A protester is arrested for blocking the entrance to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's local campaign office during an Occupy The Caucus demonstration in Des Moines, Iowa. (Credit: AP/J. David Ake)

DES MOINES–”They’re closing, so if you want to get arrested, come now!”

An older woman made the announcement as she breezed into and Occupy Iowa Caucus’ headquarters early Thursday afternoon: word had gotten out about the group’s latest demonstration. They’d already hit local offices for Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and the Wells Fargo branch irresistibly close to Romney’s campaign headquarters, and now their next target apparently knew they were coming.

The occupiers scurried to their cars, armed with their anti-Wall Street placards still fresh with marker ink. While navigating the streets of downtown Des Moines, Jess Mazour, 24, fumbled with her cell phone and a Ziploc bag of reporters’ business cards as Katie Rockey, 19, fed her phone numbers from the back seat.

“Let me call Channel 13,” Mazour said. “I know that number by heart.” After an answer, she began her spiel: “I’m calling to let you know we’re headed to occupy Iowa’s Democratic headquarters right now.”

Welcome to the latest and perhaps most unique iteration of Occupy Wall Street, where a splinter cell of Occupy Des Moines protestors, many of them former Obama supporters, are heading the movement’s first significant injection of street politics into electoral politics. And if what’s happening in Iowa augurs anything for the 2012 cycle, Democrats nationwide will be facing a vote of no confidence from former allies who now see the party as part of the system they’re trying to occupy. Earlier this week, when more than 100 progressive occupiers caucused to pick their candidates of greatest “dispreference,” the largest number, 30, picked Barack Obama.

“I voted for Obama in 2008, and I feel really let down by what’s happened since then,” said Ross Grooters, 37, of Pleasant Hill, Iowa. His mother-in-law had to move in with him, his wife and his daughter after she lost her job and then her home.

If disruption is the name of Occupy’s game, Occupy Iowa Caucus has already succeeded in Des Moines. The local Obama campaign office was conspicuously shuttered on the day occupiers had identified it as a protest target. Meanwhile, state Democratic leadership had no idea what to do with the few dozen protestors — many of whom they’ve worked with before — who then decided to show up on their headquarters’ doorstep for a sit-in instead.

“You are preventing them [Democratic volunteers] from entering or leaving,” a frustrated Iowa Democratic Executive Director Norm Sterzenbach told the occupiers, who later dubbed him Scrooge McDemocrat. “I see that as a violent action.”

“We will defend our right to do a nonviolent protest,” replied occupier Frank Cordaro, 60, something of a local legend; he’s a Catholic anarchist who’s been arrested more times than he can remember.

“Well, we see it as violent, and I’ll treat it as such,” Sterzenbach told Cordaro.

State Democratic party chairwoman Sue Dvorsky tried to be more patient with the protestors, but even patience proved incompatible with the Occupiers’ demands.

“I’m just here to listen,” Dvorsky said as a small crowd of occupiers gathered around and volleyed anti-corporate grievances at her for 20 minutes. “I just don’t know what you want from us.” We want to talk to Obama on the phone, the occupiers said, and ask him to take corporate money out of politics. “We do not have the ability to get the President on the phone and to get him to do the things that you want to do,” Dvorsky replied.

Democratic Party, meet Occupy Wall Street. To many outsiders, the Occupy movement has a particularly infuriating brand of Zen obliqueness to it because of its refusal to appoint leaders and lay down clear, negotiable demands, the typical mode of American activism. The movement sort of exists for its own sake; there’s no obvious authority that will realistically give it the kind of vast economic reforms that many occupiers would like to see, so many participants figure they’ll band together, stick around and raise hell until an authority exists that can.

“No longer does it matter who gets elected,” Cordaro told me earlier this week. “Tweedly dee, tweedly dum. There could not be two more different presidents in our history than George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and yet the corporations still run the system.”

This Democrats-equal-Republicans rhetoric, at least among the far American left, isn’t particularly new. But what’s new is that Iowan occupiers, which includes a somewhat broader ideological array of members than the left’s usual suspects — there are Occupy nuns! — are starting to act on it, and the upcoming caucuses gives them the perfect opportunity.

No one here has uttered the phrase “lesser of two evils” by my hearing, and that doesn’t bode well for a Democratic party already facing an enthusiasm gap against its motivated Republican opposition. State Democratic executive director Sterzenbach said liberal activists had never picketed its headquarters or shown such open confrontation since the movement’s first sit-in at party headquarters last week. Twelve were arrested on Thursday night.

Occupy Iowa Caucus faces its own pitfalls, for those in New Hampshire watching Des Moines’ experiment for cues. The movement’s leaderless structure and diverse ideological grievances have made for sluggish decisionmaking sessions on who and where to protest — a major impediment for activists facing a Jan. 3 deadline to inspire statewide voters to vote “no preference” on both parties’ ballots.

The result is that all the protests have thus far looked the same: a few familiar die-hards decide at the last minute to sit down in front of a given candidate’s doorway for the sake of getting arrested in front of a few cameras.

It’s worked so far; the Des Moines movement’s received exactly the boon of journalistic interest that it clearly craves and needs for new members. But in Iowa, where the relationship between the activists and the police remains startlingly polite compared to the bitterness harbored in many coastal Occupy movements — there have been no incidences of rough arrests — could the lack of violence lead to media and public disinterest? It’s hard to say, when so many national journalists are here and starved for a stories beyond candidates desperately shaking strangers’ hands.

But for the occupiers risking arrest, it’s become the only conceivable course of action anybody can think of. Take Grooters and Shawn Gude, 22, two 2008 Obama voters who decided to tape dollar bills to their mouths and stand in front of the front doors to state Democratic headquarters until the police came to remove them.

“There’s nothing for a citizen in a democracy left to do than put his or her body on the line and stand up for his principles if voting has become meaningless,” Gude said, his back to the glass, before sheepishly correcting himself: “I should say insufficient, rather than meaningless.”

“It’s not that these aren’t issues that everybody knows or understands,” Grooters added helpfully.

“Well, we have dollar bills taped over our mouths, so it’s a little more difficult to express ourselves,” Gude replied, and that’s about when the cops came to take them away.

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Matt Pearce is a contributing writer for The Los Angeles Times, The New Inquiry, and The Pitch in Kansas City. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattdpearce. More Matt Pearce.

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