Virginia - A Microcasm of Obama's Re-election Problems

The GOP presidential candidate line up continues to be a circus where the only sane candidates - Romney and Huntsman in my view - do not score well with the lunatic Christianist?tea Party base. However, should Romney or by some miracle Huntsman be the GOP nominee, Obama's campaign stratagem relying on the obvious insanity of his GOP opponent will take a major hit. Obama has recently visited Virginia - including the Tidewater area - in an effort to resuscitate his popularity. Given the general malaise of Democrats in Virginia, it will be an uphill battle in my view. Rightly or wrongly, Obama is viewed as devoid of leadership and one who has failed to deliver on 2008 campaign promises. Some of the failings are not of Obama's making. Other failings - such as the perception that he has constantly allowed himself to be rolled by the GOP - are of his own making. The other problem Obama faces is the reality that Virginia continues to be the home of large numbers of Kool-Aid drinking, reality denying members of the Christian Right and/or delusional Tea Party adherents. A New York Times looks at the campaign on the ground in Virginia. Here are some highlights:

President Obama arrive[d] in Virginia on his bus tour [earlier in the week], just as some Democratic candidates for the state legislature are running away from him. Ward Armstrong, the top Democrat in the House of Delegates, is one of several incumbents up for re-election in the state’s off-year elections three weeks from now. And he’s one of several who have been tied to Mr. Obama by Republican rivals.

To win re-election next year, Mr. Obama’s team is eager to keep Virginia and its 13 electoral votes in their column. But with polls showing Mr. Obama’s approval ratings slipping here, Republicans, including Virginia’s governor, say a repeat of his 2008 victory is increasingly unlikely.

A poll by The Richmond Times-Dispatch released Monday showed that Mr. Obama would face a tight race with either Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, or Rick Perry, the governor of Texas (Mr. Romney narrowly led the president 45 percent to 42 percent; and in a matchup with Mr. Perry, he and Mr. Obama were tied at 43 percent).

Democrats in the state disagree that a victory in Virginia is out of reach for the president — though they concede that the race will be a tough one. Mike Henry, a veteran Democratic strategist who is managing Tim Kaine’s United States Senate race next year, said the growth of minorities and suburban votes in the state, as well as the Republican efforts to cut government spending, will help Democrats, including Mr. Obama.

The pledges to slash the size of the federal government — Ron Paul on Monday proposed cutting spending by 10 percent across the board in a single year — would hit Virginia’s many government contractors particularly hard. That could fire up anger at Republican candidates and Republicans in Congress.

And Democrats are counting on shifts in the state’s population that helped Mr. Kaine win the governorship in 2005. Those include increases in Hispanics, especially in the exurban communities around Northern Virginia, and the movement of traditionally Democratic voters like African-Americans into the suburban rings around the big, Democratic-leaning cities.

Parts of the state remain extremely difficult for a Democratic presidential candidate. The rural communities in the state’s southwest remain bastions of Republicanism. And Democrats have long struggled to win in places where textile factories and tobacco farms have largely disappeared. Obama campaign officials are counting on the demographic changes to help Mr. Obama’s chances in the state. The population centers are shifting inexorably away from the rural communities to the suburban ones.

The irony, of course, is that the Republican bastions in Southwest Virginia continue to embrace policies and religious based discrimination that make the region a hard sell when it comes to luring new industries to replace the largely extinct furniture, textile and tobacco industries. Bible beating by Republicans plays well with the local electorate but scares away anyone who doesn't want to live in the midst of religious extremists and KKK sympathizers.