TD Blog

The Quiet Rebellion

Bleeding Obama Voters. From the Wash. Post via Instapundit

As Michael Barone says in his “Going Out on a Limb Prediction,”it’s about fundamentals:

Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That’s bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.

But it’s also true that most voters oppose Obama’s major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery — Friday’s jobs report showed an unemployment uptick.

In other words, it’s still the economy, Stupid.

But, this time, it’s also more than the economy. It’s a raging if under-reported rebellion against a radical agenda that began with the stealth ObamaCare vote and gained steam as the debt and deficit soared, as jobs disappeared, as Obama’s promises for unity and bi-partisanship and lowering seas evaporated . The rebellion led to the creation of the Tea Party and the historic nationwide upsets in 2010.

The rebellion has been building and on Tuesday, the silent majority will once again roar. If you pay attention to the fundamentals, if you can see the forest through the slobbering trees of the Mainstream Media, if you dig deep beneath the headlines, you will find the data that supports the predictions of Michael Barone, Jay Cost, and Karl Rove.  UPDATE — and George Will.

Here’s how I see just a bit of Mitt Romney’s winning coalition:

Cuban Americans: The Miami Herald reports that Obama’s lead among Florida hispanics has shrunk to only 4 points, thanks to Cuban Americans, whose “unrivaled intensity for the Republican ticket…could help keep Obama from a second Florida win — and therefore a second-term in the White House.”

White Catholics: John McCain won this group by 5 points in 2008. According to a Pew poll released this week, Mitt Romney is winning this group by 14 points.

Evangelicals: According to the WSJ, more than 350,000 evangelicals in Ohio stayed home in 2008 rather than vote for McCain. Today, they are surging for Mitt Romney, supporting him by over 70%.

Suburbanites: According to Pew, Obama won this sub-set of voters by 20 points in 2008. Today Romney is winning the suburban vote by 19 points. That’s a 39-point swing away from Obama for suburban voters.

Independents: Poll after poll shows Romney winning independents by 5 to 10 points or more. Obama won 52% of independents in 2008. Jay Cost explains why indies will determine the winner of Election 2012:

…A nominal 3 to 4 point Democratic identification edge over the GOP will shrink to 1 or 2 points, meaning that independents will determine the outcome, just as they have basically for the last 32 years.

White voters overall: In 2008, Obama won approximately 43% of the white vote. Pew’s most recent poll says that Obama’s support among whites in 2012 is down to 37% — a 7% loss. (Romney is winning 57% of the white vote). The Atlanta Black Star explains Obama’s drop in supprt among white voters:

Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate director for research, said that white voters without college degrees, who tend to have lower incomes and be more likely to be suffering from sluggish economic growth, accounted for most of Obama’s falloff in the poll.

The economy, Stupid.

Coal Miners tell Obama to STFU!

In coal country, the rebellion against President “You Didn’t Build That” is already evident. According to a tweet by @redistrict, the only Virginia county as of yesterday, Nov. 2, to out-perform early vote returns from 2008 is Buchanan County, the heart of Virginia’s coal industry.  In October, The Ronoake Times reported:

“The thoughts among my co-workers is there is a singular person to blame, and that is the president of the United States,” said Jeremiah Heaton, a twice-unsuccessful 9th District congressional candidate who works in a mine in Raven.

Heaton ran as an independent two years ago in the 9th District race that also included Democratic incumbent Rick Boucher and Republican Morgan Griffith. Ultimately, Griffith leveraged more than $1 million spent by outside groups to successfully convince voters that “Boucher Betrayed Coal” — as signs put it — and unseat the 28-year incumbent.

Now, Republicans have taken the lessons of that 2010 midterm race and are applying them to this year’s elections for president and the U.S. Senate.

They’ve been backed by contributions from the coal industry that have gone overwhelmingly to Republicans. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, coal-related donors have given $10.3 million, with 89 percent of that going to GOP candidates and causes.

In Pennsylvania, Obama’s “War on Coal” combined with Romney’s growing support from suburbanites may turn the state red for the first time in 20 years. Even the New York Times sees it:

There is a tangible sense — seen in Romney yard signs on the expansive lawns of homes in the well-heeled suburbs, and heard in the excited voices of Republican mothers who make phone calls to voters in their spare time — that the race is tilting toward Mr. Romney. “

The Romney campaign unleashed a spending blitz in Pennsylvania during the last week of the campaign, including two commercials tailored to angry coal miners. Here’s one of them:

Fundamentally the American people have rejected the type of “change” Barack Obama has tried to inflict upon our society and the world. As a nation, we uniquely embrace the concept of self-determination and free enterprise, and we want a leader who supports capitalism. We want a leader who encourages individual initiative, who embraces the possibility of “I built that!” We want a leader who understands American exceptionalism and defends it worldwide.

The guy who has become the symbol of this quiet rebellion states it plainly, and I approve of his message: