Lessons From the Past

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Our political system is an amazing thing.

It really is. Oh, I know we all complain about things that government does or doesn't do, and we get mad at our elected officials from time to time — but nearly without exception our system has permitted us to make peaceful periodic changes in our elected leadership. We take that for granted, but we wouldn't if we lived in many other places in the world.

But our system also has its idiosyncracies.

The pendulum is always swinging, and the out–of–power party always has plenty of reasons to be energized by midterm elections, starting with the clear historical trend that favors the folks who are outside looking in. This time it is the Democrats' turn as the out–of–power party, and everything seems to point to a big year for them. The president's approval numbers remain low, and Democrats continue to hold a lead in the generic congressional ballot.

Along with that, nearly three dozen Republicans in the House have announced their intention to retire, and more seem likely. The terrain certainly looks favorable for Democrats in 2018.

But history has some cautionary tales.

Let's start with the most recent history that Democrats ignore at their peril.

In 2016 polls showed Hillary Clinton with the lead over Donald Trump — and, indeed, Clinton did win the popular vote by a considerable margin.

But the United States has never elected its presidents by popular vote. It has always elected its presidents by electoral vote, and Clinton's popular votes were too heavily concentrated in the coastal states to influence the Electoral College. (In fact, if you took California's vote entirely out of the mix, Trump would have won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote; Clinton's margin in California was about 3.1 million whereas her margin nationally was 2.86 million.)

The same thing appears to be likely in this year's congressional races. Democrats are concentrated in urban districts, and the Democrats' nominees in those districts are likely to pile up impressive margins. Nancy Pelosi, for example, routinely rolls up incredible margins in her Bay Area district. It's even likely in some places here in Texas, where Clinton carried the metropolitan counties of Dallas, Travis, Bexar and Harris by wide margins.

But all you need to win an election is a single vote. You'd like to do better than that, of course, but some Democrats are likely to roll up huge margins in some districts — when many of those votes would be more beneficial elsewhere.

In Texas, outside of the metro counties and the ones that border Mexico, Republicans still dominated in 2016 — and likely will continue to do so. Some Democrats are salivating at the thought of the open seats that have been held by Republicans, like the South Texas district that has been represented by Republican Lamar Smith for more than 30 years. Smith is retiring, and there have been rumblings of how Democrats think they have an opportunity there, but one of the Democrats seeking the seat once served on Pelosi's staff. That might help win the Democratic primary, but it isn't likely to be a general–election winner in a district that voted for Trump by 10 percentage points.

That brings me to another point. The Democrats, like the Republicans in the first midterm of the Obama years, are engaged in a battle from within. The battle is between the establishment and the extremists. At stake is the direction of the party.

As the battle plays out, the establishment will prevail in some places, and the loose cannons, who are typically the most energized in the midterms, will prevail in others.

Democrats are certain to try to nationalize the campaign, but midterms are not national campaigns. They are held in every state and every House district, but the issues and candidates vary. It is tempting to vote for the loose cannons because they typically oppose everything the in–power party does, but Democrats need to remember how some of those loose cannons worked out for Republicans in the past.

In 2012, Missouri Republican Todd Akin made his widely reported remarks about "legitimate rape" that helped politically endangered Sen. Claire McCaskill win a second term by 16 percentage points. McCaskill is back, still politically vulnerable and running for a third term in a state that voted for Trump by nearly 19 percentage points.

Similarly, Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock's remark that "even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." Mourdock won the nomination by defeating six–term incumbent Richard Lugar in the primary.

Indiana has only voted for a Democratic presidential nominee once since 1964, but it voted for the Democrat in that Senate race, Joe Donnelly. He, too, is up for re–election — in a state that supported Trump by slightly more than 19 percentage points.

McCaskill and Donnelly were originally expected to lose in 2012, and their victories are big reasons why, when Democrats need to win only two seats from Republicans to have a majority in the Senate, they must defend more than two dozen Senate seats in November.

Democrats have a rare opportunity in 2018, but it is not a slam dunk.

And the Winner Will Be ...

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For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by presidential elections.

Mind you, I'm not talking about election campaigns. Modern experience is that political campaigns are nasty, dishonest and undignified — although American history does have a few inspiring tales of elevating campaigns that go a long way toward redeeming the rest.

No, I have never been fascinated by the campaigns. I covered some political campaigns when I was a general assignment reporter, and I know that one political rally is pretty much the same as the next. In fact, with their scripted messages of the day and their identical backdrops, any rallies that take place on the same day really could substitute for any of the others on that evening's news broadcast — and hardly anyone would be the wiser.

What has fascinated me is the numbers that come in on election night, what they say about who we are and what we care about — and the most important numbers of all, of course, the tallies in the Electoral College.

I enjoy analyzing the vote by various demographic groups because it tells us a lot about our priorities, but I guess I have always been more intrigued by the raw state totals that usually determine how each state's electoral votes will be cast. Generations come and go, the faces in the voting lines change but political alliances seldom do.

I suppose that explains why certain states always vote for one party or the other. And I have a healthy respect for the lessons of history.

In the lead–up to this year's elections — in large part, I'm sure, because of our national experience with the recounts of 2000 — some have been openly worrying about the possibility that the popular vote winner will not be the electoral vote winner.

Paul Brandus, for example, recently wrote in The Week about nail–biters in American presidential election history.

And he pointed out something that no one else, to my knowledge, has in this election cycle — the possibility that the electoral vote would be inconclusive and the matter would have to be decided by the Congress.

Brandus wrote about the slim mathematical possibility that both Obama and Romney would finish with 269 electoral votes — one short of the required 270. (Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that a "faithless elector" — or two or three — would prevent a candidate from winning in the Electoral College.)

If that happened, the House would select the president, and the Senate would select the vice president. That is how such an impasse is to be resolved, according to the Constitution.

The catch is that the newly elected Congress — not the one that is presently in power — would make the decisions. Congress has adjourned and is not scheduled to be in session again until January, when the newly elected members will be sworn in.

And their first order of business, in the event of an Electoral College tie, would be to choose the president and vice president.

Most people expect the House to remain in Republican hands — the GOP would have to lose about two dozen seats to lose control of the chamber, which is something that almost never happens (historically), but, in the last three elections, we have seen double–digit seat shifts in the House so it is possible.

However, the fate of the Senate, which is narrowly held by Democrats (who must defend about two–thirds of the seats that will be voted on Tuesday), has been less certain for many observers, but the emerging consensus seems to be the Democrats will hold on to their majority in that chamber.

If that turns out to be the breakdown of the next Congress, Brandus observed, the House would be expected to elect Romney president — and the Senate would be expected to re–elect Vice President Joe Biden. Talk about gridlock.

It's a season for silliness, I suppose. Most of the time, the electoral vote winner is the popular vote winner so, historically speaking, talk of such a split belongs under the heading of worst–case scenario. It is possible but not probable, even in a very close race.

And, usually, a candidate's share of the electoral vote tends to mirror that candidate's share of the popular vote (if not exceed it) as well. But not always. The only requirement for winning a state is to get more votes there than the other guy. It can be by a few hundred votes (see Florida in 2000) or by a million or more (see California, Texas, New York in just about every election in the last 30 years).

For that reason, many political scientists have observed, Democrats (like Al Gore in 2000) may be more vulnerable to a popular vote/electoral vote split because — in recent elections, at least — they have been winning heavily populated states like California and New York by wide margins.

The flip side is that most of the states that are popularly labeled red states these days are primarily smaller states (with the noteworthy exception of Texas) — so if a Republican is winning a majority of the popular vote, recent history suggests that he must be winning (perhaps handily) in the Electoral College because his margins in most states will appear tiny when compared to the Democrat's margins in the larger. more urban states.

(While we're on the topic of silliness, I feel torn between hilarity and horror at the suggestion that the president could postpone the election because of the recent hurricane that devastated the East Coast.

(The Constitution spells out when a federal election is to be held, and only an act of Congress — which is not in session, as I mentioned earlier — could do that. Lawmakers from the interior U.S. almost certainly would sympathize with the plight of the folks in the Northeast but would not see any reason to inconvenience their own constituents, many of whom have already voted early, anyway.

(So I find it hilarious that people even suggest this. It may be in jest or it may be serious. I think both may be at play here because I am sure that at least some are being facetious. But I am inclined to feel horror at the thought that there are citizens out there who not only believe the president possesses such sweeping powers that he can reschedule a national election — but are actually comfortable with one individual having such totalitarian power in a democratic republic.)

Speaking of history, I can't recall a week preceding a presidential election that was quite like last week.

I didn't have access to a wide range of news sources when I was growing up, but I've been online for about 15 years now, and I have witnessed all sorts of columns and articles prior to presidential elections during that time.

And, frankly, I was astonished at the number of post–mortems for the Obama campaign that were appearing in print and online editions of publications last week — almost as if the votes had already been counted.

Steve Huntley of the Chicago Sun–Times wrote that Obama has "eroded" the American dream.

Foremost in these post–mortems was a column by Richard Cohen, who wrote in the Washington Post of watching a documentary about Ethel Kennedy that showed her husband on his trips to Appalachia and Mississippi and how he "brimmed with shock and indignation, with sorrow and sympathy" over the plight of the poor.

Kennedy "was determined," Cohen wrote, "you could see it on his face — to do something about it. I've never seen that look on Barack Obama's face." He lamented that "I once wondered if Obama could be another RFK."

But, Cohen wrote, undoubtedly echoing the thoughts of many, "I wish he was the man I once mistook him for."

Anyway, let's get back to the business at hand.

Back in April, I examined the "emerging electoral map" and tried to explain historical voting patterns.

I started off by dismissing nearly half of the states as sure things for one side or another — and, with only one real exception, I'm standing by that forecast.

Of the sure things, Mitt Romney has 14 states — Alabama (9 electoral votes), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Nebraska (5), Oklahoma (7), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), Utah (6), Wyoming (3). Total = 120 electoral votes.

Barack Obama has 10 states (and D.C.) — California (55 electoral votes), Connecticut (7), D.C. (3), Hawaii (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12). Total = 145 electoral votes.

The wild card in that group, I feel, is Oregon.

Yes, I know that Obama carried Oregon by more than 16 percentage points in 2008. And I know Democrats have carried Oregon in six straight presidential elections.

But I'm still doubtful about the state.

Last Monday, The Oregonian reported a six–point lead for Obama in its latest statewide poll.

That may sound good to Obama supporters, conditioned as they have been lately to disappearing leads in states they were counting on carrying, but it actually represents a decline from findings in polls taken in the last three or four months. It isn't a huge decline as these things go — and it falls within the typical margin for error so things may not have changed in Oregon.

But slippage would be in keeping with the apparent pattern in most states.

And, even though seven electoral votes from a single state doesn't mean much when there are 531 electoral votes in the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, seven electoral votes might make all the difference in a race that is expected to be as close as this one is believed to be.

(Personally, I don't think it will be as close as many people do.)

So, while I still predict that Oregon will vote for Obama, I also say that, if it is a very close race, Oregon will bear watching in the late–night hours when the votes on the West Coast are being counted.

I'm still inclined to keep Oregon among the sure things — but, in the shifting political climate, I'm not as sure of it as I was.

I labeled the next group of states the probables — states that are likely to vote in a certain way but, for one reason or another, their eventual leaning will remain unclear until the votes are counted on Tuesday.

Romney had nine states in this group: Arizona (11), Colorado (9), Georgia (16), Indiana (11), Montana (3), North Dakota (3), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), West Virginia (5). Total = 70 electoral votes.

I'm inclined to leave those states in the Republican column — including Colorado. Many observers have been listing Colorado as too close to call — but Colorado usually seems to be close. (Well, Obama did carry the state by about nine percentage points in 2008.)

It also seldom votes for Democrats. In the 14 presidential elections before 2008, Colorado only voted for Democrats twice. And it hasn't voted for Democrats in consecutive elections since it supported Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936.

Most recent polls show either candidate with a one–point lead or the two candidates tied. I expect it will be close on election night, but I'm sticking with my original prediction that Romney will carry the state.

Obama has five states among the probables: Delaware (3), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14). Total = 51 electoral votes.

I still think Obama will win those five states, but I'm a little dubious about Minnesota and New Jersey.

Minnesota has a long history of supporting Democrats. It hasn't voted for a Republican since Richard Nixon's 49–state landslide in 1972.

A week ago, though, rumors were rampant that Obama was planning a visit to Minnesota, sparking speculation that Democrats were in trouble there. Obama, preoccupied with Hurricane Sandy, didn't go to Minnesota after all, but former President Bill Clinton came instead.

Minnesota voted for Obama by about 10 percentage points four years ago, and it is hard to imagine that it would flip to the Republicans. But Clinton's presence there about a week before the election can only be interpreted as a sign that Democrats are worried.

My next category was the leaners. Like the probables, they can be expected to vote in a certain way — but the chances that they actually will are less than they are for the probables.

Romney has two states in this group: North Carolina (15), Virginia (13). Total = 28 electoral votes.

They were both regarded as too close to call a few months ago, but I felt Obama effectively lost North Carolina when he announced his support for gay marriage the day after North Carolina voters resoundingly rejected it.

Virginia is still considered too close to call by many. But its support for Obama in 2008 was the first time it had voted for a Democrat in more than 40 years — and Virginia hasn't voted for Democrats in back–to–back elections since the 1940s — all of which leads me to believe Virginia will vote — albeit narrowly — for Romney. Especially if George Allen's Senate race is successful.

Obama also had two states among the leaners: Michigan (16), New Mexico (5). Total = 21 electoral votes.

New Mexico looks like it will remain in the Democrats' column, but I'm not so certain about Michigan. That, after all, is where Romney was born and where his father served as governor. Obama did win the state by more than 800,000 votes in 2008 — and a recent Detroit Newspoll showed Obama in the lead — but that lead, which has been cut in half since early October, was within the margin of error.

Ramussen recently found Obama leading in Michigan with 50%. I think Obama can count on it — but it may be late in the evening before he can secure Michigan's electoral votes.

That gives the following electoral vote totals: Romney = 218, Obama = 217. And it leaves eight battleground states — Florida (29), Iowa (6), Missouri (10), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10) — worth 103 electoral votes.

I designated these states as battlegrounds back in April. Most are still regarded as battlegrounds today; a few are considered reasonably safe for one candidate or another, but I think all are in play to an extent.

Recent polls indicate that Missouri is likely to vote Republican, which would boost Romney's electoral vote total to 228. And, in fact, polls have been suggesting a Romney victory in Missouri was increasingly likely ever since I posted my first glance at the Electoral College.

But the other seven states still are generally regarded as too close to call — even if some polls suggest that one candidate or the other has a modest lead.

So let's look at them, one by one:

• Florida — The race appears close in Florida, with recent polls showing one– or two–point leads for either candidate. Florida voted for Obama four years ago, but the state hasn't voted for Democrats in consecutive elections since the days of FDR and Harry Truman.
  
  I think it will be close – no surprise there — but I think it will be in the Republican column. (Romney = 257, Obama = 217)
• Iowa — The Des Moines Register, which has endorsed Romney, reported Saturday that Obama leads by five points, but he is still below 50%.
  
  It will probably be tight in Iowa, but I think Obama will carry it. (Romney = 257, Obama = 223)
• Nevada — With one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, Nevada seems like fertile ground for Romney, and perhaps it will turn out that way on Tuesday.
  
  But even though the Las Vegas Review Journal, in a sharply worded editorial, endorsed Romney last Thursday, Obama's lead in Nevada appears to be growing.
  
  So I will pick Nevada to vote for Obama. (Romney = 257, Obama = 229)
• New Hampshire — New Hampshire was once considered reliably Republican, but it has voted Democrat in four of the last five elections.
  
  A recent University of New Hampshire poll found the candidates tied at 48–48. Since undecided voters tend to break for the challenger, I will call this state for Romney. (Romney = 261, Obama = 229)
• Ohio — It is an article of faith among political observers that no Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio. Sometimes Republicans have lost the national election in spite of winning Ohio (Richard Nixon in 1960, Tom Dewey in 1944).
  
  Most recent polls — MSNBC, CNN, WeAskAmerica.com — show the president at 50% or better in Ohio. And, without the auto bailout, it is hard to argue that Ohio would be doing as well as it is in the current economic climate.
  
  It is worth noting that Rasmussen says the race is a dead heat. Perhaps it is.
  
  But, right now, I'm inclined to pick Ohio to vote for Obama.
  
  Does that mean Romney will lose? Not necessarily. Twenty years ago, when George H.W. Bush sought a second term, polls showed him leading Bill Clinton in Texas — and political observers pointed out that no Democrat had won the presidency without winning Texas.
  
  But Clinton was elected president twice — and Obama was elected president once — without the support of Texas. A U.S. presidential election is actually 51 individual elections (50 states and the District of Columbia). If Romney loses Ohio, it is only 18 electoral votes — the fewest Ohio has been worth since the days of Andrew Jackson — and that loss can be made up with victories elsewhere. (Romney = 261, Obama =247)
• Pennsylvania — I'm sure no one in the Obama campaign thought Pennsylvania would be up for grabs in the closing days of the election, but I predicted it would back in April — and my reason was the strong Republican showing in the state in the 2010 midterm elections.
  
  Republicans won a U.S. Senate seat and the statehouse.
  
  Recent surveys by Franklin & Marshall and the Philadelphia Inquirer have Obama leading but with a plurality, not a majority.
  
  And, since Pennsylvania was assumed to be a lock for Obama, it was spared the barrage of anti–Romney commercials that flooded other battleground states in the spring and summer — so the voters there had few preconceived notions that Romney had to refute
  
  To be fair, that wasn't an unreasonable conclusion. Pennsylvania voted for Obama by a 10–point margin in 2008, and the state hasn't voted Republican since 1988.
  
  In a close race, Democrats usually hope for a strong turnout in Democrat–leaning Philadelphia to help them win Pennsylvania. But I wonder just how strong the turnout in Philadelphia will be, given its close proximity to the area that was most directly affected by Hurricane Sandy.
  
  I believe few, if any, Americans hope that the pain and suffering caused by the hurricane will influence the election in any way, but, if turnout in Philly is lower than usual — and I'm inclined to think it might be — that could tip the balance of power to Romney. And that is what I think will happen. (Romney = 281, Obama = 247)
• Wisconsin — Usually, Wisconsin could be expected to be even more Democratic than Michigan, perhaps about as Democratic as Minnesota.
  
  But a couple of things make me think Wisconsin will vote for Romney.
  
  For one, Wisconsin has been the site of many recent Republican victories — the 2010 election of Scott Walker as governor and the rejection of the recent recall effort, the 2010 election of Republican Ron Johnson to the U.S. Senate, and the shift of two of its eight House seats from Democrat to Republican hands.
  
  For another, Wisconsin does not usually have a candidate on the national ticket. But this year it has one in Rep. Paul Ryan, who ran 13 percentage points ahead of Obama in his southeast Wisconsin district in 2008.
  
  I think Wisconsin will vote for Romney. (Romney = 291, Obama = 247)

Classless

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"Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy with beautiful … somebody who really cares about and understands women."

Lena Dunham
Obama campaign commercial

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It's amusing to me, the outrage that has greeted the Lena Dunham commercial for the re–election of Barack Obama.

It's amusing because those who are outraged act as if this was unexpected. But how could it be unexpected when the Obama campaign has spent most of its time and money this election cycle pursuing irrelevant arguments — the most recent examples being the president's indignation over Big Bird, binders and bayonets — when there are so many more urgent problems in this country?

Like, for example, the war on women. With so much attention being paid to contraceptives and whether taxpayers should pay for the availability of contraceptive devices for women, with the Obama campaign shamelessly running advertisements that focus on women's "lady parts" as the only factor in a woman's voting decision, it can't surprise anyone when the campaign unveils, in the waning days of that campaign, an advertisement that compares voting to losing one's virginity.

It doesn't surprise me. I understand what's going on. Obama's support among women is slipping, and he wants to prop up that part of the winning coalition from 2008.

But, historically speaking, that was always going to be a tough coalition to keep together.

In a vain attempt to prevent the inevitable, the Lena Dunham commercial is designed to appeal not just to young women but young people in general. They're all part of that 2008 coalition — but, while women's participation rate has been consistent over the years, participation of the young has been spotty.

Until the Obama campaign of 2008, young people (generally described as those between 18 and 29) didn't have a strong record when it came to voting. It went way up in 2008 — much to the astonishment of longtime political observers — but no less than NPR and the Los Angeles Times report a decline in interest among young voters.

That surge of young voters who pushed Obama over the top four years ago? It ain't gonna happen again. But the Obama campaign insists that lightning can strike twice in the same place — you just have to help it along a little.

Presidents are notoriously slow to recognize when they have lost the consent of the governed — so I don't know how much input Obama has in all this, especially with that nasty storm churning along the East Coast and forcing him to do his job.

But I gather that Nolan Finley of the Detroit News may be on to something when he opines, "[T]he president's campaign is now driven by desperation. ... Vulgar is part of the repertoire; Obama called Romney a 'bullsh—er' in an interview. Very presidential."

Actually, that language is mild compared to the language some of Obama's surrogates have been using. Still, I have trouble imagining any president in my lifetime — other than, perhaps, Richard Nixon — using an expletive to describe his political opponent in an interview setting.

It is beneath the dignity of the office — if not the man who occupies it.

But apparently it isn't beneath the dignity of this president's surrogates.

Like Samuel L. Jackson, for example, who recently implored the audience, in an Obama commercial, to "Wake the f*** up!"

I understand why some people find Dunham's commercial offensive. It encourages women to vote for the candidate who makes them tingle between their legs above all else.

"Before, I was a girl," says Dunham — who, in the interest of full disclosure, is 26 but sounds like a teenager — of that first vote experience. "Now I was a woman."

Nearly 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment gave women — not girls — the right to vote. It is a responsibility that should be taken seriously.

Perhaps someday science will give us effective means to test people — both men and women — for emotional and psychological (not just chronological) maturity before they can be registered and allowed to vote.

Does Ryan Put Wisconsin in Play?

Politically, Wisconsin is a fascinating place.

(I'm sure it is fascinating in other ways, too. I have never lived there, but, in the interest of full disclosure, I have been a Green Bay Packers fan all my life.)

It is mostly regarded as a progressive "blue" state, having produced Robert La Follette, 1924 presidential nominee of the Progressive Party. La Follette got nearly 17% of the national vote that year, the best showing for a third–party candidate between 1912 and 1992.

La Follette began his political life as a Republican. Joe McCarthy, a controversial right–wing Republican senator, came from Wisconsin, too. In fact, although Wisconsin is often thought of as a Democratic state today, the truth is that the Republican Party got its start in a meeting at a school in Ripon, Wisconsin, in the mid–19th century. Opposition to slavery was the unifying theme at the time.

In 2008, Barack Obama won Wisconsin by more than 400,000 votes. Obama's 56% share of the vote was the highest in that state for any presidential candidate since 1964.

With the exception of the southeastern corner of the state (where Milwaukee is — although Milwaukee County itself voted 2 to 1 for Obama), the Democratic ticket cruised to victory in just about every county.

Based on that — and the fact that Democrats have carried Wisconsin in every election since 1988 — Wisconsin has acquired a reputation as a decidedly blue state.

But that six–election streak is a bit deceiving. Before 2008, Wisconsin was more of a purple state.

In 2004, Democrat John Kerry beat Republican George W. Bush in Wisconsin by about 11,000 votes. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore beat Bush there by about 5,000 votes.

Prior to that, Bill Clinton did win the state by comparatively comfortable margins, and Michael Dukakis did get a majority of the vote against George H.W. Bush (even though his margin was less than 100,000 votes).

But Republicans won Wisconsin in four of the five elections prior to the Bush–Dukakis race — and the only exception was a narrow victory for Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Wisconsin's political allegiance seems to shift every couple of decades. The state often seems determined to march to the beat of a different drum. It even voted against Franklin Roosevelt the fourth time he sought the presidency in 1944.

There were indications in the midterms of 2010 that such a shift could be happening in Wisconsin now. Wisconsin's House delegation went from being majority Democrat to majority Republican, Republican Scott Walker was elected governor and survived a recall election in June of this year, and Ron Johnson upset three–term Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold, becoming the first duly elected Republican senator from Wisconsin in a quarter of a century.

Obama is still popular in Wisconsin, but consider this: Ryan's district re–elected him with 64% of the vote in 2008. In the same election, that district gave Obama 51% of its vote. Clearly, many of the residents of that district who voted for Obama also voted for Ryan.

In fact, even if one assumes that every voter in the district who voted for John McCain also voted for Ryan — and experience tells me that some did not — the conclusion that more than one–fourth of Obama's supporters must have voted for Ryan, too, is inescapable.

But Ryan has never been in a statewide race before. The elections of Walker and Johnson two years ago suggest that Wisconsin is receptive to the idea, but the most recent polls I have seen indicate that Obama is poised for a narrow victory in the state. Marquette University's latest poll shows Obama leading Romney, 50 to 45, which is about what most polls have been showing.

And conventional wisdom holds that, in an election involving an incumbent, undecided voters usually (but not unanimously) tend to break for the challenger. In that pre–Ryan environment, Democrats could anticipate a slim win in Wisconsin.

Of course, none of the polls were taken after Ryan was introduced as Romney's running mate.

Presumably, new surveys are being conducted now, which will give us some context for comparison as we get closer to Election Day.

If subsequent polls show the race tightening, Democrats may be forced to fight for Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes.

Random Thoughts About Paul Ryan

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The first thought I had this morning when I saw Paul Ryan being introduced as Mitt Romney's running mate was of Dan Quayle, vice president under George H.W. Bush.

Nearly 24 years ago to the day, Bush presented Quayle as his presumptive running mate at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans. Bush, of course, had been Ronald Reagan's vice president for eight years and was running more or less as the Gipper's substitute.

And, consequently, he benefited from Reagan's popularity.

But his choice of a running mate was widely criticized. Quayle, who was only about a year younger than Ryan is today, was bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm, yelping and squealing like a kid on a sugar high. Even some Republicans found it difficult to swallow.

In fact, none other than Ed Rollins, who managed Reagan's re–election campaign in 1984, lamented that the convention "was supposed to be [Bush's] showcase week," but that "got stomped on" by the selection of Quayle.

Initially, Ryan reminded me of Quayle, doing a little whooping and cheerleading as he walked to and then stood before a microphone. But, as he got into his remarks, it was clear that Ryan is no Dan Quayle. In comparison to Quayle, Ryan could be judged a success if he simply gets through his acceptance speech with a little maturity — and he showed more than a little of that in his introduction this morning.

In fact, Joe Biden is likely to realize rather quickly — probably well in advance of the vice presidential debate in a couple of months — that Ryan is no Sarah Palin, either. Palin's lack of knowledge on key issues was widely ridiculed, but nothing remotely like that could be said of Paul Ryan.

Ryan, wrote Michael Barone and Chuck McCutcheon in the 2012 Almanac of American Politics, "is regarded as an intellectual leader in the GOP for his unrivaled influence on fiscal matters."

Speaking of debates, Quayle made the observation in his debate with Lloyd Bentsen that his congressional career was as lengthy as John F. Kennedy's when he was elected president — which was almost, but not quite, correct and gave Bentsen the opening for his famous line that Quayle was "no Jack Kennedy."

(Ryan's congressional service actually does match Kennedy's in length.)

The Bush–Quayle ticket went on to win that 1988 election in spite of Quayle, but it was a different time, and no one yet knows the kind of impact Ryan may or may not have on the race. True, the Democrats led in the polls when both running mates were announced, but Bush overcame that during the general election campaign.

Romney doesn't face the kind of mountain to climb that Bush did, but he doesn't have the benefit of being a member of a successful lame–duck president's team, either.

Romney's task is just the opposite — to make the case that the Obama administration has been a failure — and Ryan seemed well qualified to make that argument.

No, Paul Ryan is no Dan Quayle. And he is no Sarah Palin.

Accept it.

The Silver Lining

As I have observed here before, I grew up in Arkansas.

And when I was growing up, there was a saying that nearly everyone around me could be heard to utter, at one time or another: "Thank God for Mississippi!"

I don't know how long they were saying that in Arkansas — and it's been awhile since I lived there, so they may well be saying it still ... for all I know. But it was always an article of faith, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it still is.

It stemmed from the fact that Arkansas usually ranked 48th or 49th in nearly every category — but Mississippi was usually 50th.

That was the silver lining for Arkansans — who weren't proud of the fact that the state lagged so far behind the others in nearly every meaningful category but who were grateful for the existence of Mississippi, without whom Arkansas would have been dead last in so many important things.

In the wake of yesterday's abysmal jobs report, supporters of Barack Obama have been grasping at anything that can give the news a positive spin. A negative jobs report at this stage of the president's re–election campaign cannot possibly help his cause, but that hasn't stopped his backers from trying to give the news a positive spin.

Call it their "Thank God for Mississippi" moment.

As usual, the White House got its rah rah from the New York Times. But it didn't strike me as being quite as enthusiastic as it usually is.

"The slow economy is getting slower," wrote the Times, apparently ignoring the influence of public policy while seizing the opportunity to criticize the president's congressional critics.

"Republicans in Congress seem more determined not only to block any boost that President Obama wants to give the economy," opined the Times, "but they are preparing to take the nation's credit rating hostage again over the debt ceiling. Mitt Romney, the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, has no new ideas."

The Times did acknowledge, however, that the numbers were "daunting." Unemployment went up (0.1%, to be sure, was not an astonishingly high number by itself, but it was alarming and disappointing for an administration that saw much more robust job creation a few months ago and was hoping for clear evidence of steady improvement); weekly wages went down (thanks to a drop in average hours worked); and nearly 5½ million Americans are now regarded as long–term unemployed.

The hardly unexpected news caused a chain reaction, along with Europe's economic woes, on Wall Street as each of the stock exchanges lost more than 2% of its volume.

But the Times chose to blame congressional Republicans, who have controlled only the House (and that for barely more than a year) since the 2006 midterm elections — "There's no sign that Washington is prepared to shoulder this responsibility," said the Times, declining to hold the president accountable — although it did acknowledge that, "[i]n the meantime, millions of Americans need jobs."

The Philadelphia Inquirer blithely called the jobs report a "letdown" that "baffled" economic experts who had anticipated better. I can assure you of one thing: When the experts are baffled, the rank and file become jittery, and they express themselves at the ballot box.

Many experts suggested that a (temporary) scapegoat is the fact that many of the unemployed who had given up the search were encouraged by job gains earlier this year to re–enter the workforce. The jobs still aren't there, but more people are actively looking for them.

Obviously, most of us would like to see those who have given up find a renewed resolve within themselves to seek employment. But, when they do, they can be so darned inconvenient.

I don't know if it was all those formerly discouraged job seekers jumping back into the far from tranquil employment waters, but few of the president's usual defenders have had anything to say about the latest job report. I guess they couldn't find a silver lining.

Jimmy Carter has been an unapologetic supporter of Obama, but, after he lets the news sink in and he reviews the unambiguous election returns on November 7 — and recalls how he has been reviled for more than three decades as the worst modern American president (which lets some rather notorious 19th–century chief executives off the hook) — he may be the only Democrat who can truly find a silver lining ...

What will Jimmy Carter say on that November day? Thank God for Barack Obama?

Goodbye and Good Luck

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Five years ago, I was a John Edwards supporter.

I had one of his bumper stickers on my vehicle, and I believed he was the best hope for the country.

The economic meltdown hadn't happened yet, and my assessment at that time, in the summer of 2007, was that the American public simply wasn't ready to elect a black president — or a female president.

I was a Democrat at the time, and I did not think either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton was the answer for the nation.

I believed the time would come for that, but the time wasn't right. I still didn't think the time was right when the meltdown happened in the autumn of 2008, and the major parties had already nominated Obama and John McCain.

That meltdown completely changed the nature of the 2008 campaign — and I think it is clear that it will heavily influence the 2012 campaign as well. But that is another story.

The story today is about Edwards' acquittal on one count and the jury's deadlock on the other counts in his corruption trial in Greensboro, N.C.

Much of the post–trial discussion has concerned whether the prosecution will attempt to re–try Edwards on the other five counts.

I do not think that is going to happen. I mean, the prosecution spent a lot of money on this trial and came away empty–handed. Many of the jurors probably will be interviewed now, and the weaknesses of the case will be revealed — which could, conceivably, lead prosecutors to pursue a conviction again with a new strategy.

But a Raleigh defense attorney told the Greensboro News–Record that he, too, thinks that is unlikely — and for the same reason as I do.

"They got their best witnesses, their best evidence and the judge ruled in their favor on all major evidentiary issues," he said. "The jury didn't believe them."

The jurors clearly didn't go for the case presented on the third count, which dealt with money that was given to the campaign by a wealthy heiress. It was the only one on which they all agreed.

And the prosecution's case on that count was probably the strongest one it had — which really isn't saying much. I'm no lawyer, and I didn't watch and/or read every report on this case, but I never felt the prosecution established its case. And I'm dubious that it will be able to do so in a do–over.

When I was a reporter covering trials in the county where I lived and worked, I learned a lot about the judicial system, lessons that seem to be repeated over and over again.

One lesson I learned was that there is no reliable way to predict what a jury will do. Don't believe me? Ask the experts who believed O.J. would be convicted of a double homicide or who were convinced that Casey Anthony murdered her daughter and there was no way she would escape the long arm of the law.

But both were acquitted.

And there are other such cases, some that only get local attention and are not the subjects of national attention but are still astonishing when they result in unanticipated verdicts.

Veteran court watchers look at jurors' body language during testimony and closing arguments and try to interpret what they are thinking, whether they have made up their minds. And I remember that such veterans did not hesitate to tell me, when I was a reporter, what they thought a quick verdict meant or what one that took several days' worth of deliberations to reach meant.

But, at best, their conclusions were and are only educated guesses.

Prosecutors may one day bring Edwards before a new jury and charge him with the remaining counts, but don't look for that right away. Their gun is out of bullets and, unless they come up with a new bullet that is sure to bring down their prey, I don't expect to see him in court on these charges again.

Another thought struck me as I watched Edwards' press conference this afternoon.

He said all the right things. His problems were of his own doing, he said, no one else's. In spite of that, though, God is not finished with him yet, he said. "I really believe he thinks there's still some good things I can do."

Perhaps Edwards is right. Perhaps God is not finished with him.

But I am.

Why We Can't Have a Serious Talk

Last night, I read an article in the Washington Post about the recent electoral embarrassments that have been handed to Barack Obama in Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Obama, of course, is the incumbent, and he has drawn no serious opposition for the Democrats' nomination. Consequently, some people apparently believe, the Democrats in the primaries that are being held late in the process should line up like good Democrats and vote for the incumbent.

Even if they have objections.

But the voters in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky have thrown Obama an off–speed pitch when he was looking for a fastball. About two–fifths of the Democratic voters voted for token opposition — in West Virginia, that meant voting for an inmate who is presently incarcerated here in Texas — rather than for the president, who long ago secured his nomination.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes that many Democrats have a ready excuse for the political resistance they have encountered within their own party — they "ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism."

Most Democrats speak disparagingly of George W. Bush. And I have no fondness for him, either.

But this is a tactic those Democrats share with Bush and his supporters — and they have been every bit as gleeful in its use and in anticipation of its power to squelch serious discussions.

Sure, it was disguised differently when Bush was president. In those not–so–distant days, anyone who disagreed with Bush on anything was labeled unpatriotic.

End of discussion. Once you have been tarred with that brush, you might as well stop trying.

No matter how strongly you may feel about the issue, no matter how many legitimate concerns you may have, no matter how many hours you may have spent arguing with yourself about it, if the other side has labeled you a racist or unpatriotic, there is nothing you can say to reverse that conclusion, no logic you can offer, no facts you can provide.

But that doesn't mean the allegation is true.

Oh, to be sure, there are people today who do permit race (or religion or gender or sexual preference or anything else) to determine how they will vote, just as there have always been people who were racist (or sexist or homophobic or whatever). And there are people among us who are not patriotic Americans — they have always been with us, too.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in a free society.

But it's not so easy to know who the racists and unpatriotic citizens are. In my experience, they usually don't advertise the fact or leave tell–tale clues behind. They might share their views with like–minded individuals, but they don't usually tend to share them with strangers.

"The problem with that theory," Cillizza writes, "is that it's almost entirely unprovable because it relies on assuming knowledge about voter motivations that — without being a mindreader — no one can know."

It's true that Obama lost all three of those states in 2008, and it is quite likely that he will lose all three in 2012. I don't see a racial backlash in these votes. I see a repeat of a phenomenon I have seen many times in the past — when a candidate locks up his party's nomination, disgruntled voters in the late primaries are emboldened to vote for any alternative on the ballot.

It's an electoral protest, and it should be taken seriously. My experience tells me Democrats shouldn't be dismissive about it.

In 1980 (when another Democrat president was running for re–election), I was living in Arkansas. Gov. Bill Clinton was seeking his second two–year term as governor. He looked like a sure thing. He was young and charismatic, and his only opponent in the party primary was a 77–year–old retired turkey farmer who barely scraped up enough money to pay the filing fee.

Clinton's opponent had no campaign staff or finances to speak of, but he received more than 30% of the vote when the Democrats held their primary.

The governor's staff and supporters insisted that it didn't mean a thing, and, in Arkansas, it was generally accepted that it really didn't mean much. Arkansans, after all, had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction.

But they elected another one that November — narrowly.

Both political extremes use the term fascism almost casually in their references to each other, which I find to be alarming — as well as an appalling display of an absence of knowledge.

Neither side is truly fascist — at least, not yet. But, with their blatant use of what Adolf Hitler called "the big lie," it is clear that it probably wouldn't take much to push either one over the edge.

"Make the lie big," Hitler said, "make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

It was a lie when Bush's supporters accused his detractors of being unpatriotic. It's a lie when Obama's supporters accuse his detractors of being racist.

It has a chilling effect on dissent, and that makes it one of the most anti–democratic (that's democrat with a lowercase d) assertions imaginable.

Forecasting an Incumbent's Chances

We are just about six months away from the 2012 election.

In the early days of my collegiate career, I was a political science major, and one of the things my professors drummed into my head (and the heads of my peers) was the conviction that voters reach their conclusions about an incumbent about six months before the election.

That is a piece of conventional wisdom that has held up rather well, whereas I have found that people who rely on surveys that measure the likability of an incumbent inevitably are misled.

When times are generally good, as they were when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore, voters can afford the luxury of picking the presidential candidate with whom they would rather share a beer. (Of course, the incumbent wasn't on the ballot that year.)

But when times are not good, likability takes a backseat to competence with most voters. In 1972, for example, when Richard Nixon was seeking a second term, the Vietnam War was still unpopular and there was some dissatisfaction with the economy, but voters were influenced more by whether they thought he was doing a good job (and most did) than whether they liked him (and most did not).

Job approval surveys didn't make their debut until Franklin Roosevelt had already won his second term — and FDR has always struck me as being a special case, having been elected president four times. The margins were different each time, and, of course, one of the issues when Roosevelt sought his third and fourth terms was whether any American president should be allowed to serve more than two terms. Some people who had supported him the first two times opposed him the second two times for that very reason.

Those campaigns for the third and fourth terms qualify as unique cases, therefore, and job approval surveys were still evolving, anyway, so the conventional wisdom of which my professors spoke isn't really applicable.

Nor, for that matter, is it applicable to 1948, when Harry Truman defeated Tom Dewey in an "upset."

I don't mean to suggest that Truman's victory wasn't a surprise (it was) or that voters were insincere when they told pollsters they didn't approve of the job he was doing.

I'm just mindful of the fact that Truman was completing FDR's fourth term. He hadn't been elected president. He was elected vice president.

And, while I can't speak for everyone, I can say that I have never based my presidential preference on the identity of the running mate. Those who choose which ticket to support on that basis are all but assuming that the guy at the top of the ticket won't complete the term.

That strikes me as being the same thing as trying to prove a negative, and, at least in my opinion, it is the wrong way to choose a president.

(In 1980, I did know some people who supported Ronald Reagan because George H.W. Bush was his running mate, and they figured that there was no way Reagan could survive the term. They became increasingly frustrated as Reagan simply refused to die — even after he had been shot — and they wound up having to wait eight years until Bush was elected on his own.

(There are sure to be some who have voted on that basis in other elections. I'm confident there were those who voted against some Republican tickets because Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle were on them. But my gut feeling is that their numbers were few.)

Besides, job approval surveys were still evolving, as I say, and the 1948 election would have a significant influence on how such surveys were conducted in the future.

So I don't include Roosevelt or Truman in such comparisons. Approval polling methods were still primitive when they occupied the White House.

But, by 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower sought his second term, a lot had been learned.

For one thing, pollsters kept polling right up until Election Day. They didn't stop polling long before the election, as they had in 1948 because it was a foregone conclusion that Truman would lose.

In early May 1956, Gallup found that 69% of respondents approved of the job Eisenhower had been doing.

A lot of that may have been due to something of a wave of sympathy for Ike. He had suffered a heart attack about eight months earlier. If the May approval rating was influenced by his health, that wave crested well before Election Day 1956, but Eisenhower still carried 41 states and received 57% of the popular vote.

Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy, died before the end of his term, and his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, had been president for less than a year when he won a full term.

Six months before the election, three–fourths of the respondents to a Gallup survey approved of the job that he was doing — but that, too, may have been the result of public sympathy.

Johnson went on to win the 1964 election by a landslide — but, four years later, the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War forced Johnson to drop out of the race, and a month after he did so, the approval ratings appeared to confirm the wisdom of his decision.

In April 1968, Johnson's approval rating, as reported by Gallup, dropped below 50% and never exceeded that number again. It was tumbling by May.

Consequently, Johnson's decision to drop out of the race seems prescient in hindsight. Odds are, he wouldn't have been successful, even if he had been renominated.

Nixon replaced LBJ, and his Gallup approval ratings in May 1972 hinted at what was to come.

Nixon's job approval six months before the election was somewhere between 54% (his rating in late April) and 62% (his rating in late May). On Election Day, more than three–fifths of the voters endorsed his bid for a second term.

One can argue, of course, that Nixon's campaign was tainted by the illegal activities of his staff and his own involvement in efforts to cover up those activities. But the bottom line is that the job approval ratings pretty accurately measured how voters felt about the Nixon presidency in mid–1972.

Nixon's second term was cut short by the Watergate scandal, and his replacement, Gerald Ford, enjoyed high approval ratings in his first month in office, but his ratings declined rapidly after he pardoned Nixon.

In May 1976, he received approval ratings that hinted at what would happen in the election. For members of Barack Obama's staff, it might be instructive to study the Ford campaign because Ford's approval in mid–1976 was close to where Obama's has been lately — just short of 50%.

Ford, of course, went on to lose to Jimmy Carter in a very close election. Some people have been tempted to presume that it was almost entirely because, not having voted for him to begin with, voters felt no real allegiance to Ford — but he lost largely due to his job performance, because he pardoned Nixon, not because voters stopped liking him. He was still affable Jerry Ford in the minds of most.

But voters did not like the decision to pardon Nixon.

The voters definitely soured on Carter by the time he sought a second term in 1980, and the approval ratings six months out did more than hint at that. In May 1980, Gallup found that the share of voters who approved of the job he had been doing was in the upper 30s and lower 40s.

When the voters went to the polls that November, Carter received 41% of the vote and carried six states. Reagan was elected in a landslide.

In 1984, Reagan won a second term in spite of a jobless rate that was higher than it had been for any successful incumbent in nearly 50 years.

It was conceded at the time that Reagan was widely liked by the American people, but their electoral endorsement of his presidency in November was foreshadowed by Gallup polls in May that indicated that (1) a majority approved of the job he was doing, and (2) that majority was growing, not declining.

When the votes were counted in November, Reagan received nearly 59% of the vote and carried 49 states.

Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, was elected in 1988 when Reagan was constitutionally prohibited from running again, and his lightning–like victory in the Gulf War seemed to be propelling him to a second term — but a funny thing happened to Bush on the way. A recession derailed him.

The recession was mild by historical standards — certainly when compared to the one that Americans have been slogging through since late 2007 — but it was bad enough to lower Bush's approval ratings from the 50s in late 1991 to 42% by May 1992, according to Gallup.

Once again, it was a reliable predictor of the incumbent's fate. Bush went on to lose to Bill Clinton in a three–man race.

The economy was better four years later when Clinton sought his second term.

Clinton's Democrats lost control of Congress during the 1994 midterms, but Clinton, through a combination of shrewd political moves and sheer good fortune, was on an upward trajectory in May 1996. Six months before the election, CNN/Time reported that 51% of Americans approved of the job he was doing; Gallup found that 55% approved.

The endorsements were solid, if not resounding — as were November's election returns. Clinton was re–elected with 49% of the vote and the support of 31 states.

In 2000, of course, George W. Bush defeated Gore in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Although extremely rare, such an outcome was not unheard of — but, to be old enough to remember the last time it happened, one would have to be at least 130 years old when Bush was elected — and there were no job approval surveys in those days.

That probably made Bush something of an exception to the conventional wisdom concerning the relationship between job approval numbers and eventual electoral verdicts on incumbents — since he hadn't received the support of at least a plurality of the voters the first time, as nearly every duly elected president has.

But the job approval rule still held true when Bush sought his second term in 2004.

The job approval ratings in May 2004 warned Bush that he would face a close race in November. NBC/Wall Street Journal, Gallup and other surveys in early May found about as many Americans who disapproved of his job performance as approved.

And that was borne out in the general election, when Bush received less than 51% of the vote and the support of 31 states. In the Electoral College, he defeated John Kerry by 35, 286 to 251.

What will all this mean in the 2012 election? I guess that remains to be seen.

Next Sunday is precisely six months from Election Day, so any job approval numbers that are announced on or after that date could be said to be potential indicators of what to expect in November.

But Gallup reports that, according to his job approval average for his 13th quarter in office, Obama's ratings are below the average for presidents who went on to win re–election.

They're even below one president — Carter — who was defeated in his campaign for re–election.

J. Robert Smith makes intriguing observations in American Thinker that speak to the relevance of history — even though he doesn't connect the dots between job approval ratings and an incumbent's odds of winning a second term.

"Presidential election history gives us indications," Smith writes, "that Mr. Obama either squeaks back into the White House or gets an undignified boot in the back of his designer trousers. ... [O]nly Jerry Ford lost his re–election bid narrowly. Odds are, if Mr. Obama loses, it will probably be on the order of [Herbert] Hoover (1932) or Carter (1980)."

Manchin's Fence Straddling

Most folks shouldn't be overly concerned about West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's revelation that he hasn't decided whether to vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney this fall.

Manchin, 64, was one of the few Democrats who prospered in the 2010 midterms, winning the seat long held by the late Robert Byrd.

His victory really came as no surprise. Electing Democrats is a long tradition in West Virginia. Since the Stock Market Crash of 1929, West Virginia has elected (or appointed) more Republicans to complete unexpired Senate terms than have been elected to full six–year terms — and there haven't been many of either.

And supporting Democratic presidential nominees has been a tradition there, too — at least, until recently.

But Manchin's margin fell short of what was to be expected in 2010.

The campaign in 2010 was only about who would complete Byrd's unexpired term, which still had two years left. Manchin knew that, if he won, he would have to go before the voters again two years later.

And, in 2010, as a popular governor, he was able to win the vacant Senate seat in part because he had insisted he would keep an open mind about whether to support Obama in 2012.

That's a promise he seems to be keeping.

Even if he has made up his mind which candidate to support, Manchin has walked a fine line in his home state, and he will continue to walk it for most of the campaign. Obama has not been very popular in West Virginia, and, although he was a popular governor, Manchin only won election to the Senate by less than 55,000 votes out of more than half a million cast.

There isn't much room for error, and Manchin is probably wise to keep his cards close to his vest. Even if polls show Obama taking an unlikely lead in West Virginia, my guess is that it will be tenuous, at best, and Manchin probably won't reveal his presidential preference publicly.

He's likely to retain the seat in a rematch with 2010 Republican candidate John Raese, reports Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, but Manchin doesn't want to take any chances of alienating anyone.

West Virginia has voted Republican in the last three presidential elections, and many voters there remain upset with the health care reform law that may be overturned by the Supreme Court.

In October 2010, several months after the law was passed, Manchin told the voters he would have voted against the legislation if he had been in the Senate at the time.

Even then, he was keeping his distance from the administration

As I said earlier, I think that will continue.

What does it mean? I'm inclined to think it doesn't mean as much as a lot of people would like to think. It strikes me as a political move, not a philosophical one.

After all, it isn't as if Manchin's fence straddling represents some kind of defection — or potential defection. Manchin wasn't a member of the Senate when it supported the so–called Obamacare legislation — but he did say early in the year that he supported it (only to reverse himself before the election).

And he drew a distinction between himself and other Democrats by resisting the bill to reduce carbon emissions — a bill that was unpopular in coal country.

Let's keep Manchin's electoral history in mind here. When he was elected governor the first time in 2004, he received 64% of the popular vote. When he sought a second term in 2008, he received 70%.

His 53% showing in the 2010 Senate race must have been a bit of a shock, but it appears to have conditioned him.

If Manchin had received three–fifths of the vote in 2010 — and if polls had shown him enjoying that kind of lead late in the campaign — he might still have spoken favorably of the health care reform legislation.

But Manchin had to fight for it — and he may have to fight for it again.

His main interest in 2010 is his Senate seat — and the absence of support for his party's nominee is not a reflection — either favorable or unfavorable — on the president's performance in office.

Now, if other embattled Democrats begin to defect, that will be another story.

Registered Voters and Likely Voters

There is an important distinction between polls of registered voters and likely voters.

I have to make this point to people in every election cycle, but it seems particularly relevant this time.

It's easy to be a registered voter. Registration drives are so numerous that, in many places, you can register to vote at your local shopping center or campus. (I recall overhearing a snippet of a conversation between some of my students about voting. One student expressed what appeared to be genuine surprise that she was not automatically registered to vote on her 18th birthday.)

It wasn't that simple when I was a child. Most people know, I guess, of the many barriers that were erected by state and local folks (notoriously in the South but elsewhere, too) to prevent minorities from registering, but it wasn't quite as simple then as it is now.

Even those who did not have to pass literacy tests or jump through any of those other hoops had to go to a specific office during office hours to register. That was what I had to do when I registered to vote for the first time.

Anyway, it took a special effort to get registered to vote in those days. You couldn't just walk up to a card table while you were browsing video games or T–shirts. As a result, I presume that being a registered voter carried a little more weight with pollsters then than it does now.

Gradually, pollsters have been inclined to differentiate between garden–variety registered voters and voters who are truly likely to vote — and the definition of a likely voter may well change as the practice of polling evolves.

But, right now, most polling organizations define likely voters as those who have an established history of participating in elections. Obviously, that de–emphasizes the youngest voters, even if participation is minimally defined (say, for instance, voting in at least the last two election cycles).

Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, has said that Gallup's designation of likely voter depends on several factors — demographics mostly ("[e]verything else being equal, certain types of people are more likely to vote than others"), although he acknowledges the existence of factors that are "idiosyncratic and can reflect one of a hundred characteristics that come into play in any given election."

(Some organizations define likely voters as those who have some kind of record of participating in midterm elections — so if 2012 is going to be the first election in which you will be old enough to vote, such organizations would not consider you a likely voter, no matter how determined you may be.)

There is some logic in differentiating between those who are merely registered to vote and those who are likely to participate.

As I mentioned earlier, it's pretty easy these days to get your name on the voter registration list — even if it doesn't happen automatically. But actually showing up at the polls and voting is another thing entirely.

Just as it is easy to register to vote, it is also easy to answer a pollster's question about which candidate you support. But it is those who show up who get to make the decisions.

More and more, as Election Day draws closer, pollsters will be emphasizing those voters who are likely to show up — as opposed to those won't make the commitment in time or personal resources to the act of voting.

For Barack Obama, that might not be such a bad thing.

Voters who tend to be regarded as registered but not likely to participate include the young, minorities and low–income people — all groups that propelled Obama to the White House in 2008. Obama's support remains high among blacks, but Molly Ball of The Atlantic has wondered if Obama has problems with young voters (those between 18 and 24).

Obama "remains dramatically better liked by young voters than [Mitt] Romney," Ball writes, but "less than half" support his bid for a second term. Emphasizing only approval and not likelihood of participation could be of benefit to the incumbent — but not if one is familiar with young voters's voting history.

Anyway, most of the polls that you will see at this juncture in the general election campaign are surveys of registered voters. There will be more polls of likely voters the closer we get to the election.

There are a few polls of likely voters out there but not many. Rasmussen released a poll today that was a survey of likely voters — and it shows the race as, for all intents and purposes, a dead heat.

That means little — if anything — about 6½ months before the votes are counted. Besides, most of the polls these days are of registered voters, and those surveys show Obama leading, typically by about four or five points.

Some media outlets have tried to make sense of all the conflicting signals coming from the April surveys, and you can take encouragement from whichever poll supports your position today, but I suggest keeping an eye on the polls of likely voters as we get closer to Election Day.

The Emerging Electoral Map

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Thirty weeks from today, America goes to the polls.

With the exception of the farthest corners of the extreme right, it seems that more and more Republicans now are acknowledging that Mitt Romney will be their standard bearer in the fall — and that he will be the only realistic alternative to Barack Obama.

The plausible scenarios in which Romney could be denied the nomination on the first ballot are dwindling.

Thus, attention is shifting to a different kind of math from the delegate math that has obsessed Republican observers to this point — electoral vote math.

Each presidential election is unique, of course. The circumstances are unique, and the candidates, even those who are not running for the first time, are unique.

Incumbents usually have evolving philosophies shaped by their time in the White House. They learn — sometimes early, sometimes late — that things are not as simple from the inside as they appear to be from the outside. Their rhetoric tends to reflect that.

Presidential nominees who lose a general election, even one that is close, almost never get a second chance anymore, but Richard Nixon did, and he was triumphant the second time in part because of a strategy built around the idea that he was a "new Nixon" who had learned from defeat.

Nixon also followed strategies that played on lessons from history. Faced with two rivals in 1968, he devised a "Southern strategy" that exploited racism and used fear as a wedge tactic. Nixon — and, in a more primitive form and with considerably less success, Barry Goldwater four years earlier — laid the foundation for the GOP's steady takeover of the South in the latter 20th century.

Knowledge of electoral history often makes it easier to predict the outcome of a current race — in some states anyway. For example:

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The Sure Things

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These are states that have regularly favored one party over the other or recent margins have been lopsided — sometimes both.

Both Romney and Obama can expect to win some states like that — and, frankly, little needs to be said about them.

Romney has 14 states in this group: Alabama (9 electoral votes), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Nebraska (5), Oklahoma (7), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), Utah (6), Wyoming (3). Total = 120 electoral votes.

Obama has 10 states (and D.C.) in this group: California (55 electoral votes), Connecticut (7), D.C. (3), Hawaii (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12). Total = 145 electoral votes.

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The Probables

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The outcomes in these states appear likely to favor a particular nominee, but, for one reason or another, there is some residual doubt — and that doubt likely will remain until the election is over.

Romney has nine states meeting this description: Arizona (11), Colorado (9), Georgia (16), Indiana (11), Montana (3), North Dakota (3), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), West Virginia (5). Total = 70 electoral votes.

• Arizona, of course, is John McCain's home state, but it probably would have supported him in 2008 even if he was from a state two time zones away. It has consistently supported Republicans for more than half a century. Since 1952, Arizona has supported only one Democrat, but that exception is noteworthy. It was Bill Clinton when he ran for re–election in 1996.
  
  Will Arizona vote for another incumbent Democrat seeking a second term? It didn't vote for President Carter in 1980 or President Johnson in 1964.
• Colorado voted Republican in nine of the previous 10 elections before voting for Obama in 2008. It was reminiscent of 1992, when Clinton snapped a six–election Republican winning streak in the Rocky Mountain State. But Colorado turned against Clinton when he sought re–election, and it is a good bet that the same will happen this time. Colorado hasn't voted for Democrat nominees in consecutive presidential elections since the 1930s.
• I have a friend who assured me in 2008 that Georgia would vote for Obama. My friend lived in Atlanta at the time, and I think his judgment was clouded somewhat by his enthusiasm for Obama. Anyway, Georgia's black population didn't turn out to have nearly the clout he thought it would, and Georgia voted Republican, as it has in six of the last seven elections.
  
  Georgia bucked the Republican trend in the South in 1980 when it stood by native son Jimmy Carter and in 1992 when it endorsed Clinton; other than that, it has been in the GOP column for the last three decades.
  
  I expect Georgia to remain in the Republican column this fall, but it is possible that the progressive element in Georgia could carry the day.
• When Indiana voted for Obama in 2008, it snapped a streak of 10 consecutive elections in which the Hoosier State voted for the Republican. It seems likely that Indiana will return to its traditional ways this November. Indiana has not voted for Democrats in consecutive elections since the 1930s.
• Montana's incumbent Democrat senator is facing a tough fight for re–election, and that could mean trouble at the top of the ticket. It isn't as if Democrats have a lot of wiggle room in Montana, anyway. The state has voted Republican in 10 of the last 11 elections. As it is with Colorado, the exception is 1992, when Clinton carried Montana as the challenger.
  
  But incumbent Democrats usually struggle there. That's not a new development for the senator, who won the seat by less than 4,000 votes, and LBJ was the only incumbent Democrat who was able to cruise to victory there in a presidential race since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor seven decades ago.
• North Dakota has only voted for one Democrat since 1936, and Republicans usually poll in the upper 50s or low 60s there, but Obama held McCain below 55% last time.
  
  I don't know if that will be important or not, but, if the race is as close as many observers seem to think, even three electoral votes can be significant.
• South Carolina has voted Republican in every election but one since 1960. The exception was Carter's near–sweep of the South in 1976. But the Republican share of the vote declined in 2008, which made me wonder if the times were changing in Strom Thurmond's stomping grounds.
  
  Such thoughts seem to have been premature. South Carolina voters elected a Republican governor, re–elected a Republican senator and ousted a Democratic incumbent who was a 28–year House veteran.
• South Dakota has only voted Democrat three times since the dawn of the 20th century, but the GOP share of the vote there declined in 2008.
• Until George W. Bush won West Virginia in 2000, that state had not supported a non–incumbent Republican since before the Great Depression. It's been nearly a century since West Virginia voted against an incumbent Democrat, but the state has been trending Republican, having gone for the GOP nominee in the last three elections.

Obama has five states meeting this description: Delaware (3), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14). Total = 51 electoral votes.

• One would expect the Democrats to hold on to Delaware. It is the home state of the vice president, and it has voted for the Democratic nominee five straight times. But Delaware is streaky that way. In five of the six elections prior to that, Delaware sided with the Republicans.
• Illinois is the state Obama represented in the U.S. Senate. He should be expected to win that one, right? He probably will, but Illinois is large enough that, if other states in that part of the country are in play, Illinois will be the target of some spirited campaigning on both sides as well. I think it will be a battleground in 2012.
• Maine wasn't always the apparently solid Democratic state it is today. Before its current five–election streak, Maine usually supported Republicans. It voted for the Democratic ticket in 1964 and 1968 (when its junior senator was nominated for vice president), but it voted heavily against Jack Kennedy in 1960, and it was one of two states (Vermont was the other) that never supported Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  
  Recent elections would suggest that Maine will be back in the Democrats' column this fall — but if the GOP nominee is a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, who knows (especially with an open Senate seat and the leading contender for it being a former governor who is an independent)?
• Minnesota has the nation's longest active uninterrupted streak of endorsements of Democratic tickets. The last time it voted for a Republican was 40 years ago, in 1972 — and, based on the numbers, it did so reluctantly that year — but no Democrat has received 55% or more of Minnesota's popular vote, other than Lyndon Johnson, in the last 60 years.
  
  Minnesota probably will be in the Democrats' column in November — but it might be vulnerable if other large midwestern states are competitive.
• New Jersey, too, appears to be a lock for the Democrats. It has voted Democrat in five straight elections, but it voted Republican in the six elections before that. In fact, in the last half of the 20th century, New Jersey often gave the winners slender margins of victory — even in years when other states were voting heavily for one side or the other.
  
  That primarily seems to be due to cultural issues. Jersey doesn't seem to be as responsive to conservative positions on social issues as other states are, and its rather large ethnic population (18% Hispanic, 13% black, 8% Asian) tends to favor progressive positions on immigration.
  
  All that could be rendered irrelevant, though, if New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is chosen to be Romney's running mate.

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The Leaners

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These states seem likely to vote in a certain way, but history suggests the results may be much closer than expected. Romney has two states in this column: North Carolina (15), Virginia (13). Total = 28 electoral votes. Before 2008, I would have said both of these states would be in the Republican column. North Carolina hadn't voted for a Democrat since 1976, and Virginia hadn't voted for a Democrat since 1964. But Obama won both in 2008. They weren't decisive victories, though, and there is no reason for Democrats to take them for granted in 2012. Obama has two states in this column: Michigan (16), New Mexico (5). Total = 21 electoral votes. "For a moment in history," write "The Almanac of American Politics" authors Michael Barone and Chuck McCutcheon, "Michigan was a bellwether state," explaining that, in the elections of the 1980s, Michigan voted within 1% of the national average. Those were clearly Republican years, though, and, in the elections before and since, Michigan tended to vote a little higher for Democrats than most states. A noteworthy exception was 1976, when Michigan voted for native son Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. Thirty–six years later, another Republican with ties to Michigan will be on the ballot. Michigan was hit hard by the recession and struggled with high unemployment. Will it vote for Obama again, or will it support the son of a popular former governor? New Mexico voted for Obama by more than 15 percentage points in 2008, but the vote is usually much closer than that. The 2008 election was the first time a presidential nominee carried New Mexico by a double–digit margin in nearly a quarter of a century. Now, if all those states really do vote as I have indicated, that would mean Romney would carry 25 states with 218 electoral votes and Obama would win 17 states worth 217 electoral votes. Which brings us to ...

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Too Close to Call/The Battlegrounds

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I believe these eight states (worth a total of 103 electoral votes) are where the election will be won. Florida (29), Iowa (6), Missouri (10), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10). If you look at the results of the last 10 elections (1972–2008), you will find that Republicans have won Florida, Missouri and Nevada seven times and New Hampshire and Ohio six times. On the flip side, although Florida voted against Clinton when he was elected in '92, it supported his bid for a second term. In fact, in its entire existence as a state, Florida has only voted against one incumbent Democrat (Jimmy Carter) seeking another term. New Hampshire, long a sure thing for Republicans, has voted for Democrats in four of the last five elections. Obama's share of the vote there in 2008 was greater than any Democrat's since Lyndon Johnson, but the 2010 vote implied that New Hampshire will probably be close this fall — a Democrat was re–elected governor, a Republican was elected to the U.S. Senate and Republicans seized both of the state's House seats from the Democrats. Ohio and Missouri have been 20th–century bellwethers. Ohio has been on the winning side in every election since 1964, and Missouri was on the winning side in every election from 1960 to 2004. Democrats have won Wisconsin seven times and Pennsylvania six times. Most people would probably concede Wisconsin to the Democrats (they've won the state six straight times), but I'm inclined to wait and see the results of the gubernatorial recall election in June. For more than 30 years (from 1976 to 2004), Pennsylvania was the scene of spirited campaigns on both sides and never voted for either party by more than 10 percentage points. In 2008, Pennsylvanians gave Obama a double–digit victory over John McCain (just barely), and most observers would probably expect the Democrats to win there again, as they have in every presidential election since 1992. But in 2010, Pennsylvania elected a Republican governor and a Republican senator. Seems to me that casts a certain amount of doubt over the eventual outcome there. Iowa has split down the middle, voting for each party five times. It tends to support most incumbents these days, but that was not always the case. Iowa voted against the last two presidents who were denied a second term (Carter and George H.W. Bush), and the outcome there may hold significant implications for the rest of the country. If history is any guide, the last four decades indicate that Republicans are likely to win 67 electoral votes, Democrats are likely to win 30, and Iowa's six will be up for grabs. But that is strictly a look at how states have voted in the last 40 years. Things can always change. If that is, indeed, how things turn out, though, Iowa's vote won't produce a cliffhanger like the one in 2000 when the press camped out in Florida for a month waiting for the historic Supreme Court ruling that determined the winner of its electoral votes. Nevertheless, it certainly isn't as cut and dried as all that. Florida's population differs greatly from other Southern states in nearly every demographic category imaginable and, while other Southern states were giving Republican nominees double–digit margins, the tallies in both Florida and Ohio tended to be much closer — less than 7% in both states in the last five presidential elections and less than 5% in both states in the last three.

Clearly, neither party can consider either state locked up until the votes are counted in November.