A step in the right direction.” That’s what Barack Obama said
in Poland, Ohio, about Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment
report, which showed only 80,000 net new jobs and unemployment
remaining at 8.2 percent.
The thought will occur to many, not all of them Obama detractors, that this was at best a baby step. It’s not enough to keep up with population growth, much less to restore the low unemployment rates of most of the 1990s and 2000s. Another thought will occur to professional amateur political strategists: Why did the president’s campaign schedule a two-day bus tour of northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania to coincide with the day the unemployment numbers were announced?
Sure, Ohio and Pennsylvania are important states politically. They have 18 and 20 electoral votes, and Obama carried them in 2008 with 51 and 54 percent of the votes. But current polling shows Obama with only 46 percent in Ohio and 47 percent in Pennsylvania, when paired against Mitt Romney.
Obama’s bus tour was aimed at the historically Democratic Rust Belt territory. Since the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, and United Rubber Workers organized the steel, auto, and rubber factories in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, and Toledo, this has been prime Democratic territory. Even in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was winning a 59 to 40 percent landslide, this Rust Belt — 19 counties of northern and eastern Ohio and 14 counties of western Pennsylvania — voted 52 to 47 percent for Walter Mondale. It was 12 points more Democratic than the national average. If these 33 counties had been a single state, they would have cast 19 electoral votes for Mondale, more than doubling the 13 he won from his native Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304973/obama-nothing-rust-belt-michael-barone
The thought will occur to many, not all of them Obama detractors, that this was at best a baby step. It’s not enough to keep up with population growth, much less to restore the low unemployment rates of most of the 1990s and 2000s. Another thought will occur to professional amateur political strategists: Why did the president’s campaign schedule a two-day bus tour of northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania to coincide with the day the unemployment numbers were announced?
Sure, Ohio and Pennsylvania are important states politically. They have 18 and 20 electoral votes, and Obama carried them in 2008 with 51 and 54 percent of the votes. But current polling shows Obama with only 46 percent in Ohio and 47 percent in Pennsylvania, when paired against Mitt Romney.
Obama’s bus tour was aimed at the historically Democratic Rust Belt territory. Since the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, and United Rubber Workers organized the steel, auto, and rubber factories in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, and Toledo, this has been prime Democratic territory. Even in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was winning a 59 to 40 percent landslide, this Rust Belt — 19 counties of northern and eastern Ohio and 14 counties of western Pennsylvania — voted 52 to 47 percent for Walter Mondale. It was 12 points more Democratic than the national average. If these 33 counties had been a single state, they would have cast 19 electoral votes for Mondale, more than doubling the 13 he won from his native Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304973/obama-nothing-rust-belt-michael-barone
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