By: Michael Tomasky
It was a rare confessional moment for Barack Obama. At a Miami fundraiser in mid-June, the president acknowledged that it’s “not as cool” as it was in 2008 to support him. It isn’t just a matter of fewer hip posters and viral videos. It’s a matter of votes. Rekindling the enthusiasm of African-Americans, educated white liberals, Latinos, young people, and union members–the Democratic Party’s most loyal and progressive members–will be a huge challenge. After all, you can only elect the first African-American president once, and the past two and a half years have deeply disappointed many liberals. “I know a lot of the kids who worked hard in 2008,” says Hodding Carter III, adviser to the last one-term Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) and now a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “They walk around like cattle who’ve been hit with stun guns between their eyes. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

Obama and his people have heard this sort of thing so often that they no longer bother to take umbrage. When I asked chief Obama reelection guru David Axelrod about this sense of disillusionment, he patiently ticked off a list of accomplishments: health-care reform, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” financial regulatory reform, the drawdown from Iraq, student-loan reform. “Did we keep faith with the things that the president said he would do when he ran?” asks Axelrod. “There is a long list of things he said he’d do that we in fact did.”

It’s a solid inventory. But it’s countered by the undeniable reality that the country hasn’t noticeably moved in a more liberal direction (quite the opposite), and by the widely held perception among progressives that Obama will never wage fierce battle on behalf of liberal ideals. When I interviewed Justin Ruben, the executive director of MoveOn.org, whose 5 million members (many in swing states) must be revved up and mobilized if the president is to be reelected, he gave me four or five variants of the line “People need to feel like the president and the Democrats are really going to fight for their side.”

   President Obama arrives in Miami on June 13.

Unfortunately, making tough, partisan economic arguments has never been the president’s strong suit. “Since the beginning of his candidacy in 2007, Barack has struggled to put together a sustained, winning economic argument,” said Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a Washington-based think tank.

“With ‘Morning in America’ not really a viable option for 2012, he is going to have to draw brighter lines with the GOP, and particularly do much more to discredit their failed and reckless economic approach.”

The base vote can still emerge in large numbers, but the dominant factor this time won’t be hope and change. Instead, the factors will be fear of the other side, state and local political conditions (think of how motivated Democrats are to regain control of their politics in Wisconsin), and demographic changes that are still redounding to the Democrats’ benefit. And because we elect presidents by states, the place to assess Obama’s prospects is on the ground.

Wake County, N.C.; Arapahoe County, Colo.; Franklin County, Ohio–these are representative base Democratic counties. They are in swing states, which means the president will need a big vote in these places to offset a presumed high conservative turnout in other parts of these states. And they are counties that have only recently become solidly Democratic, because of demographic changes. “Obama’s majorities in these counties are not secure,” says Ruy Teixeira, coauthor of the 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, which predicted the bluing of states like then-red Colorado. “He needs a full-bore mobilization effort in these counties to get his supporters out and develop the margins he needs to carry swing states like Ohio, Colorado, and North Carolina.”

Wake County is home to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. Bush won it by 7 points in 2000 and then, in a sign that demographics were changing, by just 2 points in 2004 against the Yankee John Kerry. But in 2008 Obama blew it open–a 15-point win, 57-42, and a turnout 80,000 votes higher than in ’04. Since then? Very different story. In 2009 voters installed an aggressive conservative majority on the school board, and in 2010 Republicans took a congressional seat and swept most state and county offices (the GOP won back both statehouses last year).

I don’t know a single expert who thinks Obama has a great shot at winning the Tarheel State again. But he wants it badly enough to hold the Democratic convention in Charlotte (Mecklenburg will be another county to watch). Mack Paul, the attorney who chairs the Wake County Democratic Party, believes that population growth has brought in more Democrats since 2008, and he insists, “I hear more anger directed at Democrats who don’t support the president.” His GOP counterpart, Sue Bryant, ventures that her party’s candidate might just carry Wake, but “even if we come within 5 points here, that’s the election in North Carolina.”

In Arapahoe County, outside Denver, Democrats only recently came to outnumber Republicans in voter enrollment. But the trend lines are clear: whereas Bush beat Kerry 51-47 in 2004, Obama romped McCain by 56-43 in 2008, when turnout was about 15 percent higher than four years earlier.

In the last decade, the Latino population of Arapahoe County has more than doubled, to 105,249. If the Democratic Party can register and mobilize this key Obama constituency–Latinos gave him 67 percent of their votes nationally last time–the president would likely carry Arapahoe by a far larger margin than he did in ’08. But Olivia Mendoza, executive director of the nonpartisan Colorado Latino Forum, says the community’s temperature about Obama is awfully lukewarm. “This is very anecdotal,” Mendoza ventures, “but overall, in my experience? General dissatisfaction.”

Todd Mata, the county Democratic chairman, acknowledges that “a lot of people are a little disillusioned, rightly or wrongly,” with Obama, but he says that on the ground, the party structure is working much more closely than last time with Organizing for America (OFA), the Obama get-out-the-vote vehicle. Obama might benefit here from a local GOP that “doesn’t have it together,” according to Scott Adler, political-science professor at the University of Colorado. When I spoke with Joy Hoffman, the county Republican chairwoman, she did acknowledge she’s herding cats, between the more traditional Republicans and no fewer than “15 or 16 distinct Tea Party groupings in the county.” But, she insisted, the state GOP is picking up the pieces from its 2010 debacle, when its gubernatorial candidate got just 11 percent of the vote.

And then there’s Ohio. Big numbers in Franklin County–home to the state capital of Columbus, Ohio’s largest city–are crucial to Democratic hopes. Again, the trend is evident: Al Gore won the county 49-48 in 2000, when 414,000 votes were cast. Kerry won it 53-45, with 517,000 total votes. Obama: a 59-40 blowout on the strength of 575,000 total votes.

It’s pretty difficult to imagine another nearly 20-point win. But Greg Schultz, the county’s Democratic chairman and the state director for OFA, says an on-the-ground network exists today in a way it didn’t even in 2008. “There’s a structure that remains in place today that is self-organizing,” he boasts, even in Republican-leaning parts of the county like Westerville.

Another factor that might motivate Democrats in Franklin, and across Ohio: the unpopular Republican governor, John Kasich. He won a narrow victory over Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland in 2010, when base Republican voters turned out and their Democratic counterparts did not. Now Kasich and his public-employee-union-bashing bill (S.B. 5) are targets of rage. “If the Democrats are smart,” says Herb Asher of the Ohio State University, “here and in Wisconsin they’ll have a very simple theme: Elections have consequences. Look at what happened in your states.”

That’ll be about the strongest argument Obama can make to base voters: it could, and will, be a lot worse if you don’t vote for me. That’s true, and fear is usually a pretty good motivator in politics. But it still isn’t what people were hoping for, and it seems inevitable that some percentage of the most loyal Democrats will stay home. In these three counties and others like them, that percentage will be the difference between reelection and retirement.

Playlist: Road To 2012 U.S. Presidential Elections [ 194 Clips ]

Playlist: Road To 2012 — Barack Obama Re-Election Campaign [ 43 Clips ]

For a while now, first lady Michelle Obama has placed the issue of “healthy eating” front and center — in an effort to encourage responsible “gobbling” and reduce childhood obesity, nationwide.

As expected, loathsome conservative media RATS have been attacking Michelle relentlessly, over her efforts, baselessly claiming that Americans “will be reported” or be “jail[ed]” for eating French fries.

FAT Rush Limbaugh took the food fight up ten notches — seizing on a report out of Vail, Colorado — where first lady Michelle Obama is on a ski trip with daughters Sasha and Malia.

“The problem is, and dare I say this, it doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice,” Limbaugh said on his radio program. “And then we hear that she’s out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving.” “She is a hypocrite,” Limbaugh continued. “Leaders are supposed to be leaders. If we are supposed to go out and eat nothing, if we are supposed to eat roots, berries, and tree bark, show us how.”

From the Vail Daily:

“A braised short rib is a relatively lean cut of beef, braised with most of the fat cooked off. The 5-ounce serving runs about 600 calories, Liken said ? a far cry from the 1,500 calories and 141 grams of fat it’s accused of.

“‘A proper 5-ounce portion of protein is what nutritionists say we should have,’ said Kelly Liken, who launched the highly successful restaurant.”

Rush: “Dare I Say This: It Doesn’t Look Like Michelle Obama Follows Her Own Nutritionary, Dietary Advice“

Reference: In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank Writes — “Rush Limbaugh binges on anti-Michelle Obama vitriol,” — he thinks Michelle Obama is a big, fat idiot. [ READ MORE ]

Limbaugh Continues Attacking First Lady’s Nutrition Campaign, Repeats Falsehood That Secondhand Smoke Is Harmless

Limbaugh: “Mooch-elle” Obama “Is Now In Charge Of What You Eat At Walmart And What It Costs“

Limbaugh continues attack on “Mooch-elle” Obama for pushing Healthy School Meals bill

————————————————————————————————————————————————

————————————————————————————————————————————————

   By: Adele M. Stan
If the latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters is to be believed, in the Colorado governor’s race, anti-immigrant gadfly Tom Tancredo is polling within four points of the frontrunner, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat. The Rasmussen poll shows Hickenlooper at 42 percent, Tancredo at 38 percent and Republican Dan Maes at just 12 percent.

When Tancredo jumped into the Colorado gubernatorial race, most political analysts simply rolled their eyes. After all, this was the guy who, at the Tea Party Nation convention in Memphis earlier this year, advocated a return to literacy tests for voter registration, a practice that was used and abused for decades in the South to keep African-Americans from the voting booth. And this was the guy who called Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor “a racist” who should be “disqualified” from serving on the bench, and a member of “a Latino KKK.” The most Tancredo could hope for, the thinking went, was to be a spoiler by splitting the right-wing vote between himself and Maes, the Tea Party-backed candidate who won the G.O.P. nomination in an upset.

If you think his rhetoric is scary, consider this:

To make his third-party bid, Tancredo signed on with the American Constitution Party, which despite its secular-sounding name, is a party based upon the principles of Christian Reconstructionism, whose adherents seek to have biblical law — including the execution of LGBT people and the stoning of adulterers — instituted as the law of the land. (Both Rand Paul and Sharron Angle have links to the Constitution Party, as we reported here.)

Pat Buchanan, when he threatened to bolt the Republican Party in 1996 after winning the New Hampshire presidential primary and a nice slice of delegate pie in other states, openly flirted with the party Tancredo now finds himself in. (Back in Buchanan’s political heyday, it was known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party.) Tancredo has long been allied with Buchanan, who supported Tancredo’s presidential bid for the G.O.P. nomination in 2008. As she did for her brother in 1996, Bay Buchanan served as Tancredo’s presidential campaign manager.

Even as he surges on the Constitution Party ballot, Tancredo now seems to be seeking some distance from the party’s extremist platform, which calls for an end to public education and all public “welfare” programs — including Medicare and Social Security — and the banning of abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. The platform’s wording of its plank on HIV/AIDS prevention suggests that gay sex is “perverted.” “My joining the American Constitution Party this year is a marriage of convenience not of love,” Tancredo told the Colorado Independent. “This is not some [philosophical] metamorphosis. I needed to get on the ballot and the [American Constitution Party] needed to draw votes.” (Don’t you feel better already?)

The Rasmussen poll shows 59 percent of Republican voters backing Tancredo.

Other recent polls show a much larger gap between Tancredo and Hickenlooper, but all show the Constitution Party candidate gaining on the Democrat. The most recent Denver Post/Survey USA poll shows Hickenlooper with a 12-point lead, but that poll was taken more than two weeks ago, on September 29. Rasmussen is sometimes dismissed by observers for being too weighted in Republicans’ favor, but in races that fail to follow predicted courses, Rasmussen is sometimes more on top of on-the-ground sentiment among G.O.P. voters, especially late in a race. A Fordham University report (PDF) ranked Rasmussen first in accuracy in for its final poll of the 2008 presidential election — ahead of Pew and Harris, and far ahead of Gallup (ranked 17th). Rasmussen also accurately polled the 2004 presidential race.

Ugly Hatred: Twisted Colorado ‘Republican‘ Group Calls Obama ‘Angel of Death‘

————————————————————————————————————————————————

————————————————————————————————————————————————

During his show Wednesday night, Bill O’Reilly said, “…people on msnbc lie. Every day.” The original serial liar and media terrorist at Fox has no business reprimanding anybody. O’Reilly’s history of vicious lying, race-baiting and baseless innuendo is unmatched.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More Lies At Fox…

[ PLENTY MORE HERE and HERE ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

O’Reilly: Obama “is the furthest left president in the history of our republic”

Beck University Opens

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sharron Angle Shows Insensitivity To Rape Victims

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Limbaugh: Obama Deliberately Tanking Economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

————————————————————————————————————————————————

————————————————————————————————————————————————

By MICHAEL B. FARRELL
Nov. 29, 2008

When President Bush says so long to Washington on Jan. 20, he’ll return to a much different Lone Star State from the one he left eight years ago.

Pickup trucks, Big Oil, and barbecue brisket still reign supreme, but this red state that helped deliver the presidency to Mr. Bush twice and his father once, and that catapulted GOP strategist Karl Rove to the national stage, is suddenly spotted with big pockets of blue.

Dallas is controlled by Democrats; Houston is in their hands, too. It’s all largely because of the state’s growing Hispanic population, which overwhelmingly sided with Democrats this year.

“The tide of demography in Texas is moving against the Republicans,” says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “All the major cities are Democratic and are likely to become more so over time.”

The Pew Hispanic Center reports that Latino voters sided with President-elect Obama over Sen. John McCain by a margin of more than 2 to 1, helping Democrats win crucial states such as Florida, Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado. While the overall Hispanic turnout did not rise much, it accounted for 9 percent of the vote this year and 8 percent in 2004 — Latino support for the GOP dropped nine percentage points, according to Pew.

That has left Republicans panicking and Democrats drooling. Duncan Currie writes in last week’s conservative Weekly Standard that Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R) of Florida says the GOP has a “very, very serious problem” because of diminishing Hispanic support.

Political scientists, sociologists, and activists say that concern reflects a keen awareness of what a growing and increasingly political Latino community could mean in big, traditionally red states like Texas: Those voters could tip Democratic in future national contests.

“We are in the process of watching this remarkable shift,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University here, referring to the overall demographic transformation of America. “You can be absolutely certain that every election [to come] in Texas will have a larger percentage of Latino voters.”

In 2005, Texas joined California, New Mexico, and Hawaii as states where minority populations collectively outnumber whites, according to the US Census Bureau. In Texas and California, the second-largest group behind whites, and the fastest-growing population, is Hispanics. Nationwide, Hispanics number about 45.5 million, or 15 percent of the population. In Texas, Latinos make up about 36 percent of the population and about 20 percent of participating voters this year.

“It’s the biggest pool of Hispanic voters left in a state that didn’t vote Democratic in 2008,” not counting Arizona, because it’s Senator McCain’s home state, says Richard Murray, a political scientist at the University of Houston.

For the Democratic Party nationally, the overwhelming Hispanic support presents an inviting opportunity, especially to develop party loyalty among younger Latinos, who backed Mr. Obama 76 percent to 19 percent for McCain, according the Pew analysis.

In Harris Country, which includes Houston, 70 percent of people older than 60 are Anglo, while more than 75 percent of people younger than 30 are non-Anglo, notes Professor Klineberg.

While Bush didn’t carry the Hispanic vote here in 2004, he came close. He captured 49 percent of that bloc, with 50 percent going to Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry. Republicans also lost ground among Hispanics this year in Florida.

Since the advent of his political career, though, Bush found ways to appeal to the Latino community, which saw him favorably for his close relationships with Latin American leaders, his faith-based initiatives, and his ability to speak Spanish.

While Hispanics are not a monolithic bloc, many began turning away from the Republicans in Texas, and elsewhere in the US, amid the harsh rhetoric about immigration reform in 2007, says Professor Murray.

| Read: Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News |

“Even in Texas you can’t just be a party of white folks,” he says. “Nationally and locally, the party is going to have to do some retooling.”

Though the Lone Star State’s spots of blue darkened on Election Day, the state remains solidly Republican (55 percent McCain, 44 percent Obama). McCain scored huge victories in rural Texas, taking as much as 93 percent of the vote in some counties in the Panhandle, helping deliver the state’s 34 electoral votes to the Republicans. The statehouse in Austin also remains in Republican hands.

Associated Press exit polls showed that whites, seniors, Christians, and the affluent largely stayed with the GOP ticket and that McCain took two-thirds of the state’s white vote and about three-fifths of families making more than $50,000 annually.

While rural, suburban, and small-town Texans stick with traditional Republican values, Klineberg says, a new cosmopolitan and high-tech Texas is emerging in cities such as Houston, which is the country’s fourth-largest city, with a population of about 2 million.

Houstonian Judy Craft, a longtime Democratic activist and an environmentalist, is used to swimming against the red tide in Texas. “I was hoping we’d do better, but that’s because I’m really good at suspending my disbelief during the middle of a campaign,” says Ms. Craft, who signed off her e-mails during the campaign with the hopeful wish that Texas would turn blue. “Oh well, at least I got a bluer shade of purple.”

————————————-