West coast debate

FL Key

Welcome to the biggest, most diverse battleground state in presidential politics, where every demographic group and, lest we forget, every vote matters. It's been 11 years since the days of "hanging chads" and Bush versus Gore, when the Republican governor of Texas and the Democratic vice president came closer to an exact tie in the final deciding state than anyone dreamed possible. In 2012, Florida will be a more valuable prize than ever. This time, 29 electoral votes are at stake, up from 25 in 2000, of the 270 needed for victory. For the Republican nominee, Florida is a must-win – thus the choice of Tampa for the GOP convention next August. For Obama, winning without Florida will be difficult but doable. He has electoral votes to burn from the 365 he won in '08.

FL and PA are key – Obama can’t swing Midwest but still wins if he controls those 2 states

Nick Ottens, staff writer, 11-8-2011, “Obama’s Swing State Challenge,” Atlantic Senitinel, http://atlanticsentinel.com/2011/11/obamas-swing-state-challenge/

The 2012 presidential election will be decided in twelve battleground states. As Barack Obama is unpopular among white working class voters, his ability to sway the Rust Belt will be limited, imperiling his reelection prospects. A plurality of voters now consider themselves independent. One out of four believe that the country is “on the wrong track.” Less than half approve of the president’s job performance. These are tough numbers faces an incumbent who is fighting for reelection. Americans are apparently less and less confident in President Obama’s ability to lead them out of recession. But his most structural challenge may be demographic. As David Gregory, moderator of Meet the Press, pointed out on NBC’s Hardball last week, the Democrats “don’t just have to win” the Latino vote in the southwest, “they have to win them huge.” Although the party traditionally polls well among racial minorities, Republicans realize that if they are to attain a majority in states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, they have to appeal to the same Hispanic voting bloc that tends to be more socially conservative than Asian or black Americans. In the upper Midwest, added Gregory, Obama’s has to appeal to blue collar, typically unionized voters whose economic prospects haven’t improved under his presidency. Especially with regard to environmental issues, where the activist left and unions collide, Obama is in a tough spot. If he reins in the Environmental Protection Agency, he risks alienating greens whereas not enough of a focus on job creation could disappoint working class voters. Kimberley Strassel wrote in The Wall Street Journal that blue collar white voters can still play a decisive role despite the emphasis on minorities in the press. They helped Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania and Ohio during the 2008 Democratic Party primary elections. “Obama would go on in the general election to lock up the college educated, the affluent, the women, the minorities, the first time voters—you name it.” But he lost the white working class by eighteen points. Rather than court this constituency, the Obama Administration has spent three years waging war on it with activist environmental legislation that’s especially hurt the decaying industrial base of the northwest. A Pew poll this year found an astonishing 43 percent of the white working class didn’t believe they’d be better off in ten years—the most negative views of any group polled, by far. It helps explain why, in the 2010 election, the white working class surged to give the GOP a record 63 percent of their vote, 30 points more than for Democrats. White blue collar voters make up 40 percent of the electorate nationwide and they form an even bigger group in many of the very swing states Obama needs to win. In 2008, the president won 359 electoral votes, including a lone elector in the state of Nebraska. Even if he loses Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin, where the impact of the recession has been severest, but wins the west, he would still have the 270 votes needed to win exactly. If he also lost his one vote from Nebraska, the race would be tied. The two states that the president cannot afford to lose are Florida and Pennsylvania. The former was won by George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 while the latter went for the Democratic candidate in those elections. Each time, the margins of victory were slim in both states and they trended Republican during the congressional midterms of 2010. Between them, Florida and Pennsylvania wield forty-nine electoral votes.

Obama Good – Turns Case – Heg/Econ

Romney kills our alliance structure – ends heg

David Solimini, the Communications Director for the Truman National Security Project, 9-30-2011, “Mitt Romney Throws America’s Allies Under Bus for Political Gain,” The Moderate Voice, http://themoderatevoice.com/124153/mitt-romney-throws-americas-allies-under-bus-for-political-gain/

This week, Mitt Romney clumsily waded into the discussion of Israel and Palestine. By calling for a wholesale re-evaluation of relations with dozens of countries, he called more than his own judgment into question. Strong alliances are an essential element of American power. They are difficult to build, important to maintain, and essential in a world of inter-connected economies and cross-border security threats. It is in this essential context that leading conservative voices have engaged in a perilous race to the bottom on issues of American national security. Most recently, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romneyz suggested that the United States reconsider a number of long-standing alliances purely to further domestic political considerations. On Tuesday, right-wing radio show host Jordan Sekulowz asked Romney how he would handle the application by Palestine for statehood recognition by the UN if he were president. Romney responded: Putting aside what’s already happened, at this stage the president should make it very clear that we stand with Israel, that this is very important to the United States of America and that any nation that votes against Israel and against the United States in the vote in the United Nations will recognize that America will very carefully reconsider our relationship with that nation. Defenders of Romney’s position might say it was an important statement in support of Israel. Critics would note that there are far better ways to demonstrate support for an independent Jewish state free from terrorism – a position he shares with President Obamaz. Romney went farther than he needed to go, apparently in an attempt to place political distance between himself and the president. Had the words he uttered – “America will very carefully reconsider our relationship with that nation” – actually come from the mouth of a sitting president, the impact would have been significant. The former governor’s answer to a straightforward question is revealing to the point where one might wonder if Romney realizes the enormity of the job he seeks. These are not quarterly earnings reports or 10K filings, these are nations – some of which have nuclear weapons and thousands of our troops stationed in them. Let us consider exactly what Romney suggested: Romney would be open to re-analyzing our relationships with China, the world’s most populous nation; Russia, the nation with the most nuclear weapons in the world; India, the world’s largest democracy; and Brazil and South Africa, two of the world’s largest developing nations. Our relationship with Russia is essential to the prevention of a second Cold War. India is America’s best bulwark against China in the East and Pakistan to the North. Also among those who would fall afoul of Romney’s domestic political concerns include Spain, France, Norway, and Ireland, some of America’s longest held friendships. If a president were to say what would-be-President Romney said, we would be forced to ask what it means to “reconsider” these relationships. Would a President Romney take the same actions in re-evaluating our relationship with China, our largest trading partner, as he would with Ireland? Would a President Romney cut funding to the efforts to stabilize Iraq over its vote on Palestinian statehood? Would he pull out of the 2016 Olympic Games because of Brazil’s statement of support, or shut down the $160 billion per year in American goods sold to countries supporting the UN resolution? And what of our ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Would we stop the rebuilding efforts essential to peace in Iraq over this issue, even if it meant stretching out our military presence there? Governor Romney’s willingness to use our international alliances for political gain will likely be seen by many as deeply troubling. America’s interests are clearly served by a stable solution to the conflicts in the Middle East, and Israel is a valuable if sometimes imperfect ally. It’s also in our interests for ostensibly credible candidates not to make inflammatory policy proclamations for political gain. Romney’s comments cannot be taken in isolation. It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that he is exercising the political triangulation he is famous for and is simply catching up with some of the clumsier comments of his peers on the campaign trail. Michele Bachmannz, for example, believes the Arab Spring is a problem for which she must assign the blame to President Obama. It is a familiar and troubling playbook from the ex-governor. Keeping America safe requires that we exercise delicate diplomacy backed by the effective and powerful force of our military. We have seen both exercised with deftness under President Obama, with relationships improving between us and our allies and precisely targeted strikes taking out more of our enemies than the Bush Administration managed to accomplish. America is not well-served when the talk is tough but the strategic considerations are ignored.

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