"Colorado Strategy" vs. "Ohio Strategy"

William Galston (The New Republic) y Sean Trende (RealClearPolitics) han abierto un interesante debate sobre la estrategia de reelección que debiera seguir el Presidente Obama.

Opción A: crear un cortafuegos en los estados del Oeste rocoso (Colorado y Nevada) y en dos del nuevo Sur (Virginia y Carolina del Norte), reforzando una coalición de minorías (en un caso hispanos y en el otro negros) y votantes blancos suburbanos con estudios superiores, que compensaría las pérdidas en el Medio Oeste castigado por la crisis.

Opción B: seguir el manual tradicional y concentrarse en asegurar los estados competitivos del Medio Oeste sin los que ningún demócrata moderno ha podido ganar nunca (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan), lo que requeriría una campaña de tono más populista dirigido a votantes blancos de clase trabajadora y sin estudios superiores.

Recomiendo la lectura completa de los dos artículos.

Galston (TNR) escribía hace unas semanas:

(...) In some presidential cycles, an incumbent’s reelection strategy doesn’t matter all that much. When the economy is very strong (1984), the incumbent wins big; when it’s very weak (1932), he loses even bigger. And when a party chooses a nominee seen as outside the mainstream (1964, 1972), it suffers a crushing defeat. It’s possible that one or more of these circumstances could prevail next year. The economy could over- or under-perform current projections; the Republicans could choose a nominee who’s too conservative or lacks credibility as a potential president. But it’s more likely that both the economy and the presidential nomination contest will yield results in the zone where strategic choices could prove decisive. In that context, two recent events are alarming, because they offer clues to what may well become President Obama’s reelection strategy.

The first was a Ron Brownstein interview with David Axelrod, who said that he saw Michael Bennet’s 2010 senatorial victory in Colorado as “particularly instructive.” As Brownstein noted, Bennet prevailed by mobilizing “enough minorities, young people, and socially liberal, well-educated white women to overcome a sharp turn toward the GOP among most of the other white voters in his state.” The second event was DNC chair Tim Kaine’s selection of educated, new economy Charlotte, North Carolina, as the site for the 2012 Democratic convention. In the process, he rejected three Midwestern finalists: St. Louis, Minneapolis, and, most notably, Cleveland.

Taken together, these clues suggest that the Obama’s 2012 campaign will focus more on the Democratic periphery—territory newly won in 2008—than on the heartland, where elections have been won and lost for the past half-century. This could turn out to be a mistake of epic proportions. Why? Because the United States looks a lot more like Ohio than like Colorado.

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Trende (RCP) le ha respondido:

(...) William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton White House advisor, wrote an intriguing column in The New Republic recently entitled "Colorado vs. Ohio." In it, Galston, a political scientist by training, argued that President Obama and his team of 2012 campaign advisers appeared to be poised to make "a mistake of epic proportions."

And what was that mistake, exactly? It was eschewing a focus on working-class Democrats of the Midwestern heartland in attempting to cobble together a coalition of minorities, young people, socially liberal women and other upscale, upper middle class voters.

This "Colorado Strategy" is derived at least in part from Michael Bennet's surprising win in the 2010 Colorado Senate race, and Obama's strategists have signaled that this could be the strategy they pursue in the 2012 Presidential race. In his original essay - and in a follow-up piece in which Galston answered his criticis - he urged Obama instead to try to bring white working class voters back into the fold, focusing on Midwestern states like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Especially Ohio.

Galston's theory has obvious appeal - but is it a superifical attraction? It is true that Sen. Bennet won his election in a swing state in a tough year for Democratic incumbents by doing extremely well among minorities,college educated liberals, independent women, social moderates, and environmentalists - but the story in 2010 was more complicated than that. For starters, Obama will probably not be running against the national equivalent of the Colorado Republican ticket of Ken Buck-Dan Maes. Also, there are simply more electoral votes in the "Ohio strategy" states - and they start out with more of a Democratic lean.

But a close look looking at the exit poll data, and a regression analysis I ran myself, makes me wonder if Galston is right. Or, to put it another way, maybe he's half right: That what Team Obama has to do is focus on Ohio and the other Midwestern prizes, but not only with traditional appeals to working class whites. In other words, Obama ought to run a "Colorado strategy" in Ohio.

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