Those of us who have been working in and around politics in Washington for the past two decades have been deeply immersed in the machinations of five presidential elections — but until the last one, none of our actual votes were really up for grabs. From 1992 to 2004, both major parties essentially bypassed the D.C. metropolitan area because the outcomes were foreordained: The Democratic nominee would rack up at least six out of every seven votes in the District and carry Maryland by at least a dozen points, while Virginia remained a bedrock of the Republican base as it had been since the LBJ landslide.
The race for the Republican nomination looks like it still has many more melodramatic turns to take. New and galvanizing crises at home or abroad could make surprise appearances. And the first primaries and caucuses are still a month away. But at this juncture, it’s tough to imagine the 2012 presidential campaign being anything other than very straightforward. It is, in fact, one of the few things on which Republicans and Democrats agree: In all 50 states, the election will be more than anything a referendum on the state of the economy — and a vote of confidence on whether the current chief economic steward deserves four more years. And the outcome, both parties concede, will be close.
When the Denver Regional Council of Governments decided four years ago to allow more development in the territory it managed around the Denver-Boulder metropolis, the move was hailed by supporters as a reasonable necessity to give the fast-growing area a little more breathing room.
Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement, the overhaul of the nation’s medical insurance system, was a huge political gamble from the start. It got through Congress by the narrowest of margins in the spring of 2010, and seven months later, it clearly played a major role in the Democrats’ loss of their control of the House. Today, polls reveal a public that remains deeply divided about the law, with more than half of those surveyed by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation reporting an unfavorable view.
Many a presidential dream has been plowed under the cornfields of Iowa during the past four decades. For a select handful of presidents — Barack Obama among them — the state’s caucuses have served as their singularly most important launching pad toward the White House.
Touting free trade at an auto plant in economically battered Michigan — and with the head of state of a top car exporter at his side — might seem an odd choice for an American president. After all, lowering barriers to foreign goods and services has for years been the definition of a political hard sell in that Rust Belt battleground, which has so often been on the wrong end of globalization in recent decades.
On a cool and sunny day in the middle of last month, the head of the Sierra Club’s Pennsylvania chapter stepped to a microphone on the steps of Penn State’s Old Main to warn a group of 100 protesters about the environmental dangers created by the recent surge in natural gas drilling across the state. “We are under assault, we’re under attack by invaders from Texas, from Oklahoma,” the advocate, Jeff Schmidt, told the crowd. “Range Resources and Chesapeake and Anadarko and other companies are not going to be satisfied until they have all the gas rights in Pennsylvania.”
With more than 17 cents of every dollar earned in Virginia — and about one in five jobs — directly or indirectly dependent on the Department of Defense, it’s easy to understand the role that military policies could play in the coming presidential contest.
