Obama leads Romney 49 – 42 in the new Ohio poll, a state where the political ground has shifted greatly over the last few months. After the massive defeat of SB 5, the anti-union legislation pushed by state Republicans, Obama has seen a major turnaround in his numbers on the ground.
Back in October, PPP’s President Dean Debnam said that were the election to have been held then, Obama would have lost. PPP’s analysis at the time suggested it would be hard to see more support coming to the president as the election got closer. The SB 5 vote moved the state back toward Obama in PPP’s November poll, resulting in a nine point lead, and it seems that trend is continuing into the new year.
“The race in Ohio is going to get closer because there are so many more undecided Republicans than Democrats,” PPP pollster Tom Jensen wrote in a email to TPM. “But it does look like Obama’s chances at matching his 3-4 point victory in the state from 2008 are pretty good right now. John Kasich has really hurt the Republican brand in the state and the economy’s getting better. Romney’s not popular enough to overcome those two factors if they persist through November.”
I’ll happily go along with the political professionals and say that former Fox News personality John Kasich has “really hurt the Republican brand” (hah!).
That happened in Florida, where the GOP candidates avoided another extremely unpopular Tea Party-backed governor, Scott:
Scott’s disappearing act is a conscious decision. The governor who rode the conservative wave of 2010 to victory has since watched his popularity plummet.As a Quinnipiac University poll earlier this month found, his approval rating among Florida voters stands at just 38 percent — among the lowest for any governor in the country. He also has a sour relationship with some Republicans in the state after winning a bitter primary against the heavily favored Bill McCollum.
So it’s easy to understand why Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich might not be eager for a photo-op with Scott.
Branding may be really important, you’d have to ask Rupert Murdoch about that, but reality matters too, and I think the revival of the US auto industry is what’s really helping Obama here. Despite the near-constant drumbeat of doom that comes out of the national political media, stories like this are in local news.
Chrysler, propelled by higher sales of Jeeps and other revamped cars and trucks, reported its first annual net income since 1997, capping a pivotal turnaround year that many thought would never come. The U.S. automaker, now privately held and majority owned by Italy’s Fiat SpA, earned $183 million last year, reversing a $652 million loss in 2010, its first full year out of bankruptcy protection.
Chrysler expects an even better 2012, despite a sluggish and uncertain economy. The company, which sells most of its vehicles in the U.S., predicts it will make about $1.5 billion this year and increase revenue 18 percent.
Chrysler spent much of 2010 designing new vehicles and trying to spruce up an archaic lineup that wasn’t selling well. Now those vehicles are in showrooms, and they’ve sold far better than expected, especially the Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV. The company’s global sales climbed 22 percent to 1.86 million last year. U.S. sales growth was even faster, up 26 percent.President Barack Obama has been touting Chrysler’s turnaround in recent appearances ahead of the November presidential election. Obama cast the deciding vote to save Chrysler and authorized much of the $12.5 billion in government funding that bailed out the company. Of the original bailout to Chrysler and its financial arm, the government said it was repaid all but $1.3 billion.
What helps Obama helps Sherrod Brown, they’ll rise or fall together, and Sherrod Brown is the top target of the wrecking crew this cycle, so good news all around.
All those ads claiming Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is a job-killing, doctor-harming tax raiser are adding up to make the Ohioan the nation’s top target for third-party GOP spending,according to the Huffington Post.
The ads by groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the60-Plus Association, not officially affiliated with the Republican Party, bring the tab against Brown to nearly $2.9 million, according to a Senate Democratic campaign operative cited by Huffington. That makes Brown a bigger target, so far, than Democrats like Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren.
The Moar You Know
He will say that he supported the auto bailout and opposed SB5. And not one motherfucking member of the worthless MSM will call him out on it.
4tehlulz
He’ll say what he wants to. It’s not like he has a conscience.
JPL
Whatever he says will be a lie but he’ll say either he was for the bailout or he’ll say the bailout didn’t work. I can’t decide. He might try to sell the public that the auto companies would be doing better if the government didn’t interfere. Why not. Sarah says it’s cold in Alaska and that disproves climate change so lying is acceptable.
also,too politifact would score it as half true because how do we really know the government helped and didn’t hurt.
Ira-NY
Whoa! Have you seen this latest groaner on steroids from Mitt? This might be a game changer.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/01/10289765-romney-im-not-concerned-about-the-very-poor
JPL
@Ira-NY: There’s a post downstairs on his latest comments.
Zifnab
@The Moar You Know: There will be wall-to-wall ads reminding the voters, though. Obama has plenty of money to spread around, and with anti-Kascich sentiment riding high there will be a lot of information cross-pollination between people pushing recall efforts and people organizing for the Obama campaign.
You’re going to have to be very deliberately ignorant to miss this fact in a car-production capital like Ohio.
sherparick
Romney’s press availability to the beat reporters is apparently regulated by the amount of favorable coverage he gets from their media outlets. Favorable coverage and “the Candidate” & his folks are available for interviews. Unfavorable coverage and tough questions? Then you are the Maytag repairman on the press plane, the loneliness man/women in the room with an editor screaming at you about your lack of copy. So for the careerists who want to be th next David Broder and/or Maureen Dowd the choice is simple: Keep the softballs coming.
For instance, in his victory speech last night the Mittser spilled out the BS about under his “Leadership” he will extend Bush tax cuts, add more corporate and capital gains cuts on top of the Bush cuts, increase military spending, and “balance the budget” by cutting “spending” (I did notice he did not say within his first term). Even if you shut down or sell off the National Park Service (not something I would put past our Mittster and Teahadists), the EPA, Education, Energy, NIH, roads, bridges, airports, etc. that is now about 20% of the Government spending. Homeland Security and Justice is another 10% and it is hard to imagine them cutting that with all the illegal aliens to self-deport and Occupied Wall Street subversives who will need to be suppressed. DoD and VA are 20% and he wants to increase DoD and perhaps start a war with Iran and restart the one in Iraq. So that leaves most of the cutting will have to come from current social security benefits, current Medicare benefits, and current Medicaid benefits. It would nice if someone would ask him to explain the arithmetic of it. But they won’t.
kay
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t think that works as well on local and state issues as it does on national issues.
I think most people predicted the failure of the auto industry rescue, so that’s understandable, as a “go along” herd thing, but why in the hell he decided to travel to Ohio to back the Tea Party on SB5 I will never know.
That was just dumb. He didn’t know the first thing about SB5. Why not just stay out of the state during that period?
Bulworth
He’ll say “less government, Democrat Party, no abortion, no gays, entrepreneurial, less regulation, freedom, faith, God, teleprompter, blah, blah, blah”.
DanielX
Kay, judging by his performance to date he’ll say whatever he thinks he can get away with, and whatever will suit his purposes. Whether what he says has any real connection with truth and fact is irrelevant.
piratedan
sorry for being off-topic, but this reminded me of Tunch and so I feel obligated to share it with his fan club:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2012/01/31/funny-pictures-the-purr-the-meow-the-legend/
jurassicpork
Romney would be the corporate antiChrist if he ever got elected but it’s not just the top of the heap guys we should watch out for but also the ones in local politics.
Case in point: Republicans love to scream about voter fraud until they themselves commit it. In this case, I decided to get involved because this newly-indicted right winger used to be my fiancee’s boss and he ruined our lives. Make sure you also read the two updates.
Now, in case you’re still wondering why I’m devoting so much time and energy into a smalltime slimeball like Mark Evangelous, let me add that his indictment has also been covered by the county DA’s office, the Boston Herald as well as the AP newswire (as well as the Boston Globe years ago pertaining to his slumlord past) and for good reason. I want this to go as viral as possible.
kay
@DanielX:
Right, but that isn’t really working for him. The PPP pollsters says the GOP primary is hurting Romney, in some unspecified atmospheric sense, I guess, but why is the GOP primary hurting Romney?
What if it’s because he lies all the time?
I just think it’s difficult to stand in Toledo OH and lie about the auto industry. That’s what he’s going to be asked. He isn’t going to be asked about the mandate in Massachusetts.
dogwood
@kay:
Conventional wisdom is that Mitt is a very disciplined and well-organized candidate. However, Mitt appears to have no general election strategy. Everything he has done and said thus far has been to cater to the far right Republican primary electorate. A lot of it was unnecessary given the weak field he faced. Why he penned the anti-auto bailout piece in the WSJ or put himself in front of every camera he could find to rail against it is beyond me. You can’t pivot away from that in the general. Why he goes on about Obama’s failure in foreign policy is another mystery? Does he really want foreign policy to be a big part of this election? If so, he is a fool.
wrb
@sherparick:
Selling off the public lands would bring in huge amounts of money.
Mitt could claim that, while selling them pains him terribly, the awful frightening, looming, sun-blotting, avalanching, debt incurred by the Democrat wastrels’ orgy of bling-buying leaves a responsible manager with no choice.
flukebucket
I have already heard him say that he would have handled the automobile situation like Obama did he would have just done it much, much quicker. That was just one of the times he ended the bullshit by saying that Obama was in over his head. He always says it like he feels sorry for Obama for getting into something he was not equipped to handle. For a robot he is a smug bastard.
DonkeyKong
“There is an idea of a Mitt Romney; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.”
kay
@dogwood:
I really think they all believed that the auto rescue was an inevitable failure. It was the conventional wisdom on the Right (and most of the center, and some of the Left).
They all listen to the brilliant libertarian Grover Norquist on matters economic :)
John Boehner predicted failure. They were SURE it was going to fail.
slag
Thank you for making this point! It’s a point that needs to be stressed across the board–for every Dem coming up for election or reelection.
Mike in NC
@dogwood:
Can’t wait for this entitled imbecile to take his show on the road in the general election and try selling a war with Iran to the national media, let alone the voters.
cckids
@sherparick:
Even if they do, Romney’s answer will have some version of the magical Republican economic theory of how if only tax rates were EVEN LOWER . . . JOBS! ! PROSPERITY !! etc, ad nauseum.
slag
@kay: I’m going to admit that I had (and still have) ambivalent feelings about it. Mostly because of stuff like this:
Shitty car design is not something I want to see us rewarding with taxpayer funds. That said, I really want people to keep their jobs.
gbear
@wrb:
Well, it would if he did something other than selling it off for pennies on the dollar to his wealthy buddies, which is more likely to happen.
Dr. Anatole Gavage-Huskanoy
@DonkeyKong: the American Psycho/Mitt Romney link is one that’s occurring to a lot of people. Here’s one cartoonist’s take on it.
http://thisishistorictimes.com/2012/01/hip-to-be-square/
jibeaux
@slag: It’s not like the taxpayers are paying for the Jeep Grand Cherokees, though.
So anyway, as to why I think Romney gets less popular the more he campaigns, I would say it’s probably a combination of he’s just unlikeable and weird, coupled with the fact that for the life of me I can’t figure out what he stands *for*. Okay, tax cuts. Deregulation. All Republicans say that. But there’s a problem with “the vision thing”, isn’t there? There’s nothing to build a narrative around. There’s nothing you could make a “yes we can” video out of, or even a “Rick Perry leaning against a fencepost in a jacket out of Brokeback Mountain” video out of.
Linnaeus
@slag:
Understandable, but the bailout was about more than aid to particular companies. The supplier chain in auto manufacturing is highly integrated and dependent on certain companies (like Johnson Controls) who are the sole suppliers of certain parts. So a simultaneous crashing of GM and Chrysler disrupts the supply chain and brings down healthier companies. That’s why even the Japanese-based automakers supported it.
Tractarian
@The Moar You Know:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for boundless pessimism and defeatism, but … have you tuned in to a MSM outlet recently?
Mitt Romney is no John McCain. Where the media consistently gave McCain the benefit of the doubt, they have largely pointed out Mitt’s lies and obfuscations. Not to mention they love writing about how out-of-touch and elitist he is. (Dana Milbank, who epitomizes the Village, seems to be on a personal quest to turn Romney into a freakish Kerry/Dukakis/Gore hybrid.)
If Mitt’s smart, he’ll set up portable tire swings and a BBQ pit that he can take with him on the campaign trail. But even that is unlikely to help him at this point.
dogwood
@kay:
I see your point, but I’m not sure I totally agree with it. The auto-bailout in the 1980’s was in fact a success. A serious person would have to look at that and understand it was by no means a sure loser this time. Opposition to the bailout was mostly just anti-Obamaism. It’s a sign of Mitt’s insecurity as a candidate and as a member of the true Republican tribe that makes him jump into the deep end over and over.
Tractarian
By the way, the PPP Ohio poll result is consistent with last weekend’s FL survey that showed Obama with a 8-point lead.
That is, on a state level, Obama is currently polling 6-7 points higher than his 2008 margins. So if the election were held today, the electoral map would look something like this.
Humanities Grad
The SB5 statement was particularly mystifying to me. If I recall correctly, Romney opened his yapper and endorsed SB5 maybe three weeks before the election. By that point, the polling trends were pretty clear. SB5 was about as popular as lung cancer with Ohio voters, and its numbers were getting worse, not better.
Now you can make the argument, I suppose, that Mitt might not know the particulars regarding a single ballot initiative. After all, he’s running a national campaign and can’t be conversant in what’s going on in every state. I don’t find that a believable argument, given how much attention the Wisconsin and Ohio laws got in the national news, but you could make it.
But someone on his staff sure as hell _should’ve_ known, and should have been sending memos in 48-point bold type screaming “STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THIS ONE!” But he didn’t.
I don’t think that by any means guarantees Romney is going to lose Ohio in November, but people aren’t going to forget what he did. And he’s a Republican, it’s not like he can write off Ohio and figure he’ll find another path to electoral victory. Still seems like an own-goal to me, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why he did that.
wrb
@gbear:
Both. There is so much value there it could pay off the debt at pennies on the dollar.
I said it partially in jest but I does sometime seem to me that privatization of the national heritage, at a discount, with unbelievable fees to be made by the managers who handle it is the set up and long-term play.
Only the .1% would be able to compete for the discounted assets. They would make the greatest killing in history. Serfdom for everyone else.
People got rich privatizing the Soviet assets, didn’t they?
Who could resist.
slag
@Linnaeus: Good points. I view the auto bailout as similar to TARP in that it pretty much had to be done. In the case of the auto bailout, however, at least there was a working man face we could put on the deed. That definitely helped me swallow the pill. But there was still a Jeep Grand Cherokee-sized pill in there.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I agree that it will be interesting to see what he says in Ohio. I chuckled when I read that Rob Portman said the win in Florida shows Romney has the diverse appeal required to win a general election. They live in a parallel universe. Diverse appeal of a multimillionaire who is “not concerned about the very poor” – good luck selling that, bucko.
The Moar You Know
@Tractarian: Funny you should mention that. Got my cable pulled four months ago, and we have no over-the-air reception, so no, I haven’t.
My mood is SO much better.
Carnacki
The great thing about being Romney — other than the hair — is he can say he was FOR the auto bailout because he was at one time and then say he was AGAINST it depending upon his audience.
Water balloon
I’m starting to think 2012 will be a very good year for Democrats. Romneywon’t excite the base especially in some winnable southern states like Virginia and Florida.
Also, and nobody seems to be talking about this, but Democrats are leading Republicans in every current generic poll out right now, including Rasmussen. This time 2 yeas ago they were losing to Republicans by anywhere from 5 -10 points. I don’t know if they can retake the House, but they’ll certainly pick up a decent number of seats.
Librarian
Actually, Romney probably thinks that supporting SB5 was a good move and will brag about it still, because he will be appealing to the base and because he actually does hate unions. And he will think that being anti-union is still the popular thing to be, and he may not be far wrong about that, at least among the GOP base and the MSM.
jibeaux
@The Moar You Know: Can I pitch to you an inexpensive product called the Mohu Leaf? Designed & built by a small startup in the US of A. I don’t work for them, but a friend does. It does work & look somewhat better than rabbit ears, though.
kay
@dogwood:
But they’ve gotten so much more dogmatic since 1980. It couldn’t succeed, because Grover Norquist says government intervention never succeeds.
I don’t know if others saw it this way, but that was back when I was still watching cable tv, and it seemed (to me) to be a coordinated campaign: auto workers = unions= vilification by conservatives.
I think they believed it. It was a freaking bash-a-thon, and they all jumped on-board.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Moar You Know:
I’m not sure he will. Romney has no loyalty to the truth and will say anything he thinks will get him elected. He’s shown so far that he has very erratic ideas about what the public wants to hear, and a tendency to randomly run his mouth.
He’s a terrible candidate. He’s an absolute failure of a politician. That he’s likely to be the GOP nominee for president is a statement only about how fantastically low the bar is.
Linnaeus
@kay:
That’s exactly what it was. They opposed the bailout because the auto industry in the US still has a significantly unionized workforce.
Linnaeus
@slag:
Or, as Jon Stewart put it, “Even when Detroit loses money, we get cars!”
gene108
OT: Don Cornelius died. Looks to be an apparent suicide. Sad, sad, sad.
Legalize
@Humanities Grad:
Not only did Willard comment on the issue, but days before the vote he visited a pro-SB5 campaign office in a very purple part of SW Ohio. A big deal was made out of it in these parts.
It is my belief that Willard lost the election for the presidency in October and November 2011. Dems in Ohio are very motivated, well-organized, and well-funded. Willard cannot win Ohio, and thus the presidency.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
I’m afraid my cynical side agrees with this. There’s a freight trainload of rationalization going on among those who should know better, basically opining that Mittens can’t possibly believe what he’s saying–because it doesn’t match what he used to say–and he’s only doing this to survive his trip through the fever swamp that is the Republican primaries.
It’s only a flesh wound and he’ll get better.
Take him at his actual word, em ess em! When he stuffs three lies into a single sentence during one one of the recent debates, do note that he just spouted three lies, regardless of how repellant Newt is over at the adjacent lectern.
jeffreyw
@jibeaux: I bought one last month. It does work.
Humanities Grad
@Legalize:
Yeah, that was what I was referring to. I thought it was a little earlier then that (a few weeks before election day, rather than a few days), but close enough that it was pretty obvious that the poll numbers weren’t going to turn around.
IIRC, he sorta-kinda showed some awareness that he’d put his foot in it by mealy-mouthing his initial statement re: SB5 (“that’s for the states to decide”). Only when the other Republican candidates started getting medieval on him for being a squish did he shift to a full-throated endorsement of SB5.
But whichever of his campaign staffers let him visit that call center in the first place is either a Democratic mole, or else should be gently but firmly taken out and shot. That’s Mark Penn-level stupid.
jibeaux
@jeffreyw: Hooray! I like mine, too.
My enthusiasm probably seems a little weird, but this guy pounded the pavement for nearly three years looking for a job. He was saved by this tiny little startup business that he really enjoys working for and makes a product that he feels good about standing behind. If it could happen more often, we’d be a lot closer to the innovation-rewarding, go-getting country we envision ourselves as being.
Rhoda
@trollhattan: I don’t think so. I think it’s very clear to the media that he’s a flip-flopping fake and the only thing he has going for himself is the sad sack campaigns and candidates running against him. He wouldn’t have won if the 2008 candidates had gone again; hell Fred Thompson would have won this in a chair, going away. Which is the best way for Thompson to campaign. He’s blessed that Newt Gingrich became his anti-Mitt because Newt Gingrich can be decimated easily in a soundbite. He’s blessed Rich Santorum can’t win anything any longer; bless his heart as the evangelicals say turning away from him to Newt in South Carolina. And Ron Paul has been blocking for him since Iowa.
That all goes away in the general election.
I mean, fuck, he stepped on his own win with that “I don’t care about poor people,” bullshit.
If the economy just treads water; I’m pretty sure the President will win. It’ll be close, but he has had enough success in foreign policy to make a case for a second term and he’s a better candidate. If Europe collapses and takes us down; Mitt Romney’s poor campaign won’t matter much.
pseudonymous in nc
@slag:
Like it or not, what currently pays the bills at Chrysler is selling Jeeps and Ram trucks and mobster-car 300s and Town and Country minivans. Having Fiat in charge means the New 500 comes over, and the crap they were making at the bottom end can go.
Chrysler was always in the weakest position of the big 3. Ford had already made the necessary changes to its US model line; GM was on the way, but hit the financial crisis right at the point of transition; Chrysler was stuck with an incoherent set of makes and models, and dysfunctional management from the mismarriage with Daimler, and they’ve done surprisingly well by streamlining and focusing their output.
grandpa john
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Maybe Portman should check the exit polling, the main group that Romney appealed to were the over 40, high income whites some diversity huh, the number of black and hispanic that voted were in numbers to small to calculate or about 1-2 percent each, yeah that really shows diversity doesn’t it .
Jay C
@pseudonymous in nc:
Chrysler was stuck with an incoherent set of makes and models, and dysfunctional management from
the mismarriage with Daimler,the last 35 years or so.Chrysler has always been the weakest of the Big Three: I remember reading Lee Iacocca’s bio, and how he was brought over from Ford (in the 1970s) to try to turn the place around. His description of Chrysler’s management was pretty much a horrorshow, IIRC: divisions ran themselves (badly) without coordination, Corporate oversight was a joke: quality and production issues an even bigger joke – Iacocca DID improve the company no end in his tenure, but it’s amazing how quickly they reverted to their default culture of Corporate Fail.
The main difference between Lee Iacocca’s time and now is that Chrysler, instead of making (and losing) expensive investments in foreign carmakers, is now the losing investment that other foreign carmakers make. Progress, one supposes; hopefully, for their sake, Fiat will be the exception…
grandpa john
heh , great news then because the latest poll has him up by 15 points. so come on wingnuts keep burning up the money on a sure loser.
Chuck Butcher
I’d say that what brings that money out is not so much Brown as it is Brown/Ohio. If a ‘Brown’ can cruise in Ohio they’ve got real problems elsewhere. Ohio is not by any stretch of the imagination a Massachusets where a Warren ought to have some built in advantage (at least minus a shit campaign). Sherrod Brown is a state wide candidate who ought not, by their standards, exist in Ohio.
Legalize
@Chuck Butcher:
That’s not really true. Ohio is a schizophrenic state. Sherrod Brown is the type of Democrat who plays well in all of the important demographics in Ohio. I’m not sure what his numbers are, but the wingnuts have been after him pretty hard since 2006, and they haven’t made a dent in his popularity; he’s popular in Ohio. He and the president will be big helps to each other in 2012. On the other hand, there are no popular GOPers in Ohio right now; Willard can’t pal around with any of them and hope to win the state.
Legalize
@Humanities Grad:
You’re right; it might have been a couple of weeks before the election. But it was certainly apparent at that the repeal effort had it in the bag. The optics (hate that word) of him meeting and greeting a bunch of old, shriveled hags in that call center (shed) was priceless. With what we’ve seen of the Willard 3000 in the primary season, his unforced error in October / November in Ohio certainly makes more sense now – he is a dreadful politician. Teddy Kennedy cleaned his clock once; Barack Obama will make Teddy look like an amateur.
Chuck Butcher
@Legalize:
I’m aware of how schizo Ohio is and that was the point. You certainly have CDs where a Kucinich can play but the state as a whole has leaned conservative for a long time.
Now I’ll make no pretense to knowing how Obama and some others would have done minus the ’07-8 economic crash but it played hugely and gets discounted at a real risk.
People worry how the UE numbers will play in ’12 but seem to forget how drastic and immediate to the election that crash was.
When you look at Ohio at state wide results, it isn’t a very comfortable picture for Democrats especially if you do some factoring of 08.
I am not discounting Sen Brown’s chances, the GOPers have done him huge favors since ’10. I am talking about the GOP’s POV.