Reality Check: Obama's Tarheel Target

By Josh Kraushaar  //  June 9, 2011 | 11:30 a.m.
Updated: June 11, 2011 | 7:00 p.m.

Sometimes the spin from the White House is more telling based on what isn't said than what is.

That seems to be the case today, with President Obama's re-election advisers pitching the case that Virginia and North Carolina - and possibly, both - are must-win states for the president. Left unsaid: if those traditionally GOP states are becoming must-win, there has to be some serious atrophy in other parts of the country where Obama has done well.

Obama has plenty of paths to victory without winning the two upper South states - in fact, he could lose North Carolina and Virginia and Ohio and Florida (and Indiana, which they've all but written off) by hanging onto all the other states he carried in 2008.

Those comments read like the White House is losing ground in traditionally favorable places (Nevada? Pennsylvania? Iowa? New Hampshire?), and need to make up for it with strong performances in states that are, demographically, trending their direction.

Don't get me wrong: both states should be aggressively contested by the president's re-election team. I've already written about how important Virginia is for Democrats' prospects in 2012, and likewise, the suburban growth in North Carolina combined with its large African-American population certainly makes it winnable, under the right circumstances.

But by putting the Tarheel State in close to the must-win category, they're unwittingly showing a sign of weakness. To be blunt, even with demographic change and the Democratic convention being held in Charlotte, North Carolina will be a tough state for the president to hold.

Consider: he won the state in 2008 by the narrowest of margins, 14,000 votes - boosted on the heels of historic African-American turnout that's unlikely to be repeated again. White House strategists are already acknowledging that, with the down economy, they're losing ground across the country from their position three years ago. It would be fairly historic for Obama to gain ground in North Carolina (which he essentially needs to win it) if he's regressing elsewhere.

Indeed, recent presidential re-elections show it's exceptionally hard to be losing ground in most states, but gaining ground (or holding one's own) in another one. (Or vice versa.)

When Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were up for re-election, they didn't improve on their percentages in any state. The opposite is true: George W. Bush only lost ground in three states (South Dakota, Vermont and yes, North Carolina, by 0.01%) as he won a second term in 2004. Other factors don't bode well for Obama to improve upon his 2008 performance in the Tarheel State: the state's Democratic governor, Bev Perdue, has struggled with low approval ratings and faces the likelihood of a tough challenge from former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. The state's most prominent politician, former presidential candidate John Edwards, may be on trial for campaign finance around the time of the president's re-election campaign. And our friends at Smart Politics have analyzed the data, and concluded there's historically no boost for candidates in the state where their party holds the convention. Obama's re-election team surely believes the president has the demographics on his side in competing for North Carolina - and they're right about the trend lines. But he'll have to buck historical trends, not to mention a lousy economy, if he hopes to win it again.

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