Good article up at TPM, that discusses reasons Obama is currently doing so much better than Romney in Ohio.
Some of the reasons, I hadn't yet considered or heard about, so I thought I would pass them on to y'all.
First, we should talk about an unsung hero. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Remember way back when some Democrats were getting nervous (Cory Booker?) about Obama making attacks on Romney concerning Bain Capital? There were people here at DKos who even questioned this strategy.
Well, it worked.
And the person most responsible for encouraging Obama on this strategy was Brown.
Plenty of critics — including some Democrats — cried foul when the Obama team opened the general election campaign with a flurry of criticism toward Romney’s time at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he helped found. But there has long been reason to believe that Ohio provided fertile ground for such a strategy. A survey from Purple Strategies in June showed that Bain-centric attacks carry far more potency in Ohio than other battlegrounds. The state’s populist champion, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), urged the Obama campaign to keep bringing the heat to Romney’s professional biography, predicting to TPM earlier this summer that drawing attention to layoffs by companies bought out by Bain would strike a chord with Ohio voters.
One could also argue that the Occupy Wall Street movement did quite a bit to bring the class warfare issue front and center, as a set up for this campaign season.
Another unwitting (and reluctant) hero would have been Ohio's Republican Governor, who would not stop touting Ohio's improving unemployment numbers, even though he himself was not up for reelection. Thanks John!!!
The article goes on to list other ways in which Ohio has been taken into Obama's column (so far).
Democrats there have jumped at the chance to highlight Romney’s opposition to the restructuring of the U.S. auto industry, epitomized by his 2008 New York Times op-ed with the now-infamous title, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
Perhaps Mitt didn't know that no other Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio? And Perhaps Mitt didn't know that 1 out of every 8 jobs in Ohio rely on the auto industry?
And.................the coup de grâce???
That's right. Jimmy Carter's grandson, and David Corn at Mother Jones. And the videos of the 47% comments, straight from the weasely mouth of one..........Mitt Romney. Brought to light at last.
Then there's Obama's commitment to Ohio, since the 2008 election. And Mitt's woefully low number of campaign offices.
But if Ohio Democrats are brimming with confidence, it may also come from strength in numbers. The Obama campaign boasts 96 offices in the state to the Romney campaign’s 36. A low number of undecided voters this year places an even greater emphasis on efforts to get out the vote, which could make a robust field organization an even greater asset. Early voting is slated to begin in Ohio next week.
Seth Bringman, an Ohio-based Democratic consultant, credits the Obama campaign for remaining engaged in the state since 2008, saying the Romney campaign’s ground operation “started light-years behind and they have not caught up.”
“I don’t know what [the Romney campaign’s] strategy is, quite frankly,” Bringman told TPM. “They made a run at it, but it just seems like their playbook was to rely on super PAC ads while the Democrats knew we had to outwork them on the ground. And we certainly have done that over the past year.”
I seem to remember a Romney campaign adviser stating that they were committing all their money to ads, and pulling it out of their ground-game.
Looks like that may be the single most breathtakingly dumb mistake they've made in a long list of breathtakingly dumb mistakes.
Mitt's put all his eggs in two baskets. Voter suppression. SUPERPac ads. The ads aren't working. And the jury is still out on the extent of the damage there will be from voter suppression efforts.
But, realize that requiring voter ID to vote, doesn't just hurts democrats. It will hurt many Republicans as well. And when you aren't allowed to vote against that Socialist, Communist, Nazi, Kenyan, Gay, Terrorist of a president, there may be some backlash from THAT side as well.......