Until China unionizes, manufacturing jobs won't come back here. However, by the time China unionizes everything will be mechanized so the jobs won't really come home; the only jobs that will be left are those that require creativity/ingenuity, and require college education or vocational training.
I'm most worried eabout OH and VA.
Set your mind at ease about VA. It's not in play. I would worry about MO a lot sooner than I would worry about VA.
To a lesser extent WV and NH but we don't need those: the House would select Bush over Kerry anyday.
The 12th Amendment isn't quite clear. Is it the old House or the new House that gets to pick the President?
There are a lot of close House races this year. It's possible that the Republicans won't control the necessary 26 state delegations. There are about 15 "locks" and maybe 5 more that are pretty safely in Republican hands. But they'll need some close races to go their way to control the Presidential vote. Otherwise, whoever the Senate picks as VP becomes President. Meaning, in the case of a Republican-controlled Senate: President Cheney!
The entire "North" only elects any Republicans because we still are fiscally conservative. However, Bush isn't so he may loose the three northern states on that alone.
There are two types of fiscal conservatives: those who favor balancing the budget, and those who favor low taxes. Bush will do very well among tax hawks.
Virginia is pretty much MD and WV combined nowdays.
Kinda, except most of VA is traditional conservative South, whereas that only accounts for three or four counties in MD. Most of MD is urban/suburban Northeast Corridor, whereas that only accounts for the DC suburban portion of VA.
If Kerry takes WV he'll pobably take VA,
Not at all true. The WV vote will be tied to jobs and unions. The VA vote will be a much greater diversity of issues.
he has no chance in MD. Then we're screwed unless we take PA. However the old conservative suburbs are trending Democratic after 30 years are GOP stringholds.
That has more to do with the Democrats moderating their message than with the suburbs changing their ideology. It also has to do with job losses - which also has nothing to do with ideology. The suburbs aren't "getting more liberal," as far as I can see.
That's how MD, CA, NJ, etc switched. If the process continues GA, NC, OH, IN, NV, and AZ will follow soon, but probably not till 08.
Our time of dominance in the Presidential arena is drwaing to a close, I just hope that we can squeeze out one last victory before the Dems take over.
I see the opposite. I see that the only way Democrats can make themselves palatable enough to win the White House is by steering to the center. When was the last true liberal to occupy the White House? You have to go back to LBJ. When was the last northern, rank-and-file liberal Democrat President? JFK. (LBJ, though he was very liberal, came out of the wing of the Democrats that is now the Southern wing of the Republicans.) In the last nine presidential elections, conservative Republicans have won 3 (80, 84, 00), moderate Republicans have won 3 (68, 72, 88), and moderate Democrats have won 3 (76, 92, 96). Of those three Democrat victories, one was against an unelected VP handpicked by a President who was impeached and resigned in disgrace, one was a 43% popular plurality, with a 3rd party candidate who took away the conservative vote, and one was against a very weak Republican challenger to an incumbent.
If Kerry wins in 2004, it will only be because we have a President who is utterly reviled by about 40% of the country, AND an economy that has bled jobs over the course of his administration (whether or not it's his fault). It does not represent Republican weakness. If anything, with all of the hatred of Bush, and the high joblessness, this *should* be a Kerry landslide. The fact that it is a battle goes to show how weak the Democrats are in Presidential politics.
