David Petraeus is the one potential rival for 2012 who worries the White House
The recent Democratic defeats in the Virginia and New Jersey races for governor were mainly over local reasons. But they are still having a disproportionate impact at national level. There is the Republican jubilation at blunting the Obama effect and the blow to Democratic morale, and then there are 84 other reasons. That is the number of Democratic congressmen and women whose constituencies cast their presidential votes for George W Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008. These 84 are now Washington’s walking dead, fearful of facing the voters at next year’s mid-terms and gun-shy of supporting Obama on health reform and climate change.
The 84 endangered representatives have reason to feel glum. The health bill that they’re meant to read runs to 1,990 pages and the wind is blowing against them. There has been a huge shift in sentiment among independents, voters who are registered with neither party. In last year’s election Obama split them evenly with McCain in Virginia and won just over half of them in New Jersey. In this year’s races, over 60 per cent of independents voted Republican in Virginia and New Jersey.
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