The 2012 presidential election will be held one year from today.
While the battle for the Republican nomination rages on, the surging front-runner, Herman Cain, is feeling the heat over allegations of sexual harassment.
Although some progressives on New York’s Upper West Side are grumbling about a primary challenger, it’s just a bunch of hot air. That said, President Obama must fight to reenergize and mobilize his supporters. The Los Angeles Times reports:
Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 by riding two of America's biggest waves of population change — greater racial diversity and a rise in college graduates. With the 2012 election a year away, his reelection chances depend on those trends overpowering the sour impact of a bad economy.[…]
To win in places like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico — all key targets — Obama needs the Latino vote to keep expanding and to go heavily to him. In North Carolina, another closely fought state the last time around, his chances depend in part on a very large and loyal black turnout.
Yet minorities have been hit disproportionately hard by the recession — unemployment rates are higher among blacks and Latinos than among whites, and poverty is deeper.
The grim economic numbers almost certainly will discourage some from voting. The economy could even encourage some Latinos to consider the Republicans — although the hard line the GOP candidates are taking against illegal immigrants may lessen that prospect.
They call it “Stormy Monday” but Tuesday – Election Day 2012 – may be just as bad.
