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ABC led off its newscast with a trio of reports handicapping the General Election. The network's Sunday morning anchor, George Stephanopoulos of This Week, called it no "shoo-in"--but the consensus inside-the-Beltway is that this race is "for the Democrats to lose." He offered statistics covering every election since World War II to prove that "the tide of history" is against the GOP. No party has been able to retain the White House when, one year out, its incumbent President has a poll approval rating below 45%. President George Bush's approval is 33%.
So if the Democrats are to gain, which red states are expected to turn blue? ABC's Jake Tapper offered us the "interior west," eight Rocky Mountain states (Ariz, NM, Utah, Colo, Nev, Wyo, Idaho, Mont) that had no Democratic governors as recently as 2000 and now have five. He credited an influx of Democratic-leaning Latino voters and a split within Republican ranks between its socially-conservative leadership based in the South and its "fundamentally different" libertarian western wing. Kate Snow (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) followed up from Ohio, a state, she reminded us, that George Bush won by just 2% in 2004. Snow found disaffection with the Iraq War, the state of the economy and the scandal-tainted state party among the Republican faithful; and she wondered whether Ohio's successful get-out-the-vote effort among evangelical Christians could be replicated if Giuliani turned out to be the candidate. "No Republican has made it to the White House without Ohio since Abraham Lincoln."
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