Economics vs Demographics

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a hundred times...the re-election of President Obama will depend on how the economy is doing. While I'm sure there's a lot of truth in that, even Republican political consultant Mike Murphy knows its more complicated than that.

The race is close because next year both Obama and the Republican nominee are likely to be skating on wafer-thin ice. For while the weak economy is one huge force driving these numbers, there is a second force in play that could be equally unsettling. The 2012 election is shaping up as a battle between economics and demographics. The economy is threatening to end the President's political career. The demographics of a changing America might just re-elect him.

Actually, as I've written about here before, Ron Brownstein made this same point several months ago.

The next America is arriving ahead of schedule. And it could rattle assumptions about the coming presidential election.

Last week’s release of national totals from the 2010 census showed that the minority share of the population increased over the past decade in every state, reaching levels higher than demographers anticipated almost everywhere, and in the nation as a whole. If President Obama and Democrats can convert that growth into new voters in 2012, they can get a critical boost in many of the most hotly contested states and also seriously compete for some highly diverse states such as Arizona and Georgia that until now have been reliably red.

Yesterday, Public Policy Polling came out with some fascinating numbers in the presidential race. In terms of Latino support, here's what they found:

Obama: 66%
Romey: 29%

Obama: 72%
Perry: 26%

Obama: 74%
Bachmann: 26%

So the next time you hear Perry compare the Civil Rights Movement to tax cuts for the wealthy, or you hear Romney say he's against immigration reform because he doesn't want to read a long bill, or Bachmann tries to tell us that Black families were better off during slavery, remember that they are just continuing to dig their own hole even deeper.

President Obama can at least run on a record of doing everything he could to improve the economy. For these folks, there's no salvation from the stupid.