A nice mix of stories today from our stable of reporters, rounding out to a big picture of where the election is today. We now face an election with at best a tepid US economy — Brian Beutler looks at how the fate of the US economy hinges on the management and outcome of the EuroZone crisis, which is almost entirely outside its control. And that’s forced the president back from the broad ‘Morning in America-lite’ campaign they were hoping for last winter to a tighter and more hard fought blocking and tackling over critical demographic groups in in a handful of states.
On that front, we have the President’s surprise move on Friday to push through a mini-Dream Act by administration directive. In addition to being good policy, it was clear to anyone who was watching that this was intended to and likely would buoy the president with Hispanic voters. But there’s a more complex dynamic that’s important to note. A poll out this morning shows that the public overwhelmingly supports the President’s move. In fact, everybody supports except folks in the base of the GOP. And they hate it. (To get a taste of it, look at the GOP Senate primary in Texas.) So, as Sahil Kapur explains, the President has managed to pick a fierce fight between the GOP base and not just Hispanic voters but pretty much everyone else, a fight that puts Romney in a very bad position. (The backstory of course is that GOP strategy for 2 years has been to block all legislation to hamstring the President; this was an end run around them.)
Expect more and more of this kind of intense skirmishing over different sections of the electorate because in the big picture you’ve got a challenger who the public doesn’t particularly like and an incumbent with an economy he simply can’t sell.
