Now that Congress will take up the debate over the American Jobs Act, President Obama and his supporters in the Democratic Party will embark on a campaign to promote the bill and fight for its passage. Will this fight be coming to your state? Well, ask yourself this: are your state's electoral votes up for grabs in 2012? No? Well, probably not then.
Over at the Plum Line, Greg Sargent reports that the Democrats are "ramp[ing] up [the] push to sell [the] American Jobs Act." And in support of President Obama's plan to head out on a mini-tour to promote the bill, the Democratic National Committee has produced the following advertisement:
Interestingly enough, the DNC has chosen to highlight the part of Obama's speech before a joint session of Congress that downplayed the election year drama. "The next election is fourteen months away," Obama said. "And the people who sent us here -- the people who hired us to work for them -- they don't have the luxury of waiting fourteen months." But if Obama's rhetorical play was to put "now" before "later" and suggest the Jobs Act needed deliberations that were disentangled from election year hype, the DNC is definitely thinking 14 months ahead. As Sargent notes, "The ads will run in select markets in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia."
And what states did Larry Sabato identify as the battleground just last week? "Seven super-swing states with 85 electors will determine which party gets to the 270 Electoral College majority: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13)." So the ads will run in Sabato's swing states, plus the state hosting the Democratic National Convention.
The unemployment rates for the states in which these ads will run are as follows: Colorado (8.5), Florida (10.7), Iowa (6.0), Nevada (12.9), New Hampshire (5.2), North Carolina (10.1), Ohio (9.0) and Virginia (6.1). By contrast, the ten states with the highest unemployment rates are Nevada (12.9), California (12.0), Michigan (10.9), South Carolina (10.9), District of Columbia (10.8), Rhode Island (10.8), Florida (10.7), Mississippi (10.4), Georgia (10.1) and North Carolina (10.1).
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