President Obama and Vice President Biden will visit a Chrysler transmission plant here Tuesday afternoon, a trip that the administration is billing as part of its "White House to Main Street" effort to highlight economic progress and tout the back-from-the-brink success of the automobile industry.
But with Republicans flexing their newfound power in Washington and gaming out their 2012 prospects, and the White House ready to put top political players back in campaign mode, it is hard not to see this visit as an opening argument for 2012.
Mitch Daniels, Indiana's popular Republican governor and a possible White House contender, won't be on the tarmac to greet Air Force One when it lands. Instead, he will be in downtown Indianapolis unveiling his agenda for the state, which revolves around cutting benefits and balancing the budget without tax hikes.
"Given what's happened in the midterms, I think the eyes of everyone are firmly on 2012 and I look at this visit as trying to repair the damage that was done in the midterms," said Edward Carmines, a political science professor at Indiana University. "The car bailouts and getting out in the country is important, but there's a real electoral angle to this visit."
Carmines said Obama has little chance of winning any states in 2012 that he did not win in 2008. "And of the states he did win, they have to figure out which ones he can retain in 2012, and that's where Indiana comes in."
Obama was the first Democrat presidential candidate to win Indiana's electoral votes in four decades. He won this state by the barest of margins, eking out a stunning victory by racking up a huge victory in Indianapolis and scooping up several border counties.
Tuesday afternoon, however, Obama will find a different Indiana. As elsewhere in the country, the GOP is resurgent. Here, the Republicans are led by Daniels, who helped the party gain control of the state legislature and add two House members and a Senate seat to GOP column in Washington.
Election Day exit polls showed deep disapproval of Obama and his economic agenda.
Obama last visited Kokomo in April 2008 for a town hall meeting, at which he made the case for new investments in clean energy, good jobs and manufacturing. Tuesday, he'll tell Kokomo residents that their town - labeled one of "America's Fastest Dying Towns" in 2008 - is in the middle of a stimulus-backed revival.
The town, divided about 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, received $400 million in stimulus funding that, among other things, helped a revitalized downtown attract several new small businesses. The government-backed auto industry bailouts meant that 400 workers were rehired at a local Chrysler plant.
Unemployment has fallen from a grim 20 percent in 2009 to a still-troubling 12 percent as of September. About 20 percent of Kokomo's residents work in jobs connected to the car industry.
"We've had a lot of challenges over the last few years and we are being recognized for getting through these times," said Mayor Greg Goodnight, the city's first Democratic mayor in 12 years. "I'm going to give Obama a 'thank you' and tell him he made the right decision with the auto bailouts."
Since the summer, the administration has been trying to make that argument stick, and at least one recent poll shows that people here are starting to believe that the investments were worth it.
In the midwestern states, where manufacturing remains a driving economic force, the perception of whether the bailouts worked will be critical come 2012, especially among "Hillary Democrats," with whom Obama still remains on shaky ground.
"Indiana has a lot of the types of voters for whom the president's appeal is weakest--older whites, especially men, who live in rural areas and small towns and who don't have college degrees," said Marjorie Hershey, a political scientist at Indiana University.
"If the Obama campaign can't placate some of these voters in Indiana, or counterbalance them with with a big turnout of Obama supporters, then he'll have trouble doing so in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, as well."
نقلا" من الواشنطن بوست الامريكية -مدونة محمد سيد نجا -Quoting from "The Washington Post, U.S. - Blog survived Mohamed Sayed nga
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