Caitlin Huey-Burns of realclearpolitics.com has a report on North Carolina pegged on Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue’s surprise decision not to run for reelection this year and, after noting Perdue’s bad poll numbers, examining Barack Obama’s efforts to carry once again a state which he won 50%-49% in 2008. My sense is that Obama’s poll numbers in the Tarheel State have held up better as compared to 2008 than those in many other states (e.g., Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania), and perhaps Obama will get a boost from Charlotte’s hosting of the Democratic National Convention. But, as Huey-Burns writes, energizing the blacks and young voters who provided his margin of victory “will need to be the president’s chief focus.”
It may be an uphill battle if the quotes she got from Obama backers are any indication. “I hear nothing but excitement in the African-American community about the president,” Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx tells Huey-Burns. And how does that excitement manifest itself? He goes on to say, “People feel like he’s been dealt a crummy hand.” Devin Lee, a freshman at UNC-Charlotte, tells her that he will support Obama mostly because the rest of the field is so weak, and campus College Democrats president Eliza Hernandez tells Huey-Burns, after rhapsodizing about the “groundbreaking” 2008 campaign, “It’s going to be a lot more difficult, that’s for sure. The whole slow process of change has disenchanted some students.”
Doesn’t sound like “Hope and Change” and “We are the change we are seeking” will quite do it this time.
