Is the “Bradley effect” dead? The Obama campaign had better not count on it.

The way Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 led many commentators and political scientists to drive what they cited as the final nail into the coffin of the Bradley effect. This term, named for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, defines how polling for elections between a minority candidate and a white candidate is skewed if voters won’t admit that they will not vote for a minority candidate. (Some East Coast political analysts call this the “Wilder effect” — since this same phenomena happened during my 1989 gubernatorial campaign in Virginia.)

But what if the Bradley effect is not dead? What if this byproduct of racism has only metastasized?

Time magazine explained the Bradley effect in an October 2008 article:

“In 1982, Tom Bradley — the African-American mayor of Los Angeles — ran for governor of California. On the eve of the election, polls anointed him a prohibitive favorite. But on Election Day, Bradley lost to his white opponent, Republican George Deukmejian.”

Post-election analysis showed that white voters had cast ballots for Bradley in far smaller numbers than polling suggested. Meanwhile, the votes of the avowed “undecideds” fell in a cascading wave for Deukmejian.

This almost happened to me. Voter surveys immediately before my 1989 election as Virginia governor showed me leading my Republican opponent by almost 10 points. Some showed an even larger lead.

My campaign knew better, however. Our internal polls always showed the race to be a statistical dead heat. We told everyone to stop acknowledging victory and taking kudos. On Election Day, I won by less than half a percentage point — far less than the double-digit victory polls expected. That same day, David Dinkins eked out a similarly close win to become the first black mayor of New York — also unlike what pre-election polls had predicted.

So is the Bradley effect dead? I would argue that Team Obama should tread cautiously when looking at where the president stands in the polls. Since a variation of the Bradley effect should be anticipated.

The New York Times has noted this, with a recent article, “4 Years Later, Race Is Still Issue for Some Voters.”

One Ohio law enforcement official, John Corrigan of Jefferson County, talked about this. “Certain precincts in this county,” Corrigan said, “are not going to vote for Obama. I don’t want to say it, but we all know why.”

Jason Foreman, also interviewed for this article, had no trouble discussing the reason why, “I’ll say it: It’s because he’s black.”

The article continued describing how race in non-urban/nonsuburban areas of swing states — even those populated by union members normally supportive of Democratic candidates — still have a problem supporting Obama, due to his mixed-race heritage.

The article made me think of the Bradley effect — and why its classic sense from the 1980s may now be inoperative. Voters today do feel comfortable telling a pollster that they won’t vote for a minority candidate. They are able to do just this in the Times — with their names, hometowns and occupations cited. That’s not the concern in what may be a modernized Bradley effect.

This time it’s minorities, students and marginal independent voters who are in the grasp of the effect. In 2008, those groups turned out in large numbers for Obama. When pollsters called, they proudly announced their plans to take part in a national movement — one that would elect Obama to the White House.

Some seasoned election watchers questioned whether these groups would actually show up in the overwhelming numbers predicted. On Election Day, they did.

So Obama won. And he won big — becoming the first person, black or white, to win more that 51 percent of the vote since 1988. (He won 53 percent of the ballots cast in 2008.)

What about 2012?

When pollsters call these voting blocs now, many people will likely proclaim their continued loyalty to the president.

They won’t be lying to pollsters about whom they really want to vote for. The issue will be whether they actually go to the booth and vote for Obama.

Many voted in 2008 with the desire to see racism and racists humiliated by having a qualified black man elected president. Especially after eight years of what was not, and still is not, perceived as a successful presidency.

Now, many of these same voters still feel an allegiance to Obama — and he’s their theoretical choice in the election. But along with feeling some allegiance, they also may be left feeling disappointment. And that can lead to a disconnect with what pollsters hear compared with the voters who actually show up on Election Day.

What I am hearing from around the country is that many black and brown voters, whom the president might consider his strongest base, feel left behind, taken for granted and largely ignored.

The people who need jobs, help with educational costs and improved wages question when their bailout is coming. They question why they were not included in the first stimulus package. They wonder whether this is the best that can be achieved where they are concerned. They wonder why, when they ask these questions, it is considered “whining.” Yet when others make the same “noise,” they get the mother’s milk of politics: money from Washington.

Have the president and his administration tended astutely to the special concerns of these voters, who placed so much hope in him and his ability to make life different or better? Too often the answer I hear is, “No.”

Will the people who voice such sentiments storm the gates for the Republican nominee? Again, the answer I hear is, “No.”

But will a large portion of them feel less likely to make lines unusually long come Election Day 2012 to match what they did in 2008? The answer to that question, might be, “Yes.”

And with that, a version of the Bradley effect may be reborn as the Obama effect. Voters who tell pollsters the candidate they support, wanting to still be a part of a post-racial American tableau — but unmotivated to vote by former feelings of hope that saw too little real change.

The piece originally appeared in Politico on May 15, 2012: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76274.html

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Wilder talked about Tuesday’s Virginia primary, whose result is a foregone conclusion, since only former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul qualified. He said that regardless, Romney has the institutional support of Virginia Republicans, including the governor, Bob McDonnell, the lieutenant governor, and House Majority Whip Eric Cantor, who endorsed Romney this week. Wilder has been critical of President Barack Obama, and he believes the Republican Party is not without strength for November, and not without its own political star. Here are Wilder’s takes:

On Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has been mentioned as a potential vice presidential nominee for the eventual GOP nominee: I think he got hurt very badly in the last [legislative] session … and the current session for that matter. And Eric Cantor brought in Marco Rubio to a breakfast a week or so ago, and he was resoundingly received, I’m told. And I’m told that there was not a person in that room who did not believe that Rubio should be the first choice [for] Romney if that is the situation, with him getting the nomination.

On what McDonnell and Rubio bring to the table as potential vice presidential running-mates I’ve always thought that if McDonnell were to have a chance, Romney would have to be running strong, to show the need for pulling in a southern state. But Rubio is a different take. He’s more communicative. He speaks pretty much of and for the people he represents in that regard. He’s clearly conservative; clearly far right. But he gives a different take, something that Romney is going to need, Romney being a bit too robotic. I think McDonnell needed to have something going for him. [But] the ultrasound piece the gun piece .. and just today, you’ve got SWAT teams out there after the people who were supposedly camping in [protesting the state's sonogram law] … it hasn’t been a good 30 days for the governor.

On the upcoming Senate race between former governor and ex Democratic National Committee chair Tom Kaine and former GOP Senator George Allen: My take on that is that it’s dead even. I know the polls that came out here recently had Kaine up about eight or nine points. I wouldn’t take that poll too seriously. That poll was taken with the matrix where 50 percent of the people polled were Democrats, so what would you expect? … I think what you see out there [is that] it’s neck and neck as it relates to the Senate race.

On whether the general election race for president will be close: I do think so. The unfortunate thing for the Democrats, and particularly for the president, is there’s a strong anti-Obama sentiment in the nation, and it’s very strong in Virginia. And I’m not suggesting at all that Republicans haven’t fueled that … but it’s strong. It isn’t something that the Democrats can take for granted. That’s why I said a about a week or so ago that the best thing that could happen for the Democrats, and particularly for Obama, is for Santorum to win [the GOP nomination]. I don’t see any way that Santorum could reach the majority of the American people to be elected the president of the United States. [But] since I don’t believe that’s going to happen — I don’t think he’s going to get the nomination — if Romney wins … I think there’ll be people saying, ‘well, I think he’s the only person left. He might have the best chance to beat Barack Obama.’ And I predict there’ll be a sizable coalescence behind his candidacy. Virginia is going to be very tough. Virginia’s pivotal. I advised the president the last time around, [that] if he campaigned in Virginia — if he committed to Virginia, he could win Virginia. He campaigned, he committed and he won Virginia with 53 percent of the vote, [versus] only 51 percent in Ohio and by only a 25,000 vote difference in North Carolina.

On whether Obama is in a position to take advantage of Republicans’ declining popularity: I’m not suggesting that he can’t [win], I’m suggesting that he’s going to have to work it. I’m not suggesting that he isn’t, or doesn’t plan to. But the fact that the Republicans are killing and tearing each other asunder now isn’t something you can depend on. And with gas prices being what they are [and] escalating, even though they wouldn’t be the president’s fault, that doesn’t matter. People look to who’s in charge; who’s heading the government. And so that’s not a good sign; not a good thing at all. So even if the economy is coming around, gas prices and the economy are almost on equitable terms as far as many people are concerned.

On whether he still thinks former national security adviser and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, Condolleezza Rice, would make a good Republican vice presidential pick, as he wrote in Politico: Yeah, I still think that. I think it would be wonderful for the election. Now let’s be real, and let’s be honest. I don’t think [Romney would] do that. I think there are any number of people who would not accept her as the nominee, and wouldn’t come out directly and say so, but would say, ‘hey wait a minute, you’re going a little too far.’ There are people who already question Romney’s bona fides as it relates to how conservative he is. As a matter of fact, that’s the be all and end all of Santorum’s campaign: ‘I am the true conservative in this race, I’m the only real conservative in this race.’ And so, that being the case, I think it would be a stretch for Romney to do that. Would it be a winning thing? It possibly could be, but could he get away with it, I don’t know. Now having said that, the next best thing to do is to pick somebody who you think could win. And I’m not suggesting [Senator Marco] Rubio would accept it, [but] he’s sharp, he’s smart, he’s young, he’s gifted. He could wait for years and say ‘I’ll wait til there’s no incumbent out there, and I’ll run on my own for the presidency,’ rather than to take what some might say would be a failed opportunity — not suggesting that it will be failed, because I think this will be a close election. And not just in Virginia. It’ll be a close election nationwide.

On whether Obama’s election exacerbated racial tensions in the U.S. No, I don’t think it has exacerbated racial tensions, to the extent that it might hurt him. By the same token, his election didn’t eradicate racism in America. Some would have said ‘we live in a post racial society now.’ We don’t. Just as my election as governor didn’t change racism’s ugly head in Virginia. There are episodes. There are things that take place that cause change to happen, and cause people to recognize what can happen. But you have to maintain it. That’s why when you get that foot in the door, you have to keep it open. One of the things that has happened is the lessening of the intensity, the lessening of the excitement, the lessening of the “yes we can” or hope and “change we can believe in.”

On his criticisms of the president Can I cut right to it? I had desperately wanted to see somebody put on the Supreme Court that could articulate our needs and our desires, as would a Thurgood Marshall. That hasn’t happened with two opportunities to do so. Jimmy Carter never had a shot at naming anyone to the supreme court, but Jimmy Carter named more African-Americans to the federal bench than any American president. Now having said that, do I criticize the president for picking people who obviously might be good? But when you consider we now have coming up before the Supreme Court the possible turning back of the clock on affirmative action — now I’m not suggesting his nominees that he’s put there might not vote as we would hope they would vote, but are they in a position to really articulate like a Marshall could? You can predict what Clarence Thomas’ position is going to be. Related: White House pushes back regarding President Obama’s federal appointments Now put that criticism on the side. My other thing was, that, when you put people in the pipeline, that is, when you put people in cabinet positions, they have independent budgets from your own. Consequently, you are in a position then to burrow people into public policy positions and government to effect it, long after the president is gone. They’ve been my criticisms. I don’t back down from them. This doesn’t say to anyone that I would not still support the president, but if I can’t criticize what I see is wrong, then I have no business being in a position of asking anyone to do anything when it’s right.

On whether he has taken his critiques and advice directly to the president: No, we’ve not talked in that regard. The last conversation I had with him was brief, when he was here in Richmond campaigning. And I told him that I still thought he could win. And I told him … that I thought Virginia would be dispositive of his election. If he wins Virginia this time, I think he wins the nation. I think he agreed with that.

On whether he will participate in the upcoming campaigns in Virginia I’ve always voted (laughs) That’s in November. We’ve got a long time to go before we talk about campaigning. Why don’t we just see what’s going to take place, and then we’ll move in that regard. The alternatives are so bad in many instances; that one is almost impelled if not compelled — to do that. But go back to what I said: it is not going to be a piece of cake, and I am not at all unaware of the fact that the president knows that, too.

On the late Rep. Donald Payne, who died this week: Oh I saw that and I was just torn to pieces by it, because he and I were good friends. I liked him. I liked his approach. I liked his style. He was a low key guy; he didn’t look for headlines, he wasn’t trying to impress anybody. He was a hard worker. He did a great deal to bring attention to Africa. He worked assiduously, relative to the problems of our cities in this country, and he’ll be missed. With his years of experience, and having come from where he’ s come from, as the first African American congressman from New Jersey, it’s a great loss to the nation, and obviously a great loss to the constituents that he represented.

On what he hopes will be his legacy in Virginia: I appointed more women to positions than had ever been in the history of the Commonwealth. I appointed more minorities to positions that had ever been before. I made certain that every board, every commission, every entity had minority representation, and in so doing, I never was criticized for doing it because I wasn’t advertising that I’m putting in this black person or this woman — because they were qualified.

On whether he’s troubled that his legacy doesn’t include more than one other elected black governor (the other being Deval Patrick in Massachusetts: Oh it troubles me, so much so that I’ve said being number one means nothing if there’s not a number two.

On whether there’s a next Doug Wilder, Deval Patrick or Barack Obama out there: Oh yeah, there are some bright guys out there … the only thing they need is for some light to shine on them. Like Marco Rubio is a perfect example: came from nowhere literally … legislatively … but look, he’s on the national scene now, or Bobby Jindal of Louisiana…

On why he seems to be such a fan of Rubio’s: No, I’m not a fan of his, let’s be clear. But I’m a realist. And I’m saying, when you take a sharp young guy like that around, his star will rise. It’s inescapable that it must rise, because he’ s not gonna stand still. And that’s the same type of adrenaline flow that’s necessary in the minority community. That young person. They’re out there. What we need to do is to not plow them under, and not tell them that the time is not right. Look, there wasn’t any groundswell for Doug Wilder to run for any office, ever. State senate, lieutenant governor or governor; each time I’ve ever sought to run for any of those offices I was told it’s not right. It’s not your time.

On the legendary “Bradley effect” when he ran for governor in 1988, that showed polls overestimated the percentage of white Virginians who would vote for him: I knew, my polls were showing [it]! I was never anywhere but in the plus or minus [two] arena. So it was a dead even race. It came out just like I thought it would – I never thought I would lose it, but 15, 16 points are you crazy? No way in the world!

On why that experience has made him skeptical of Obama’s rebound in the polls, including in Virginia: Oh yes, but it’s not a Bradley effect there. [It]‘s because people haven’t focused on the election. Polls are snapshots. Look what’s happening on a regular basis now. When you see a poll today that tells you something, and you take that same question being asked just three days later, and it tells you something completely different. It’s like a shutter of a lens, the clicking of a camera. It’s not dependable. So consequently, I am convinced that the White House knows that it is going to be a tough fight, and they are preparing for that, and I commend them for that.

The piece was originally comprised by Joy-Ann Reid from the grio on March 6, 2012:http://nbcnews.to/yjKlxr

In August 2010, here in POLITICO, I proposed that President Barack Obama replace Vice President Joe Biden on the 2012 Democratic ticket with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I still think it is the wisest course of action.

And what about the GOP’s vice presidential intentions?

First the Democrats. Obama would need a little more of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s chutzpah to dump Biden. After watching Biden’s performance the past few years, Johnson would not have had difficulty moving him out and bringing in a stronger teammate — largely because it would be right for the Democratic Party and the country.

Consider LBJ’s maneuvering to appoint Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice on the Supreme Court. There was not a vacancy on the court — and none on the horizon. That was of no moment to Johnson. He took care of that minor complication in short order.

A master of political maneuvering, Johnson created this vacancy out of whole cloth by appointing young Ramsey Clark as U.S. attorney general and convincing his father, Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, to resign. If Clark had stayed on the court, he would have had to recuse himself from every case his son, the new Justice Department head, was involved in. Tom Clark left, and Marshall made history — again.

But the Democrats will have an Obama-Biden ticket in 2012.

Now, what about the other side of the ballot?

It looks increasingly likely that Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. Seeing how he’s evolved ideologically during his political career, Romney must be careful when choosing his VP. The GOP base will see it as a signal of which Romney will lead the party during the general election.

Frankly, Romney needs a Southerner. It is the modern GOP’s base — and that base has yet to develop any real connection with Romney. He will need his candidate to bridge that gap, and Romney has little to no choice on this.

The most obvious running mates are Florida freshman Sen. Marco Rubio and the governor of my own commonwealth, Bob McDonnell.

First, Romney should take Rubio at his word that he doesn’t want to be on the ticket. Rubio’s instincts are right. It is too soon for him.

McDonnell, though, has the profile that conventional wisdom would say Romney needs. McDonnell is Southern, conservative, politically savvy, popular and suburban friendly in a must-win state. No one could blame Romney for making this sound electoral choice — which addresses every political calculus important this November.

I would not be surprised to see Romney’s people start spending time in Richmond, to check up on McDonnell.

Yet, I’m not sure this is a time that calls for the conventional.

What if Romney did in 2012 what Sen. John McCain tried to do in 2008? McCain, frankly, failed to reshape the mold. Romney, though, can succeed.

The answer to Romney’s search may well be sitting in Palo Alto, Calif., at Stanford University.

His success could come in the form of a petite, whip-smart, iron-willed woman who knows the world and America’s place in it better than most: Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state.

As political maneuvering goes, Johnson would let out a belly laugh at the political skill of a Romney-Rice pairing.

Rice was a darling of the Bush administration, one of the few who suffered minimal public scars and escaped minus the political revulsion some of her former colleagues still evoke. She knows foreign policy, which Romney does not. She understands the workings of Washington, also not Romney’s forte.

Rice, though, is not a Beltway captive, having spent most of her life outside the nation’s capital. She is of the West, having lived many years in California. Yet she also is a woman of the South, having come of age in Birmingham, Ala. — the daughter of a teacher and minister — during a time of segregation when that city earned the terrible nickname, Bombingham. She survived a tumultuous time in this nation’s history, facing violence and the loss of friends with grace and hope.

Rice is an American example.

She would break barriers. She would also bring national and international gravitas to the 2012 political discussion, which is desperately needed.

Obama-Biden versus Romney-Rice. What a campaign that would be!

The piece originally appeared in Politico on January 17, 2011: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71537.html

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In 1998, I was not quite in sync with literary icon Toni Morrison when she wrote of President Bill Clinton: “White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president.”

She was making a provocative point about the aggressively negative treatment Clinton received from wide swaths of the media and political world. Her specific proof was not off base, if tongue-in-cheek.

“Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime,” Morrison wrote. “After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

But regardless, it seemed a bit disjointed to use the moniker, “first black president,” for a man who — while sympathetic to the circumstances of Americans of African descent — had not and could not experience what it actually means to live as a black man.

So, no, I couldn’t get on board with the notion that Clinton was our first black president — even if the statement was made almost solely to spur political conversation.

But as I had learned in Virginia during the fall of 1989 — and then through travels across the country — Americans should not be underestimated. I felt voters were closer to electing a black president than conventional wisdom suggested.

The national electorate confirmed my hunch in November 2008, choosing Barack Obama, a darker-skinned man of mixed racial heritage, to be chief executive. He is a gentleman I proudly campaigned nationwide to elect.

All of a sudden, during both Morrison’s and my lifetime — not just our children’s — America elected a black president, in a spirit of hope and optimism painted in votes from all hues across the human rainbow.

Yet here we sit, more than three years after Obama’s win, and too many people are pulling me aside in private to ask why his standing in the African-American community has softened since his Inauguration. They also question whether the reduced excitement among young and new voters — with that lack of enthusiasm from African-Americans — might hinder Obama’s 2012 campaign.

This has forced me to think back to Morrison’s comment.

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

Has that happened? I am forced to say, “No” — especially when comparing Morrison’s metaphorical first black president to the actual first black president.

Think back on a small slice of merely the upper levels of the Clinton administration, and remember how many Cabinet agencies the Arkansan had named African-Americans to lead: Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown, Army Secretary Togo West, who succeeded Brown at Veteran Affairs, Office and Management and Budget Director Franklin Raines and Director of National Drug Control Policy Lee Brown. Clinton also regularly cited Vernon Jordan as a respected adviser and strategist.
Clinton may not have been the nation’s first black president — but he did make appointments like he was. Obama would do well to look a little closer at the Clinton template.

I have heard any number of people worry what will happen to the estimation of African-Americans if Obama is not reelected. I remind them, come Jan. 20, 2017, at the latest, he will not be president — regardless of what happens next fall.

I also ask them to consider what legacy Obama will leave — no matter when he vacates the Oval Office. What will he have left for black Americans beyond an electoral point in time? Who will follow him? Who will be the second to Obama’s first, and what has he done to help prepare for that?

The answers have not been made obvious for the public to embrace.

In discussing this with my college class at Virginia Commonwealth University, one astute young man raised his hand and asked me the natural follow-up question: “Governor, what did you do when you had the chance?”

It’s a good question. One I don’t mind handling because of the record my team and I built when entrusted with Virginia’s executive office.

We hired Jacqueline Epps to be the first African-American head of the Virginia Retirement System, a multibillion-dollar enterprise; Eddie Moore, as the first African-American state treasurer; James Dyke, first African-American secretary of education; and Ruby Martin, the first African-American secretary of administration. We appointed the most black members to state boards and commissions ever seen in Virginia’s history.

We did not govern solely for any single specific segment of Virginia’s population. But we also did not ignore the responsibility and opportunity to open the doors of government leadership to all.

The third branch, the judiciary, though, provides the greatest layer of concern when it comes to Obama’s record of appointments. A person with even the smallest understanding of the Civil Rights era knows many, if not most, of its significant achievements were spurred by the judiciary — the Supreme Court in particular. Thurgood Marshall’s voice made a difference arguing cases before the court and then as a long-term member after his appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson. His sensibility is missing, and it is needed again.

For any talents Justice Clarance Thomas may bring to the table — he does not use them to advance the causes that Marshall spent a lifetime fighting for. Marshall needs a successor. Obama’s actions say he believes Thomas fills that role. Others of us urge him to reconsider.

The question comes up in every presidential election: “What kind of justices will you appoint to the Supreme Court?” With the first vacancy during Obama’s term, conventional wisdom suggested that he needed to court the Latino vote and name a Latino to curry favor with that growing electorate. We waited to be surprised — but to no avail.

When the second vacancy occurred — a rarity because few presidents get to appoint more than one, and some not even that — we again had high expectations that an African-American would be appointed.

When not a single African-American — at least publicly — was seriously considered, certain presumptions began to arise. The first is that there were none qualified; the second is that there were none psychologically or politically suited.

There are too many persons, too numerous to name, who stand in rebuttal to such nonsense. Don’t give up, wait until the next one comes around, that might be your turn.

Clinton, among others, seeded the government with those who could grow to fill this role. Obama needs to take advantage of previous seasons’ sowing of the fields.

By birth and life experience, Clinton cannot lay claim to the title of first black president — as Morrison knighted him. But Obama needs to work harder to make it less obvious that Clinton, in governing deed, actually deserves it more that the 44th president does.

When I arrived in the Ivory Coast in the early 1990s on a tour of seven African nations, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the first president of that country, greeted me. He was instrumental in the efforts leading to the decolonization of Africa.

“I have waited for you,” Houphouet-Boigny said through an interpreter. He meant this to show his pride in seeing America elect a governor of African descent.

In reflecting on what he said to me, I, too, have waited for a long time. If the Republicans persist in their “presidential candidate for the month” campaign, then I’m correct in assuming Obama will most likely be reelected — and that we are correct in reminding him that we have waited.

The piece originally appeared in Politico on December 12, 2011:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70302.html

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Richmond — When I received a phone call earlier this week asking me to have a frank discussion about the president’s problem with independents — specifically, as to how acute the issue is in Virginia, an important swing state — I wanted to share the sense of unease that I am hearing from my neighbors around the commonwealth and around the country.

But the call did not come from anyone affiliated with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or folks in Chicago. That call came from James Hohmann of Politico, who co-wrote a terrific piece about the president’s difficulty with independents in the commonwealth, and by extension around the country.

I hope the White House political department and the Obama campaign are doing work at least as in depth as Hohmann and his cowriter Glenn Thrush have done. Such yeomen’s work is necessary if the president is going to match his 2008 win of Virginia’s electoral votes in 2012.

To be blunt, if it is not, he will not win.

I have observed and been involved with politics for many years, but it does not take any special skill to note that Virginians are not quite happy. Their mood is unsettled. And, as many a politician has learned over the years, Virginians are an independent lot quite ready to  look for new leadership when they feel that is what the hour demands.

President Obama, a Democrat, won Virginia in 2008 for the very same reason Republican Bob McDonnell won the gubernatorial election in 2009: Independents vested the two campaigns with an overwhelming number of their votes. They were not being fickle by switching from a Democrat one November and choosing a Republican the next. No … they were being discerning.

People for decades have talked about my home state as a conservative bastion. And it is true that the temperament of Virginians is moderate conservative. But more than anything else Virginians are independent. They are smart. They consider. They weigh. They decide. They do not blindly follow any party or ideology. Instead they are deeply rooted in a political mindset that values prudence, pragmatism, and results.

That is what they saw from Barack Obama in 2008. Virginians — like many people around the country — thought they saw our home state’s values wrapped in the Obama message of hope and change. The people of my commonwealth hold practical ideals of the utmost importance, but that does not mean they do not dream, too. They wanted to dream with this president, so they gave him their votes at a time the economy was beginning to falter. Surely his middle-class success story would lead him to put their everyday concerns at the top of Washington’s agenda.

Three years later, I hear many Virginia independents wondering if that is indeed what happened. They are not sure. And to win in 2012, that is the concern that this president must address between now and November 6, 2012.

Is he doing that with his jobs plan? I, unfortunately, am not quite so sure.

Let’s say, as is possible, that the absolute worst happens legislatively with the jobs plan the president is touting: It does not pass. Then what? The message we seem to be getting from Washington is “nothing.” Instead of working to meet the dire needs of Americans during a time of widespread economic distress we will be in a permanent campaign of charges, attacks, and promises — with the voters being assured that DC will get back to work — finally — in January of 2013.

Will Virginia’s independents — or independents in any state — reward that as the result of the historic vote we cast in 2008? I am not sure I would answer that question is “yes.”

This is an election year in Virginia, we are electing all 140 members of the Virginia General Assembly. What is the mood of independents as they are contemplating those races?

The facts tell us that they are not ready to jump back on the Obama bandwagon yet. There are quite a few hotly contested legislative races that will hinge upon the decisions that independents make in the election booth. Control of the Senate of Virginia rests upon them. Where were the Democrats running in those races when the president’s bus tour rolled into southern and eastern Virginia?  Were they standing outside its doors ready to clasp hands with their presumptive 2012 standard bearer.  No. The House of Delegates Democratic leader has gone as far as to pay for a television advertisement to tell voters in his district he is not anything like Barack Obama. It is chock full of independent-minded people.

And he’s not alone in employing that tactic. My local newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, recently ran a story highlighting the members of the president’s own party who do not feel he is a help to them this fall.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the canary in the mineshaft.

Most tellingly, though, where was the president’s political partner, Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine, while Obama makes his stops in a state where Kaine is waging a nip-and-tuck race? Not by Obama’s side.

Tim Kaine knows the risks involved with his close association with Obama. They both need each other’s votes. They cannot afford the perception that one is running away from the other. It is very tricky business, and no doubt Kaine and the president have discussed the unique ramifications of their tightly knit personal and professional relationships. They are friends. That dynamic is another reason 2012 will not be like 2008.

As I have said before, and will continue to say, I want to see this president reelected. I expressed that sentiment to him personally this summer. But without independent people like the ones who live in Virginia, it will be difficult for that to happen. Obama needs to reconnect with and give them back their desire for hopes and the ability to dream. It is not too late, but it must be done.