by William E. Saracino

Remember the names Artur Davis and Jo Ann Nardelli. You will be hearing more about them as this year progresses. They are harbingers of defeat for President Obama and Democrat candidates at all levels.
Artur Davis, who happens to be Black, served 4 terms in Congress as a Democrat from Alabama. He gave one of the seconding speeches for Obama at the ’08 Democrat convention. He barely missed being the Democrat nominee for Governor in ’10 and was offered a speaking roll at this year’s Democrat National Convention. Davis became a Republican a few weeks ago.
Jo Ann Nardelli, who happens to be Italian, was the founding President of the Blair County, Pennsylvania Federation of Democratic Women, a position she held for 6 years.
Until last month, she was still an officer of the Federation and a member of the county Democrat central committee. Nardelli became a Republican last week.
Davis left the jackass party with a blast at Obama, who he said “would punish business and job creators with more taxes and has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured.” He went on to add “faith institutions should not be compelled to violate their teachings because faith is a freedom, too”, and that “the law can’t continue to favor one race over another in offering hard-earned slots in colleges”. He closed with “ the way we have gone about mending the flaws in our health-care system is the wrong way—it goes further than we need and costs more than we can bear.” Strong letter to follow.
Nardelli was more succinct, saying that Obama “has pandered to left wing interests”, throughout his presidency, specifically citing his “war on the Catholic Church and its charitable institutions” and his “flip-flop on gay marriage” as the last straws that led to her switch.
You don’t have to be Nostradamus or even Carnak the Magnificent to predict that both Davis and Nardelli will be used extensively on the campaign trail this fall by Romney and the GOP in general.
Davis will likely be teamed with other minority GOP office holders like Congressmen Allan West (Black) of Florida, Tim Scott (Black) of South Carolina and Raul Labrador (Hispanic) of Idaho; Governors Bobby Jindal (east Indian) of Louisiana, Susana Martinez (Hispanic) of New Mexico, Brian Sandoval (Hispanic) of Nevada and Nikki Haley (east Indian) of South Carolina; and of course the GOP superstar Marco Rubio (Cuban) of Florida. Tell me again how the GOP is the old white guys’ party.
Nardelli of course will be teamed with myriad Italian-American as well as Catholic GOP officer holders, aiming directly at the religion and guns “bitter clingers”, a large minority of whom happen to be Catholic Democrats and many of whom are Italian.
Don’t expect to see Davis and his GOP minority office holder road show in California, but you would see lots of them if you lived in Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and perhaps even Detroit. Likewise expect Nardelli and her Republican gumbas to be scarce in the Golden State but ubiquitous (for UCLA grads that means “everywhere”) in the environs of Pittsburgh, southern Ohio and Boston – for both Romney and Senator Scott Brown.
The Davis and Nardelli road shows don’t need to change a lot of votes to have a large impact, and the fact that both groups will be active will cause Obama’s folks to defend turf they ordinarily wouldn’t need to. Davis and Nardelli are the “smoke”, and the odds are high that there is a lot more anti-Obama “fire” behind them in their varied constituencies.
Additional sour tea leaves for President Obama come from his inability to exceed 60% of the Democrat vote in recently held primaries in West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas . The fact that an incumbent President received less than 60% of his own party’s vote would have been a huge story were the formerly main-stream media not sock puppets for Obama.
What makes the story enormous in terms of November is the nature of the opposition Obama struggled against. A currently incarcerated federal inmate named Keith Judd received 41% of the vote in West Virginia. He spent exactly zero. In Arkansas, a Tennessee attorney, John Wolfe, Jr., received 42% of the vote after spending $18,000. And in Kentucky, Obama lost 40% of the Democrat vote to…well, to nobody actually. Over 40% of Kentucky Democrats cast ballots for someone called “Uncommitted” rather than the President. This is the man the media paints as a political colossus.
It is true that Obama was unlikely to carry West Virginia, Kentucky or Arkansas anyway. The story isn’t those states but the kinds of Democrat voters in those states who, with virtually no prodding, deserted Obama in droves. They are working class voters of all races – who just helped re-elect Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Defections among these voters – to almost any extent – almost certainly puts the ’08 Obama states of Indiana, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia back into the GOP column.
Obama can win — barely — without those. However losses of similar voters in any appreciable numbers would also put Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and even Michigan in play. Obama is history if, on top of those listed above, he loses even one of these states.
It is a long way to November, and Artur Davis, Jo Ann Nardelli, along with the Democrat voters of West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas, are mere tea leaves. But for now the reading of them should bring smiles to Republican faces and acid reflux to Obama & crew.