Maybe Obama can use climate change as a wedge issue against Romney

The fact is, Obama didn’t do as well in 2008 with voters in the $100,000-$200,000 range as he did with voters above $200,000, so that Quinnipiac figure is not as troubling as suggested. Still, Kraushaar is on to something—Romney holds a natural appeal for many upscale, suburban swing voters that John McCain lacked, and that he certainly lacked once he picked the Alaskan huntress as his running mate. Obama needs to worry about holding onto this demographic in states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado and Pennsylvania (among other states) even as he works to limit his losses among working-class white voters with his more populist language. And what better way to do that than to remind these upscale voters that Romney has abandoned his formerly strong stance on addressing climate change for a morass of near-denialist statements? At the very least, it might force Romney to tack back to the center (i.e., scientific reality) on this issue, thus highlighting anew how far he has swung from his technocratic moorings. So keep an eye on this. It may just have been an off-the-cuff answer to a good question. But it may also be something that Chicago has up its sleeve.