For one thing, he has less than 1/3 of the money that his rival, Barack Obama, has to toss around; Obama's got so much dough that his team's now talking about running ads in Kentucky and South Carolina, since there's no more air time or office space left in actual battleground states. In total, Obama's raised $618 million, about double McCain's haul. And McCain, whose name graces the landmark (and spectacularly unsuccessful) Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (aka McCain/Feingold) has had to rely on public financing since the end of the Republican National Convention, leaving him a total of $84 million for the entire general election.
Oh, and he's also trailing, in most national polls, by double digits.
Electorally, Obama is on a strong track to capture each and every state won by John Kerry in 2004--- including the once-thought-to-be-battlegrounds of New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This brings him to 252. Add in Iowa and New Mexico, which he's virtually certain to win, and he's up to 264. There's been some debate over whether the McCain campaign has decided to essentially "pull out" of Colorado, but numbers don't lie: the Centennial state has seen very little of Sir Maverick on television. Assume a tidal wave of Latinos and young people, and you can add Colorado's 9 electoral votes to the Obama side. Now we're at 273, which is enough to clinch it. Add in Virginia, and you've got 286.
So isn't it over, then, you ask? Shouldn't I go back to having a life, shouldn't we all chill out and watch the world series with friends, start paying attention to our kids again? SHOULDN'T THIS GODFORSAKEN THING END?
Well, yes, actually. Except that McCain, never one to lurch about or take a gamble, has decided to hinge his entire campaign on taking a state that hasn't voted Republican in twenty years: Pennsylvania. He hasn't led there, by the way, since April. So this election will likely come down to the Philadelphia 'burbs, where Kerry crushed Bush, as simply not enough people live in Western ("racist," as Congressman Jack Murtha so delicately put it) Pennsylvania to make a difference. I'll do a more detailed analysis of the Keystone state soon, but for now let's just pause, as Democrats, to contemplate, like, the total awesomeness of this election.
1 comment:
I can't help but recall my experience (and I'm being serious here) campaigning for Kerry in 2004 in suburban Phila, where a veteran whose door I had knocked on ever-so-politely asked me to leave his property immediately, lest he bring out his gun.
Not kidding.
Of the 50 or so doors I knocked on, there was 1 gun threat. So let's extrapolate from there--maybe 1/50 of the putative "swing" voter houeholds contacted have people crazy enough to offer to shoot canvassers. I say that makes them sympathetic to at least Gov. Palin, who also makes sport of shooting harmless passers-by.
And of the 20 or so veterans I met those few days (some even begrudging Kerry volunteers), nearly all thought Kerry's testimony about his Vietnam experiences was disgraceful and anti-American.
I understand that Obama hasn't served in Vietnam, nor testified about anything like it, but you see what I'm getting at.
I think McCain actually has a shot in suburban Philly. If the entirety of the Republican "base" (whatever that is) were to show up in greater Phila, and if all of the current PA polls are suffering from Bradleyitis (which we cannot possibly diagnose beforehand), then McCain *could* win PA. He needs to win all three (OH/FL/PA) in order to have any kind of chance of winning, and he knows it, so therein lies the strategy.
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