So the Obama campaign has gone dark in Georgia and is moving some of that staff from Georgia to North Carolina. And so the last round of polling makes North Carolina and Montana look a lot less likely to swing our way. So it goes.
Virginia still looks good. North Dakota, oddly enough, still looks good. Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa still look fantastic. We’re still up in New Hampshire. Yes, we’ve won some of those states, off and on, in the last few cycles. We have not done so consistently. There is a point to this, and mark it well.
(Crossposted at MyDD)
Al Gore and John Kerry both focused on the same 16 or 18 states. That was it. The world could swing on what happened in Florida and Ohio, Florida and Ohio, Florida and Ohio. God help us, we left so much money on the table. We can win without either of those states. We could even win without Michigan, though we won’t have to.
Give us the Kerry states plus Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico. We’re home. Give us the Kerry states and Virginia and Iowa and we’re home. Give us the Kerry states minus Michigan, toss in Virginia, Iowa, and one or two of the other close ones and we still win.
Barack Obama will win a few states that John Kerry did not win. He’ll probably win at least one or two that Al Gore didn’t. Fine, we’re not going to win (or probably contest for much longer) a few of the states we’ve wanted to. As we get closer to November we have to triage. The map always narrows towards the end. But…..
This helps the party. That money wasn’t wasted. The infrastructure we’ve built in those red states will help congressional candidates and will drive Democratic turnout. That will help us next time. If we lose one of the Dakotas by less than five points people might think that showing up and voting for a Dem in 2010 or 2012 might actually matter.
Oh, and I wouldn’t count Montana out entirely. Ron Paul’s name (not Bob Barr, Ron fucking Paul) will be on the ballot there…
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