You know that saying "reading blogs is like getting the newspaper 3 days early." I thought of that when I read Nedra Pickler's latest headline:
Obama camp sees possible win without Ohio, Fla.
Umm, yeah, and? The context here is Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's recent pitch to supporters at a private event:
At a fundraiser held at a Washington brewery Friday, Plouffe told a largely young crowd that the electoral map would be fundamentally different from the one in 2004. Wins in Ohio and Florida would guarantee Obama the presidency if he holds onto the states won by Democrat John Kerry, Plouffe said, but those two battlegrounds aren't required for victory.
But really, while Pickler seems to consider this news, it should come as a surprise to no one who's been truly paying attention. Back on March 14, I laid out the extremely plausible paths that both Democratic candidates had to the nomination, neither of which went through Ohio or Florida.
The first two steps:
1. Win what John Kerry won.I think we can all agree that Kerry's states are the minimum any Democrat would (should) win, which includes 2 of the "big 4": Michigan and Pennsylvania. That will give the Democratic nominee 252 of the necessary 270 EVs as follows:
California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New York (31), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3),Washington (11) and Wisconsin (10).
2. Win Iowa and New Mexico.
Again, I believe these states, which barely went for Bush in 2004, would shift to either Democrat in November, thanks to a highly mobilized Hispanic community in New Mexico (I believe Gov. Richardson would be able to deliver the state for the Democrat this year) and an extremely motivated and well-organized Democratic base in Iowa thanks to the Iowa caucuses this year. Rasmussen Reports concurs that these states "Lean Democratic" this year. Victories here would give the Democrat 264 of the requisite 270.
Iowa (7), New Mexico (5)
As of this writing, Barack Obama is in fact polling ahead of John McCain in all of these states, which puts Barack just 6 EVs shy of the nomination. In other words, even without Ohio or Florida, Obama would need only one of the following states (where, incidentally, he is also currently polling ahead) to clinch:
Colorado (9 EVs)
Missouri (11 EVs)
Virginia (13 EVs)
And that's not even counting a few other red states the Obama campaign intends to put in play. From Pickler's article:
Plouffe and his aides are weighing where to contest, and where chances are too slim to marshal a large effort. A win in Virginia (13 electoral votes) or Georgia (15 votes) could give Obama a shot if he, like Kerry, loses Ohio or [sic] Florida. [...]Georgia has many unregistered black voters who could turn out in record numbers to support the first major-party nominee who is black, he argued. Plouffe said the campaign also will keep an eye on Mississippi and Louisiana as the race moves into the fall to see if new black voters could put them within reach.
As kos notes, there is a massive voter registration drive underway right now in predominantly black neighborhoods in Louisiana that is overwhelming the local registrar offices, all of which should pay major dividends in November. But kos is right, it's not all about winning in these formerly reddest of red states, it's about making McCain spend money there.
If Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi tighten, McCain, already lagging far behind in money and constrained in the general election by taking public financing, will have a tough choice between defending what should be easy holds and spending the HUGE bucks required to seriously contest expensive Blue states like Pennsylvania while desperately holding on to expensive Red ones like Florida.
McCain is already going to have to spend big to hold onto Florida and Ohio as it is. He's downright screwed if he has to defend Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi and Plouffe's comments at the fundraiser the other day were clearly meant to put McCain on notice.
This year's map is going to be different than 2000 & 2004 and it's about time the media caught up to that.
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