“Clearly, and I’m being cautious, I think it’s going to be a close race. If Obama wins the 255 votes in the states where he’s favored, then to get to 270 he needs to choose from the following menu: 1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West — Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N’s (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N’s and either Colorado or Virginia.” With the general election begun in earnest, Democratic pollster Paul Maslin surveys the electoral vote terrain for Salon.
2 thoughts on “The Battle Plan.”
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That seems way pessimistic. We have a much better candidate, organization, message, and strategy now than we did then, for one. He’s also ignoring the underlying fundamentals, in terms of Democratic self-identification and registration being hugely up since 2004, the GOP being at a total nadir and showing no signs of recovery, etc. If everyone has already decided that the Congressional elections are going to be a bloodbath and almost any seat less than GOP +10 will be in play, I don’t know why they haven’t extended this logic to the presidential race yet. I don’t doubt that McCain will outperform his party, but not by that much. Hell, he’s still only getting 75-80% of his own partisans running unopposed in primaries, so he’s got problems even with his own base. I’m sure most of them will come around eventually, but probably not terribly enthusiastically. And we haven’t really even begun to run against him in earnest yet. I think we’re seeing very close to the ceiling for his support in the fall right now, and we’re still winning in most polls.
I’m inclined to agree with you. I don’t want to lapse into overconfidence, but I have a feeling we’re going to win this election going away. Even in a regular year McCain would have trouble beating Obama, I think, and this is not a regular year.