In an early post on this blog, I laid out why I believed the Obama campaign's Expand the Electorate Strategy was beyond smart - was in fact essential.
Winning Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida would guarantee Barack a victory - but there's NOTHING we can do to guarantee that he will win these states. Don't get me wrong, the campaign is going to compete fiercely there, with an unprecedented grassroots, GOTV and advertising presence just for starters. But if the Republicans know that your whole strategy relies on these states, all they need to do is knock us out there. A well placed (metaphorical) stilletto in the final weeks of the campaign and they can spend the next four years counting up their tax cuts for millionaires.
No, what we need is planned redundancy. We're going to compete to win in the three states I named, but also to agressively pursue any one of several very plausible alternative Electoral Vote strategies that would work just as well - either as a failsafe in case something goes wrong or, in a best case scenario, to shore up a landslide.
Let's go to the maps!
Clever old me.
OK, so it's not exactly rocket science - but that's the point. Common sense approaches make sense. It's the hard, gritty work of building the volunteer base, registering the voters, and getting out the vote that is the real magic here. And you don't need pricey pollsters or millionaire strategists to work this out. If little old me can work it out, so can anyone. This party needs to compete EVERYWHERE to be sure of winning in enough places. Let's keep doing that.
1 comment:
By doing a better job than McCain in getting staff and volunteers to speak with voters, Obama did a bit better in various states than expected: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/contact-gap-proof-of-importance-of.html
Now, let's take a deep breath and prepare to make millions more phone calls in 2010 and 2012.
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