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Posted Friday, October 31, 2008 2:48 PM

Home-Stretch Spin

Howard Fineman
Is the Obama campaign confident, or is it getting cocky?

Last week David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, told me he was thinking of adding to his can-win list four flaming red states: North Dakota, Georgia, South Carolina and Arizona.

In a conference call with reporters Friday, Plouffe made it official. He isn’t bothering with South Carolina, but is buying TV ad time in the other three. Arizona, of course, is John McCain’s home state.

Is that psychological warfare or the real deal? Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, scoffed at the new Obama offensive. “I encourage them to pick some other states we intend to win,” he said.

But it is a measure of Obama’s strength and strategy (augmented by the largely unsung but crucial work of Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee) that Plouffe is able to commit money and manpower to “reach” states such as these.

My head is spinning after enduring back-to-back conference calls with the Obama and McCain high commands.

Bottom line: Obama has enough money and mo’ to spread the playing field in astonishing ways, and there is a palpable sense of excitement in Chicago about the numbers they are seeing (and hope to see) from minority (including Hispanic) and first-time voters.

By contrast, the McCainanites are talking less about the Electoral College map or voter groups than they are about the total number of calls and contacts they have made, and the historical trends that would suggest that they are not as out of the ballgame as it might seem.

They have hardly given up hope--and how could you, given McCain’s personal history of resurrections? They have faith that the United States is a “center-right” country, though evidence for that is murky.

But I was struck by how little the McCain folks talked about the Electoral College map--and how much Plouffe did precisely that.

One glimmer of good news for McCain: Obama was headed back to Iowa, a state that the Democrats had thought they had all but sewed up.

But that is cold comfort for McCain, given what seems to be happening everywhere else on the map. African-American and new-voter registrations have turned both North Carolina and now Georgia into tossup states and put Obama ahead in Virginia. If Obama is able to convert all three, we’ll be talking blowout on election night. Even if Obama wins only one of them, he makes the rest of the map close to impossible for McCain.

And that doesn’t even count all the other loose change on the map for Obama--potential pickups such as Montana, North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri.

Don’t forget Ohio, either. (McCain certainly isn’t: he’s spending the whole day there.) No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning that state and, if the polls are to be believed, Obama remains about 6 percentage points ahead there.

Davis’s contention is that all of the GOP’s voters (and new ones who share the same views) will come home to McCain in a rush in the campaign’s final days. It is true that the GOP ranks are more unified and enthusiastic about the ticket than they were weeks ago.

The Joe the Plumber tax attacks have had some impact. The McCain folks believe in the power of an ad showing Joe Biden predicting that Obama would face an international “test” if elected, a piece of rather obvious street wisdom the GOP has tried to twist into an indictment.

Obama’s closing messages are twofold. In one ad, Obama once again tries to tie George Bush’s economic policies around McCain’s neck. In the other, Obama touts his own economic, health-care and education plans.

McCain’s campaign claims that their candidate is matching Obama stride for stride in TV advertising spending in the last 10 days of the campaign.

“We’re expecting a barn-burner,” said Davis. “We expect a tight Electoral College and tight popular-vote race.”

So here is where we are: McCain is hoping to make it a close race. Obama is hoping to make it a blowout.
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Member Comments

Posted By: maxmoose03 (November 4, 2008 at 1:47 PM)

I love to hear the angry little man say of Obama, "If he wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run 4 years ago."  Someone should tell Senator McCain that if HE wanted to run against George Bush, HE should have run as a DEMOCRAT.

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Posted By: maxmoose03 (November 4, 2008 at 1:47 PM)

I love to hear the angry little man say of Obama, "If he wanted to run against George Bush, he should have run 4 years ago."  Someone should tell Senator McCain that if HE wanted to run against George Bush, HE should have run as a DEMOCRAT.

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Posted By: Praying for our Country (November 4, 2008 at 1:23 PM)

Who was it that asked, Don't count your chickens before they hatch?  

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