Senator Barack Obama's general election plan calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging Senator John McCain in typically Republican states - from North Carolina to Missouri to Montana - as Mr. Obama seeks to take advantage of voter turnout operations built in nearly 50 states in the long Democratic nomination battle, aides said.
Back during the Iowa caucus in January, I wrote how I saw that "Obama supporters were out in droves this morning, standing on frigid corners, shivering with their signs held passionately up... No other candidate has that going for them."
It's all about organization, and I don't see the GOP doing well at organizing. Not on the scale that Obama has.
McCain believes that his substance will beat Obama's style. That kind of smugness is not going to help him when all that really matters is numbers in November.
ETC: Saw this on HotAir today... George Will seeing this as I've discussed here.
And this:
The problem with McCain is that he's middle-of-the-road, which inspires no one to get excited about him.
In my opinion, the only thing that will lose Obama his mojo is people telling the truth and others listening about his associations and policies and sheer ignorance of the way the world works. At this point, I doubt that wil happen, but then, Kerry was torpedoed by the Swift Boat Vets. Bush at least gave me some reasons to vote for him (ownership society, Iraq). I do agree with McCain on limiting the government, but how does he propose to do that while wanting illegals to be legal? He's like a trojan horse.
McCain could also break early by nominating the very common sense oriented Sarah Palin, in my opinion. I hope she's our first female president.
Obama has actually leveraged web collaboration software to organize at the precinct level Brett. I only know this because they heavily use my friend's company's software, www.centraldesktop.com
They create a grass roots operation, with a wiki, event management, etc...and it allows them extremely tight organization where the Republicans are mostly still using other means.
His campaign is the first "web 2.0" campaign and I do believe he'll win by 8 points. That's my slogan, Obamaby8.
My friend and CEO of Central Desktop, Isaac Garcia, wrote a piece on "Barack Obama and the Long Tail of Politics" that was picked up all over the web. It's good and it highlights this organizational effort using technology.
I believe part of this is that McCain hasn't lit a fire under the GOP base, namely conservatives. If anything, he's gotten a cold reception there and flip-flopping on immigration and tax breaks has turned many away (myself included). He is continually hammered by the right and with the exception of the war he's basically a democrat. He may still carry the conservative vote simply to stop the disaster that is Obama as he wants to just pull the troops, but the question will be, can McCain make inroads on the democrat vote?
Obama does have "passionately commited" followers, and as you had previously said, this is a group that is to be reckoned with. I'd add dangerous to this definition as I question the intelligence of those backing him. They appear to be impervious to logic and common sense. The danger comes in the damage he will do to the country. God help us if he gets a democrat senate and congress to work with his first term.
Posted by Paler Rider, 6/9/2008 2:58:20 PM
I'd love to see Palin or Jindal on the ticket. It would raise my level of enthusiasm considerably but knowing McCain's left leanings, I wonder if either would accept the position?
On a side note, Obama keeps repeating that a McCain presidency would be a 3rd term for Bush. McCain finally fired back that an Obama presidency would be a 2nd term for Carter. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/09/mccain-obamas-running-for-carters-second-term/
