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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Obama's 50 state strategy (Well, really 37 or so.....)

Politico has an interesting piece on some of how Obama is looking to use resources in several "red states" he's not likely to win.

But separate from the specific states and presidential campaign strategy to press John McCain into spending time and money defending, I find the idea of coordinating and transferring Obama's enthusiasm and volunteers into local races quite intriguing. In Texas, I'm seeing huge Obama enthusiasm.
“If we can register more Democrats, if we can increase the Democratic performance and turnout, maybe we can pick up a congressional seat,” Hildebrand said.

Hildebrand’s plans underscore the unusual scope and ambition of Obama’s campaign, which can relatively cheaply extend its massive volunteer and technological resources into states which won’t necessarily produce electoral votes.

In Texas, for instance, Obama’s three dozen offices were overrun with volunteers during the primary; the campaign’s challenge is, in part, to find something useful to do with all that free labor......

(Also, I'm curious. Is this early 37 state exposure a "head fake" to lure John McCain, a testing of the waters to see where opportunities might be, or an expression of a campaign that already expects to win?

The reason I ask this is because the Obama campaign's math was unbelievably accurate in the primary. Is "50 state" a necessity or a luxury? What do they know sitting where they are? )

2 Comments:

  • As far as what I've read, Obama intends to have staff in all 50 states. Some states will only have a handful of people, though. Still, it's important from a media perspective to have campaign staff available for comments, interviews, and to counter smears that arise on the local/state levels, even in red states.

    Also, every state has colleges, and one of Obama's big support bases are college students. While the state may not go to Obama, these students are not chained to the state they went to school in and there may very well be long-term payoffs in 2012.

    In the short-term, it's a luxury, but one that the campaign can afford. In the long-term, it's closer to a necessity for Party-building purposes.

    By Blogger Todd Dugdale , at 8:17 AM  

  • Agreed.

    But there's staffing and then there's staffing. I doubt Utah is getting the cream of the crop, you know?

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:06 AM  

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