chalk talk

Roland Martin has a column at CNN.com on the Howard Dean 50 State Plan that’s been driven home during the Obama campaign. I was talking with my gal the other week about the how the plan was getting some blowback after Obama decided to close down operations in a few states that were clearly unturnable. They made a decision, maybe based on a timeline, that resources that were poised to pounce, if needed, could be used elsewhere. Had there been a need to defend, he could have done it. Everyone got on with yelling and screaming that Obama never intended to run in all 50 states and it was just blah blah blah blah. I think it’s important to remember that Obama wasn’t the candidate – let alone the leading candidate or nominee – back in 2006 when Howard Dean put this plan into play. The idea behind it was to have a ground presence in all 50 states so that as the campaign revved up the Democratic nominee would have the ability to ramp up pre-existing operations into something that could attempt to win a state or defend it, if necessary. As this General Election has unfolded, what Dean imagined has come full circle as Obama is attacking and turning states that voted Republican in 2000 and 2004 while still having volunteers on the ground in the Democratic states he needed to hold. As the new battleground states have begun to turn (Virginia, N.M., Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, Missouri, etc.) the McCain campaign has been forced to play nothing but defense with no organization in-place to defend that territory. The idea, back in ’06, that Virginia might be in play this year probably seemed so distant to the GOP that they put forth little or no effort to establish any foothold in the Commonwealth. By the time McCain realized there was trouble brewing he opened up the "GOP bag of good planning” and saw it was nothing but air and dust. As of July this year Obama already had 20 offices in Virginia while McCain had just opened his third. By August, Obama had 33 offices in Virginia while McCain was waiting to open up some offices around Labor Day. The same thing is happening in the other states where the GOP is struggling to find a ground game while everything crumbles around them. I don’t know that Howard Dean is a genius as much as he’s observant of the state of affairs: what political mind wouldn’t have looked at the electoral maps from 2000 and 2004 and realized that in order to succeed in such a perfectly divided environment you’d need to move hard into the dozen or so states perched right in the middle? What the plan enacted was a methodical course that took states like Ohio and Florida out of the mix because a combination of Virginia (already turning with Dem governors and Senators), N.M., Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana would secure a victory without relying on the big states in a winner-take-all-but-only-one-state counts result. If you look at whatever consolidated tracking map you rely on, you’ll see that as of today Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia are all in the leaning Obama column. That’s 109 electoral votes that Bush carried in 2000 and 2004 (and doesn’t include the now Obama-blue Iowa that Bush carried). Not one single Kerry state from 2004 is anywhere near the McCain column. As it stands right now, by counting only the solid states (defined as a lead greater than double digits) for both candidates, Obama is covered for 259 of the 270 needed to win and McCain for 127 of the 270 needed. What this plan has given us is a chance to win in so many states that seemed unreachable by old-time political (read: GOP) standards that all I want is Virginia to go blue and the rest (Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Colorado, and Ohio) can go to McCain and it won’t matter one bit. What this plan has brought about is a new type of campaigning that will carry forward over the next decade. Think about the Republican lead in Texas dropping by 10% in this cycle: Kansas down 13%, Alaska down 10%, Mississippi down 10%, Montana down almost 20%. Those states are now on the table for 2010, 2012, and beyond. Even though the ground game isn’t strong there any longer – it was, and it put a huge dent in some GOP luxury states.

For those that harp on the Obama campaign as being some sort of crazy group of kids, all you need to do is walk into an Obama office and see the huge breadth of people volunteering to beat the pavement, make calls, and support in any way possible. It’s an amazingly positive and powerful cross-section of the American population. A good portion of this process would have occurred whether Clinton or Obama were the nominee and that’s as important for the party as winning this election. I certainly would have spent the same amount of time on the streets in support of Clinton as the nominee as I have for Obama. That’s what this represents, at its core: the fact that a huge majority of the people are tired of the hate and misery of the GOP. Fortunately, we had people with the foresight to get the wheels rolling well in advance of the day – it’s been brilliant.

I can almost see the Sun rising....

hey to all.

t